Wait, you’re not taking her to jail, are you?” Ma hangs on to Mrs. Ross’s sleeve, her eyes pleading.
Mrs. Ross puts her free arm around Ma’s shoulders, pats her gently. “No, Mrs. Connolly. She’s not going to jail. But I do have to take her down to the probation office. Bird’s going to have to prepare a statement in accordance with the evidence I’ve discovered in her room, and then give us a urine sample. She’ll be charged with an initial probation violation because the drugs were found in her room, but if the urine comes up hot . . . I mean, if any trace of Vicodin shows up in it, we’ll have to charge her with another two counts as well. After that, it’s up to the judge.”
Ma clutches at the neck of her bathrobe again, as if pinning it to her throat. “I’ll get Angus,” she says, looking at me.
“You don’t have to get Angus. They’re not going to find anything in my urine, Ma, which means all they’re going to do right now is draw up some paperwork for finding Vicodin in my room. It isn’t going to take long.” I look at Mrs. Ross. “Right?”
She reaches up and fiddles with an earring. “Let your mother get Angus, Bird. I really don’t know how long things are going to take.”
I lick my lips. Inhale deeply, while holding Ma’s eyes in a vise-like grip. “Don’t you say a word to him. I mean it, Ma. Not one single word.”
“Well, of course I’m not going to say anything,” Ma scoffs, as if the possibility of doing such a thing would ever enter her mind.
“Okay, then,” Mrs. Ross says. “Let’s go.”
I grab for my keys and then pause. “I can take my own car, can’t I?”
Mrs. Ross hesitates, her eyes roving over my face, as if trying to find a shred of veracity somewhere in there. “No,” she says finally. “I think you’d better come with me.”
The ride over to the probation office takes less than ten minutes, but every red light, every stop sign, feels like a barrier. I look out the window, purposely avoiding Mrs. Ross’s eyes, which skitter in my direction every few minutes, and set my jaw. Her car smells like hairspray and cherries. A rubber air freshener in the shape of a lemon hangs down from the knob of her CD player, and next to my feet is an extra pair of heels. Blue leather, with a gold buckle. I kick them to one side, pretending not to notice as Mrs. Ross shoots me a look, and stare out the window. I still can’t believe Jane ratted me out. Yes, it was her medicine, and yes, the fact that I took them means that I am not to be trusted (God knows what else I must’ve taken), but going to the cops? Couldn’t she just have confronted me herself? Fired me, the way I’d deserved to be fired, maybe shut the door in my face, called me a few nasty names? Maybe I’m an idiot, but I thought the little bit of time we spent together—especially last night, talking about things, real things, not just the logistics of the house, or where I needed to clean, but her life, herself—might’ve tempered her decision. I’m not saying she should’ve let me off the hook, but couldn’t she have given me some slack? Just a little bit?
Inside the office, Mrs. Ross holds the front door open, stepping back to let me in.
“Don’t forget,” I say, striding past her. “I’m still innocent until proven guilty in this country.”
“I saw what I saw.” Mrs. Ross stalks on ahead, the muscles in her calves bulging with each step.
Screw you. You don’t know anything.
But I know that’s a lie. Even worse, I know she’s got the evidence of what she saw hidden in some Ziploc bag inside that gigantic purse of hers. Still, it’s not like she can prove that I took them from Jane. No one can, really, when it comes right down to it. Vicodin is Vicodin. I could’ve gotten it anywhere, from anyone. And my urine will come back clean, which is going to throw an even bigger wrench into the situation. By the time this whole thing is over, Mrs. Ross won’t know which end is up. She’ll have to let me go, and I will. There’s an eleven-thirty bus that comes to the corner right across the street. I’ll ride home, get my car, and hightail it the hell over to the church. If there is a God somewhere, I’ll have just enough time to still get James out of the loft before the folk group people get there and drive up to the apartment.
“Have a seat,” Mrs. Ross says abruptly as we reach the door outside her office. “I’ll be out to get you when I’m ready.” She slides some sort of credit card thing inside a little black box and then yanks open the door when it beeps.
There’s only one seat available in the row against the wall. The other two are occupied—fellow probation violators, I guess. Or newbies, maybe, just like I was eighteen months ago. I sit down in between a guy wearing a leather jacket and sweat pants, and a woman who looks as though she hasn’t eaten a meal in at least a year. Even her ankles, which stick out from the bottom of a pair of yellow cropped pants, are the size and width of chicken bones.
I glance at the clock above the door: 10:36. As long as Mrs. Ross doesn’t drag her feet, I’ll still have a little less than an hour to go over and get James. Although how long it’s going to take me to get him down all those stairs is beyond me. And that’s assuming no one will be hanging around the vestibule or inside the church itself. I don’t have to worry about the time afterward, since going to Jane’s is out of the picture—so that’s one good thing. If I can just get James out of the loft, put him in my car and—
“Who do you see?” The guy in the leather jacket elbows me. His belly is so enormous that the bottom of it, jutting out from beneath his orange T-shirt and stretched taut with white-and-purple striations, reminds me of a marbled piece of meat. He’s wearing heavy work boots with the laces undone and white socks. Black stubble darkens the lower half of his face and his nose is pocked with deep pits.
“What?”
“In there.” He points his chin toward the door. “Who’s your probation officer?”
“Oh.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Mrs. Ross.”
“Uh-huh.” He nods, as if he knows her personally. “I got Billings. He’s a total dick.”
I stare straight ahead, hoping that he will get the hint that I am not interested in having even a small discussion about our probation officers.
But then the anorexic leans forward, tucking her white sandals under her chair. “I have Billings, too. And I agree. He is a dick. He doesn’t give me a break for anything.” There is fine hair growing on the tops of her arms, like chick fuzz, and she runs her palms over it lightly as she talks. “He yanked me in here again ’cause he says he saw me ‘hanging out’ with some of my old friends at the movie theater, which isn’t even true. There was one girl in the group that I used to know from before and I wasn’t even talking to her. I was there to see a movie and that was it.”
“You can’t hang out with your old friends?” the man asks, his eyes skittering up and down the length of her. “What’re they, trouble?”
“The one girl’s a druggie.” The anorexic shrugs. “I used to buy stuff from her. But I wasn’t even talking to her. It was total coincidence that she was even there. When I knew her, she barely ever left the house.”
“You mean total coincidence that he was there,” the man says. “Or just bad luck.” He grunts sympathetically. “He wrote me up ’cause I was ten minutes late getting home last night. Didn’t matter that I was up at the mall, buying my kids shoes. He didn’t want to hear it. Just kept saying, ‘Rules are rules, buddy-boy. Rules are rules.’”
“He calls me buddy-boy!” The anorexic sits back, folding her toothpick arms over her chest. “Like I’m some kind of fucking Boy Scout.” She shakes her head. “What an asshole.” She is wearing a thin white sweater with no sleeves, even though it’s barely warm enough for a T-shirt. The tops of her shoulders stick out like knobs. She sits forward again suddenly, opening her legs, draping her elbows along the bones of her thighs. “He treats us like kids. Like we’ll never grow up or get it right, you know?”
The man nods, draws his fingers down the stubble along his face. “They’re all like that. Every single one of them.”
Like we’ll never grow up or get it right. I wonder if this is how Ma sees me. Stuck perpetually at fifteen, still kicking and screaming about missing Dad. Still deliberately making the wrong choices, although I know better. And how about Mrs. Ross? Am I just another one of her clients who lets her down, a typical self-centered brat with tunnel vision? Have either of them ever really believed in me, or have they just been holding their breath all this time, waiting for me to screw up?
Mrs. Ross appears then, a stack of files in the crook of her elbow. She pushes open the door, gives me the same dour expression as before. “Okay, Bird. Let’s go.”
“Good luck,” the man says behind me. “Don’t let them push you around.”
I can hear the two of them snickering as the door closes behind me.
The second hand on the clock ticks forward: 10:46.
I FOLLOW MRS. ROSS’S legs back down to her cubicle, sit down in the empty chair next to her desk before she has a chance to tell me to. She slides into her own chair, arranging her legs just to the right of the desk, and, without giving me a glance, starts typing. Her fingers move quickly and then speed up, flying so forcefully at one point that the keyboard starts sliding around the desk. She doesn’t seem to notice, her eyes set firmly on the screen, until finally, with two deliberate smacks against the keys, she sits back in her chair and turns her head. A long moment passes as she hooks a finger over one of the strawberry-sized beads in her necklace and glares at me.
“What?” I ask finally.
“Don’t ‘what’ me, Bird,” she says. “You know very well what.”
“But you’re freaking out for no reason. You don’t even know anything and you’re just jumping to conclusions.”
“First of all, I am not freaking out.” Mrs. Ross spits the word back out at me, as if the thought of using such vocabulary would never occur to her. “I’m just incredibly disappointed. And secondly, I am not jumping to any conclusions.” She leans forward, lowering her voice. “I found the drugs, Bird. In your pants pocket.”
“But that doesn’t mean I took them. Or that they even belong to me. Or Jane.”
Mrs. Ross straightens up again in her chair. “Well, what would it mean, then, Bird? Why don’t you tell me? Do you have some kind of secret life on the side that I should know about? Have you started popping Vicodin suddenly for some phantom illness? Or are you conducting a little extra business on the side?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot.” I can feel a latent anger starting to catch, a flame lighting. “I’m not a . . .” I pause, the word “child” sitting on the end of my tongue, and swallow it back down. Not because it’s the wrong word. Because it’s the right one. I’d bet any amount of money that those idiots out in the waiting room know it, too. For some reason or another, we are all still acting like kids, every single one of us in this place, making stupid, thoughtless decisions that we don’t take the time to think all the way through. But why? It can’t be as simple as being selfish, can it? Have all of my actions, from writing that second bad check to deciding to help James, really just been about me?
“I don’t think you’re an idiot,” Mrs. Ross says. “I’m pretty sure I know you by now, Bird. Which is why I know you’re hiding something from me about those Vicodin.”
“I’m not!”
“Okay.” Mrs. Ross shrugs, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with me. “Explain it to me, then.”
“It just means you found two Vicodin in my pants pocket. They could’ve been there for years. Or maybe I was holding them for someone. Maybe I even—” Why can’t I stop lying? What is it that keeps me from getting out of my own way? Maybe some of us don’t ever grow up. Maybe some of us will never get it right, no matter how much we want to.
“Bird.” Mrs. Ross cuts me off, leaning forward again. “Stop it, okay? You’re insulting my intelligence and yours. You and I both know where the Vicodin came from.”
“No, you don’t! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You have no idea—”
“I do.” Mrs. Ross’s voice is soft, her blue eyes edged with glossy mascara. “And you do, too. I don’t know why yet, and maybe you don’t either, but we’re going to figure out why you would go and do something like that when you’re this close to getting off probation.” She holds up her fingers, spaced an inch apart. “When you’re days away from moving into that apartment on the lake you want so much for you and Angus. Why do you think, Bird? Why would you go and sabotage something that you want so much, that you’ve worked so hard to get?”
Something flashes through the back of my head then when she says that, but it doesn’t have time to register because the sudden roar of sirens outside makes us both jump. There is a flurry of movement around me as various probation officers stand up, and the sizzle of static from the police scanner on the wall.
“All units to Saint Augustine’s Church on Maple Avenue,” a flat voice says. “Repeat. All units to Saint Augustine’s Church on Maple Avenue.”
I leap up as if someone has just lit my chair on fire. “What did they say?”
The crackly voice over the intercom gets louder. “CODE 217. ALL UNITS TO SAINT AUGUSTINE’S CHURCH ON MAPLE AVENUE. REPEAT. THIS IS A CODE 217.”
“Bird?” Mrs. Ross is looking at me strangely. “Sit back d—”
But I’m already running blindly through the cubicle’s rat maze, heading for the exit. “Bird! Where are you going? Bird, wait!” Mrs. Ross is yelling behind me; somewhere in the distance, I can hear footsteps. They may be hers or someone else’s, but I’m not sticking around to find out. “Bird!” she screams again, just as I turn a corner and swerve to avoid slamming into a cubicle wall. “Sawyer! Philip! Get her!” I backtrack quickly, spinning around just as enormous hands grab me from behind, pinning both of my arms tightly against my sides.
“No!” I scream, my heart plummeting as the hold around me tightens. The guy’s big, with arms like trees. I’m sorry to have to hurt him. I kick back, aiming low, feel a sudden release as the man grunts and then stumbles forward, dropping both of us to the floor. I look up; the door to the outside is ten feet away. I scramble to my feet and lurch for it, even as bodies seem to fall out of the heavens, from every direction, pinning me against the rough blue carpet.
“No!” I scream again. “I have to go! Let me go! I have to get him! Please! He’s waiting for me! Let me go get him! He needs me! He needs me!”
Mrs. Ross appears suddenly, getting down on her knees as two men hold my arms on either side. Her eyes are wild, the skin around her lips pale and tight as she leans her face in close to mine. “Who are you talking about, Bird? Who do you have to get? Angus?”
My brain crackles like lightning. Yes, of course, I’ll tell her it’s Angus. She loves Angus. I’ll tell her he’s sick. And then, when she lets me go, I’ll take the back route, past North Main, down all the one-way streets. I can do it. I know I can. I’ll get there before the police cars and fire engines and God knows who else they’re sending to bring him down. And I can . . . I can . . .
As if to mock my thoughts, the scanner sputters again: “Shots fired at Saint Augustine’s Church. Repeat. Shots fired.”
No.
Who fired the shot? James? The police? Both?
“Who, Bird?” Mrs. Ross asks me again. “Who do you need?” She reaches out, touches my face. Everything feels as if it’s slowing down around me. “Who, hon?”
“Officers moving in.”
And just like that, I know it is over.
I know that our time has run out, that there is no way, no possible way anymore, that I can save him. Something in my body takes over then, and I kick and scream as if possessed, writhing and twisting my limbs like airplane propellers. I bite and scratch, fighting for my life. For his. For us. For the life we will never have, at least not in this world.
“Suspect down.”
“Nonononononono!!!!”
The shriek in my ears is the last thing I remember before lurching a final time and hitting my head on the floor.
Afterward, black.