Chapter Thirteen
Sunday, November 24th, 6:00 p.m.
It wasn’t much of a surprise to see Rick’s Jeep in the driveway when Jack pulled up. I grimaced. “How much do you want to bet he hasn’t fed them supper?”
“Not at all. How do you feel about the Colonel tonight?”
“That he’s my second favorite guy.” I leaned over and kissed him. “Thanks, Jack.”
“For what?”
“For not being a jerk about my family and my responsibilities.”
“You have enough jerks in your life. You don’t need one more.” He stroked my hair. “Go save the day, Gunga Din. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”
Another kiss and I was out of his old truck, walking up the drive. Kevin jumped out as I approached. “Hey, dude. How was your weekend?”
“Awful, and we’ve been waiting forever. Dad’s ticked again.”
“Why? He’s supposed to bring you home in two hours, not now.” I put a hand on Kevin’s shoulder. “Have you guys had supper already?”
“Nope. Tessa’s sick again, and guys don’t cook at Dad’s house.”
“Well, he needs to get over himself if he wants to eat.” I opened the door and began to unbuckle Chrissy from the car seat. “Come on, kids. Let’s go.”
“I don’t appreciate always having to wait for you, Vicky.” Rick turned his head to give me his best martyr look. “You need to be here when I arrive. I have things to do.”
“Well, when you’re early, it creates a problem,” I said. “It’d be better if you stayed on schedule. I’m not dropping out of high school for you.”
That got his attention. “What are you talking about? Nobody says you have to drop out.”
“If Vicky don’t do her internship, she’ll flunk all her classes. Mr. Diaz says she’ll get kicked out of her school,” Cathy said. “And if Vicky gets kicked out, she can’t go to college. And Mr. Diaz says it’s our job to help her go to college so she can help us when it’s our turn. And we need to go to college to get good jobs when we’re all grown up like her.”
“Who is this Diaz guy?” Rick demanded. “Your mom’s new boyfriend?”
“No, Daddy.” Linda giggled, climbing out of her seat. “Mr. Diaz is our teacher. Don’t you ‘member?”
“How could he?” Lance grabbed their backpacks. “He didn’t come to our open house. Vicky did.”
“That’s enough,” Rick snapped. “You know better than to be rude to me.”
Silence from the twins, and Kevin picked up the diaper bag. “Where did Jack go? Is he getting us pizza again?”
“Not tonight, cowboy.” I boosted Chrissy onto my hip. “What time will you be here on Thanksgiving, Rick? I’ll tell Mom so she has everything ready.”
“Late,” Rick said. “We’re going to Tessa’s family up in Bellingham for dinner.”
“Okay.” I handed Cathy my keys and closed the Jeep door. “Let us in, sweetie.”
Kevin waited until the other kids ran ahead of us. “He’s not going to show up, Vicky. Tessa was having a big fit about coming back early. She wants to go shopping with her mom and sisters on Black Friday.”
“Well, if he doesn’t make it, you guys will have to go to daycare,” I said. “I’m going shopping with a bunch of my friends too.”
“What is it with girls and shopping?” Kevin demanded. “It’s stupid.”
“Not if you want Christmas, it’s not. How do you think you get all those cool presents? Mom and I always budget out what we can spend. She goes to work, and I go hit all the doorbuster sales starting at four in the morning.”
“Guess I gotta jump in and help.” Kevin groaned. “It means getting everybody up to go to daycare, huh?”
“Only if your dad doesn’t show up.” I paused to untangle Chrissy’s sticky fingers from my hair. “Do I want to know what you kids had for snacks today?”
“Peanut butter and jam on crackers. It was all they had.” Kevin told me. “Tessa told Dad that he had to go grocery shopping, and he got all nasty about it. He said it was a girl job and she totally screamed at him. That was amazing.”
“What was?” I climbed the steps to the front porch. “Her losing it?”
“You and Mom never tell Dad not to be a jerk,” Kevin said. “And Jack says he takes you to the store and helps buy groceries so you don’t get stuck with all the work. He says when the house is a disaster area, he helps muck it like he does the barn. That’s what real men do. They help clean up the mess. They don’t just make it and leave it.”
“Really?” I’d wondered why my brother had started becoming human. Now, I knew. Somebody was teaching him about choices. It should have been me. What had I been thinking? Not about his future. “You’re a good kid, Kevin.”
“And I’m gonna be a good guy like Jack and his dad.”
“Yes, you are.” I stepped into the hall, glanced at the backpacks tossed on the floor and let out a roar. “You guys get back here and clean up your stuff. Dirty laundry in the pantry. Move it, move it, move it! Kevin, give me that diaper bag and watch for Jack. He’ll be back with fried chicken real soon for supper. Please help him get everything inside and set up for us to eat.”
“I knew we’d have something great for dinner,” Kevin said. “I told them when Dad said he didn’t have time to stop at McDonald’s and Linda started to cry ‘cuz she was hungry. I said, ‘Don’t worry. Vicky will feed us soon as we get home.’”
“And Jack.” I glanced through the open door when the neighbor’s dog started barking. I saw a guy on the sidewalk. It looked like Adam Chambers, but what would he be doing in my neighborhood? It didn’t make sense. “Let’s get organized. Right?”
“Right?” Kevin passed a Spiderman backpack to Lance. “You gotta get your stuff in our room. We’re having K.F.C. soon as Jack gets here.”
“K.F.C. K.F.C.” Lance charged back down the hall to his room, chanting. “I love K.F.C. Love it, love it, love it! K.F.C.”
I laughed. “I’m so signing him up for cheer when he gets to middle school.”
* * * *
Monday, November 25th, 7:10 a.m.
Robin and I met at the front doors of Lincoln High. She passed me my latte. I peeled off the cap and tossed it before I sipped. “You should have seen Aladdin yesterday. Sierra ponied him while I rode him for a half hour and he did great.”
“Sounds like he’s turning into a horse in spite of himself, and you’re becoming a trainer. You’ll be able to help Rocky ride Twaziem next spring.”
“Yes, but you have to do more ground school with him.” After a quick stop by our lockers, we walked toward the Commons. “It’s really made a difference with Aladdin.”
We could have talked horses all morning, but we didn’t get the chance. Evie and Tom waved to me, and I led the way over to their table. “What’s up?”
“We need to tally up the donations and deliver the food to Marysville Helping Hands tomorrow,” Evie said. “Ms. Walker says we’ll cut cheer practice to do it. I wanted to give you a ‘heads up’ so you can be there.”
“No problem,” I said. “I have to see the counselor and get my head adjusted so my mom picks up the kids.”
“You sound like Sierra when she says therapy helps her escape from the barn,” Tom gave me a long look then asked, “Have you ever thought about filing for emancipation?”
“What’s that?” I swallowed more of my latte. “The only time I’ve heard about it is in Mr. B’s history class when he’s going off about the Civil War.”
“You’ve turned sixteen, right? Ask Ingrid about going for emancipation. She can help you get out on your own. If you need some place to live, you can bunk on my couch until you have enough money to rent an apartment.”
“She doesn’t need to move out, Tom.” Evie glowered at him. “She just needs to tell her mom to back off and let her have a life.”
“Well, one way to get her mother’s attention is to threaten to apply for her freedom. It isn’t like Vicky couldn’t take care of herself. She could get a job in a heartbeat. And she wouldn’t have to wait until she turns eighteen to flee the family nest.”
“This is all news to me,” I said. “What about you, Robin? Have you ever heard of anyone leaving home before their eighteenth birthday?”
She shook her head. “No. I bet we could find out about it on the Internet. Want to go to the library and see what comes up? We have fifteen minutes before class.”
“Why not? It sounds interesting.” I frowned when I spotted Adam sitting nearby. Had he been listening to our conversation? No, he couldn’t have been. He had his nose buried in his math book. Robin and I strolled toward the stairs, finishing off our coffees on the way.
Upstairs, the computer lab off the library was open. We grabbed two chairs and sat down at one of the stations. I logged on and hit the Internet to do some quick investigating. Teen emancipation popped up right away. Robin and I stared at the screen. The article began by defining emancipation, stating that it was a legal process that granted teenagers independence from their parents or guardians.
I scrolled on down to the bulleted list of facts. I had to be sixteen. Check. I was sixteen and a half. I’d have rights and responsibilities most teens didn’t. Okay, I could handle that. Oops, the very next thing was that I needed a job to show I could support myself. I had talked to Rocky about one, and she’d hire me part-time now at Shamrock Stable with full-time hours in the summer. I needed somewhere to live. I didn’t have a place lined up, and I was pretty sure that most judges would frown on me living with Tom. He seemed to be a good guy, but I didn’t want a relationship with him, at least not a serious one.
“What do you think?” I asked Robin.
“You’ve got a lot of work to do to pull this together.” Robin rolled back and forth in her swivel chair. “I wonder if my folks would agree to let you stay with us. You could have Felicia’s room. She’s in Pullman most of the year. And by the time she gets back for the summer, you’d have an apartment of your own.”
“It might be a little tricky for them.” The bell rang and I logged off. “Most adults think teens that have been together for two years like me and Jack are having a wild time.
“You mean you’re not?” Robin pasted an innocent look on her face. “What a shock.”
“Very funny.” I elbowed her in the ribs on the way out the door. “No way. I don’t care what my mother told Ingrid. There’s no way I’m ready to have a baby of my own. I want a house of my own first and a puppy.”
“And a kitten and a horse,” Robin finished. “Come on. We have to hurry or we’ll be late and Weaver won’t allow us a future.”
“Maybe if we didn’t have one, we wouldn’t have to face the dreaded Monday morning write.”
“Don’t get your hopes up, Vicky.”
* * * *
Tuesday, November 26th, 4:30 p.m.
I curled up in my favorite chair in Ingrid’s office, sipping a soda. She wore a lavender pantsuit today. I wondered what would happen if I offered to take her shopping and update her wardrobe. She crossed to the big center table. She sat down, organizing pens and a pad of paper. I smiled at her. “So, where do you want to start?”
“Oh, how about a recap of your week? Then, you can share what’s on your mind.”
“What update?” I asked. “Let’s see. I took the kids to daycare a bunch of times, had nice chats with Mr. Diaz, the kindergarten teacher, whenever they were forgotten in his room, and called you when my internship nearly got loused up last Friday.”
“Sounds like I still need to work on that parenting plan with your folks.” Ingrid made a few notes. “Anything else I should bring up?”
“Yes,” I said. “I want to get a job that pays me. How can I when I have to take care of the kids all the time? I thought you were going to talk to Mom and Rick about it.”
“I have it on my list, Vicky. What else do you want me to discuss with them?”
“Teen emancipation,” I said. “I’ve been doing some research, and I understand that I don’t have to wait until I’m eighteen to be free. I can walk right now.”
“It’s not quite that easy.” Ingrid tapped a pen on the table. “You need to be able to show the court that you can take care of yourself. You need a job, a place to live, a way to buy clothes and food, and a plan to finish school. Do you have all those things?”
“Not yet. First, I need to stop being the household drudge. If I can’t get out of my mom’s fireplace, how can I work for anyone else?”
“Fair enough,” Ingrid said. “So, tomorrow I’ll talk to your parents about you getting a part-time job. What do you have in mind?”
“Shamrock Stable,” I said. “I’m going to be a horse trainer, and Rocky said she’d like to hire me now. I don’t have my license yet, but Jack will drive me until I do.”