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That was the last time I heard the word “emancipation” for several weeks. As Thanksgiving approached, Mrs. VanDeer decided that the best thing for all involved would be to lock me up. If I showed my face anywhere besides my room or the bathroom, I was promptly carried by Abot back to my closet. The only other exception was when Abot would escort me to the bus stop in the morning, just as Jacki, Clint and Nancy began waking, still hours from having to login to homeschool. When my school let out, I got back on the bus; Abot met me at the stop, and returned me to my room where I did my homework. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I wasn't even allowed out for meals. They were sent to me via Abot: a packet of juice and some cold toast for breakfast, accompanied by a lunch bag with another packet of juice and a dried-fruit-and-soy bar. My dinner was a plate of whatever leftovers were available after the VanDeers had eaten, sometimes supplemented with a glass of milk. I had to get all my water either from the bathroom sink or school water fountains.
I only saw the VanDeers themselves when we crossed paths on my way to or from school, or if one of them happened to be in the hallway when I needed to use the facilities. On one of the latter times, another November afternoon, I needed to wait for the bathroom to become vacant. The door opened, and it was Clint.
When he saw me, his mouth shriveled into a sneer, and his eyes narrowed. He leaned against one side of the door and pressed his palm against the other.
Looking down his nose at me, he said, “Pay toll. Gimme your perks ring.”
I really needed to go, but I was not about to give him my perks and lose what few benefits my DNA signature had attached to it. So I punched him in the nose.
It couldn't have been that much of a punch. I was a sheltered ten-year-old girl who fought by instinct, not training. When Clint, grabbing his nose, raised his cleat-clad foot at me, I lifted my knee towards his groin.
“Leave me alone,” I said, “or you're the last VanDeer.”
I am not sure he fully understood the verbal part of my threat (I know I didn't at the time), but he knew what my knee meant. He clamped his hands protectively over the region in question and scurried to the stairway, bawling like a lone seagull trying to make enough noise for a whole flock.
The moment's triumph made me lightheaded with giddiness: I'd chased Clint away, instead of vice versa. Looking across the threshold into the bathroom mirror, I caught a wide-eyed smile on my sallow face and thin, pale lips. That smile winked away the second I heard Clint clomping down the stairs, jogging to the family room, blubbering: “Maaah! Look what Jane did!”
I went to the top of the stairs to listen.
“Clinton VanDeer, I told you to stay away from that girl,” Mrs. VanDeer reprimanded in her coldest voice. “You have no one to blame but yourself.”
Again, my rage possessed me. Before I could even think of what I was doing, my feet had rushed me down the steps, around the corner, through the kitchen and into the family room.
Without my consent, my mouth snarled, “He has no one to blame but you!”
Jacki and Nancy were sitting on either side of the family room couch. They narrowed their eyes at me and actually stuck their noses in the air.
“Abot!” Mrs. VanDeer called, then, pulling her perks ring off of her right index finger, instructed her children, “Go spend this somewhere. I want you out of the room while this one is so out of control again.”
All three of the VanDeer kids brightened with the order to spend their mother's money. They were through the entryway faster than gamma radiation through human flesh.
“Abot! Come here, please!” Mrs. VanDeer shrilled again.
From somewhere upstairs, I heard the servant's obedient stompings. Abot's feet were notoriously clumsy with uneven surfaces. That meant I had Mrs. VanDeer to myself, at least for another minute, while Abot negotiated her way down the steps. I leaned towards my guardian. Her round, pasty face became blotched with purple red. The bleach-blond curls on her head quivered with anxiety, flurrying against today's stiff, frosting-pink collar.
“Don't make me call the authorities, Jane,” she said, the threat in her voice tweaked with a slight tremor. “If you hit me, that's parental abuse.”
I planted my heels. “Call whoever you want. When they find out how you ignore all the things Clint and Jacki and Nancy have done to me, we'll see who's charged. Abuse and neglect fall under the same law!”
Rolling her eyes, Mrs. VanDeer made a derisive sound with her lipstick-tattooed lips. “Don't think you can manipulate me just because california.state.gov makes you think you can.”
“You're all the manipulators! Victimizing me just to make yourselves feel a little more powerful, now that Mr. VanDeer is dead and you have nothing besides what he left you.”
Mrs. VanDeer tittered. “Ooooh! 'Manipulators!' 'Victimizing!' Big words from your dictionary? Well, well, color me impressed. Did you get to the word 'sarcasm' yet?”
I ignored her and plowed on. “And what would your husband think of how Clint kicks me, how Jacki breaks into my schoolwork files and changes my answers so I fail? How Nancy steals my clothes and tells you I destroyed them, and you believe her without question? What would Mr. VanDeer think if he knew how you let all this happen, even after his will said you had to take care of me? I hope he's haunting you right now!”
Mrs. VanDeer's eyes widened with incredulity. Her hands spasmodically clutched at the sleek fabric of her designer ankle-length culottes. “Mr. VanDeer is too dead to care about what happens now,” she whispered.
She didn't sound convinced. My head throbbed with the glory of putting my tormentor in her place.
I leaned so close to her face that I could feel her short, frightened breaths. “You hate me. You tell everyone I'm violent. You tell yourself I'm an out of control foster kid so you can get away with locking me up in a closet. But I'm not out of control. This,” I said, lifting my knotted fist, “this is control. This is me looking out for myself, because you won't. I wouldn't hate you like this if you had shown me one second that you gave a shit about me.”
She blinked at the profanity popping out of my young mouth but said nothing.
“But you hate me,” I kept going, “and all I can do is hate you back. I'll die hating, just like Mr. VanDeer died hoping. And I hope he uses my hate to curse you.”
Mrs. VanDeer gasped as if I had slapped her. Her hand flew up to smack me across my face.
I steeled myself and warned, “I'll look after myself with you just like I did with Clint. After you've actually hit me, then we'll see who's charged with abuse. I wonder what your Cherished Hours Collectors' Club will think of that?”
Mrs. VanDeer's hand lowered slowly, like a piece of windborne trash fluttering to the gutter below.
“And even if I do get put in juvenile hall,” I hissed, “at least I'd get away from you.”
She pinched her mouth shut, sidled along the couch to remove herself from my pinning glare, and got to her feet. Looking at me like she wanted to say something, instead she pulled the corners of her lips down in a grimace. Then she fled the room. I heard her feet pounding heavily up the steps and through the long hall just before the distant door to the master bedroom slammed shut.
Abot finally appeared on the family room threshold. I looked at her, then I cast my glance around the vacant family room. This was the first time I noticed that another inane novella was still playing on the screen set into one of the dupioni silk-covered walls. The decorative plate rail that ran two feet below the ceiling held more of Mrs. VanDeer's collectibles. I smiled, thinking that I had finally hurt Mrs. VanDeer herself instead of just the things upon which she showered her attentions.
Then, the repercussions of my outburst began to make their way into my awareness. Just as rage had buoyed my insides, remorse now pulled them down for the count. Instead of being a mere irritation to Mrs. VanDeer, I just had made a permanent enemy of the one person I wanted most to love me. My neck, seconds ago tense with aggression, now went slack with shame. I hated the VanDeers, but my hatred made me just like them. No, it made me worse: the object of one's irritation does not hold the same power as the object of one's hatred.
Before Abot had a chance to reach for me with her clamps, I left on my own. I trudged up the stairs, my numb fingertips brushing lightly against the hollow, faux-wood banister. When I reached the top, I turned to make a stop in the bathroom. Instead of peeing, I vomited.
I wasn't even allowed to join the VanDeers for Thanksgiving dinner. I wanted to contact Ranice to see if she knew anything about my emancipation case, but per Mrs. VanDeer, I was blocked from mail both at school and while still under her roof. All I could do was eat my soyberry bar, imagine it tasted like turkey... and hope Ranice would have the time in her busy caseload to check in on me.
The waiting broke one week later. I came home from school one day and Abot met me at my stop. Once we were inside the house, I began to head for the back stairway, but Abot held on and steered me towards the terminal—I was still young enough to call it “the actie room.” I allowed myself to be led, wondering what this could mean. I hadn't even seen Mrs. VanDeer since spewing my hatred at her. I began to shake, unable to imagine what retribution she was about to unleash upon me—retribution I surely deserved.
Mrs. VanDeer had a caller.
On top of the desk, the shell was unfurled, projecting a high-res image of a man sitting in a high-backed mottled leather office chair. For some reason he reminded me of a wasp. Bulgy, shiny eyes. Bulgy, shiny suit the color of charcoal ashes left in the rain, with a light, loose layer of neck flab hanging out around its high, pointed collar. Pinched, pointy nose, chin, ears, and widower's peak. Grease-polished dark-dyed hair two months past its “cut-by” date and slicked off of his dented forehead. Even sitting down, his figure gave the impression of height, though that could have been thanks to presentation modifications on his end. He was also the palest person I'd ever seen to that date. I guessed his age to be about mid-sixties.
“That will be all, Abot, thank you,” Mrs. VanDeer said.
Abot bumbled away.
“This,” Mrs. VanDeer said, indicating me with a tense hand-chop, “is the girl.”
“A judge emancipated her?” His voice was both incredulous and so booming that the shock of it rattled the socks around my ankles. “Is she really ten years old?”
I looked to Mrs. VanDeer for an explanation.
“Jane,” she said in sharp exasperation, “your emancipation came through today. Dr. Woolthersham here has been waiting until it was final to conduct your interview.”
“Jane E,” the man said without moving, “I am Dr. Brock Woolthersham. I run the Naomi Foundation.”
In defense, I folded my arms across my middle and put on my fierce face, demanding, “What's that?”
He smirked at my boldness, and Mrs. VanDeer chopped her hand in the air again. “Do you see this? This—this rudeness!”
“A lack of discipline, Mrs. VanDeer,” he said without ever looking at her. His glossy eyes were too busy examining me—or, how my presentation was reaching him in his terminal, wherever that was. I stared back, jutting my chin out to hide exactly how badly I wanted to bolt.
“The Naomi Foundation is a work-study program for problem girls like you, are you really ten years old?”
He'd run his words together so quickly that I needed an additional second to extract the question from the statement. “As far as I know.”
“Copies of her passport and social security info are in the file I sent you along with her emancipation notice,” Mrs. VanDeer supplied.
“We'll get to that, if I agree to take her.” He spoke in a voice like a streetside preacher thundering about some illegal, progress-hindering religion. “It is in our favor that she is so small for her age. Yes, a decided advantage. It makes her more suited to the services Naomi Foundation offers.”
Services? Mrs. VanDeer quickly looked down at her hands, nervously folding and unfolding in her lap. I recalled an encyclopedia entry in my HandRight, describing worldwide efforts to curb child prostitution. Chills corkscrewed up my spine.
“Mrs. VanDeer told me that you broke a HandRight, Jane. Is that true?”
It was my turn to have downcast eyes. I already had the sense that if I answered the question truthfully, I would be called a liar, and if I answered the way they wanted me to, I would be reminded of how evil I was.
“Your silence confirms it,” he said. “What were you doing with the HR when you broke it?”
I studied the heavily scuffed toes of my oxblood school uniform shoes, noticing that wear and tear had burnished highlights on the faux leather just over the tips of my toes.
“JANE E!” Dr. Woolthersham suddenly roared loudly enough that his voice became distorted in the transmission of it. “ANSWER!”
Even Mrs. VanDeer looked as terrified as I felt. I could hear the blood drain from my face with a great “whoosh.” “I was giving it back to Clint!” I blurted.
“And before that,” he snapped, one decibel more softly.
“I was reading.” I heard my own voice shake. Tears of surprise and shame bit at my lower eyelids. I blinked them back.
“Not playing games?”
“No,” I answered, then added, “No, sir.”
“What were you reading?”
“The dictionary.”
He snickered softly. “What is your favorite subject in school?”
“Language Arts, sir.”
“Your least?”
“Math.”
This seemed either to jab a nail into my coffin or turn me right before his very eyes into some specimen on The Nature Network's 0ddities, I couldn't tell which. My peak-snap of panic began to mellow, replaced with the best armor my young psyche could provide—forced indifference.
“I am sure she can learn quickly, Doctor,” Mrs. VanDeer began to plead towards the projection in a high, nervously soothing voice. “She's so unnaturally adult sometimes.”
“Jane,” Woolthersham said as if issuing some grave warning, “if you don't get real skills, you won't survive.”
Mrs. VanDeer nodded, desperate for the man's less than forthcoming approval.
I wracked my brain for some response that would appall both of them. “I'll marry rich,” I said
“Huh!” Mrs. VanDeer rolled her eyes heavenwards.
“Seventy-five percent of all marriages end in divorce,” Woolthersham pronounced grimly. “That statistic is higher for individuals from dysfunctional homes. I am sure that not having a home of your own to begin with, Jane E, rockets that percentage far into the ether.”
I shrugged. “Then I'll divorce rich.”
Mrs. VanDeer gasped something between pain and laughter. “Please, Dr. Woolthersham. The state won't fix her, I can't afford her a homeschooler, and she's certainly beyond my power. On top of that, we all know that studies indicate drugs would only make her worse.”
At this pious spew of recently gained wisdom, I thought of the Zacdil she had given me in the capsule and glared at her.
“See?” Mrs. VanDeer pointed at me. “Do you see that face?”
Woolthersham nodded, steepling his fingers under his chin.
Mrs. VanDeer finished her closing argument by batting her eyelashes and pressing her palms over the place where her heart should have been. “Please, the Naomi Foundation is my only hope.”
When Woolthersham took his own HR out of his jacket pocket, I couldn't tell if he had been listening to this final appeal or not. In silence, he made several entries, blinking intensely at the display in its shell. Mirrors within mirrors, I thought. At last he nodded and said, “You may fetch those documents, Mrs. VanDeer. I have made all the necessary arrangements.”
Mrs. VanDeer breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “And what about the money?”
“After she completes her first assignment and payment is rendered to the Foundation, you'll receive your recruitment bonus.”
“Oh.” Her grin faltered. “Of course.”
Dr. Woolthersham continued, “I don't need her documents, though. Give them directly to her. All the necessary tickets and so forth will be attached to the girl's perks account by tomorrow morning, Mrs. VanDeer. A copy will be sent to her social worker.”
I was confused, but everything was happening so fast that I couldn't think. Had Ranice known about this?
Woolthersham added, “Her flight is at seven AM out of San Diego International. A shuttle will be here to pick her up at four. One of the Naomi girls will meet her on the shuttle.”
I was too befuddled to match Woolthersham's calculated bow of farewell with the facility of Mrs. VanDeer. Then his image was gone, and I was alone again with my guardian.
“Well,” Mrs. VanDeer said, leaning backwards in her plump burgundy and gold brocade desk chair. “Win-win, Jane E. We'll finally get rid of each other. I even make money off the deal.”
I struggled to catch enough breath to ask, “Why are you doing this to me?”
Her eyes grew cold, like setting lead solder. She smirked with self-satisfaction. “Because I have my husband's last will and testament to consider, remember? This is my way of taking care of you.”
The meaning of her words sunk in to my brain like lumpy, sour milk soaking through stomach lining. Sick with disgust at her and her last ditch effort at lording her power over me, I shook my head. “You think selling me makes you a good guardian?”
She merely blinked at me, allowing her smirk to dimple further, as if to say, “kids say the durndest things.” As if I were speaking a foreign language she did not care to learn.
I had to pass her on my way back to my room. She tensed as I neared.
“Do you still hate me, Jane E?” she asked.
“Still,” I spat. “Forever.”
I stormed back to my closet and began packing. Cold shock was my companion as I spent my last night in storage. Uncertainty made the night a sleepless one.
