No one should go without food for three days. That night at dinner, I tried to go without a second roll and I couldn’t. I was just too hungry from practice. Then, an hour after dinner, I had a bowl of cereal.
“Mom, Riley’s eating all the cereal again.” Brady’s always telling on me.
“She’s growing, honey. She needs fuel.”
I stuck my tongue out at Brady. Then he poured himself his own bowl of cereal.
As I was munching, I thought of Rusty. She was growing too, but she was going without fuel for some reason. The next day, I decided I was going to fix it so she never had to do that again.
But I basically never see Rusty at school. Or at least I’ve never noticed her being around. Usually, TJ and I are hanging out, and we get talking about stuff and don’t look for other people at all. But on Thursday morning, I decided I’d keep an eye out. I really wanted to get an answer to the question I’d asked Rusty the night before:
Does this happen a lot? You not eating?
I just needed to keep TJ from talking my ear off.
That turned out not to be a problem. As soon as she saw me coming toward her at the lockers, she whipped a U-turn. Then she looked back over her shoulder, put her hand out, and said, “Don’t talk to me.”
So I didn’t. Instead, I looked for Rusty.
She wasn’t hard to find. She was standing in front of her English classroom.
“Rusty!” I ran over to finish our conversation from the day before.
“Hi, Riley. Wow, I never see you at school.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Nice shoes.” I was wearing some purple Riley Mae cross-trainers.
“Thanks.”
There was an awkward silence. I wanted to jump back into our conversation from practice, but I didn’t want Rusty to feel bad. So I just stood there like a dummy.
Finally, Rusty spoke.
“I told you that my dad hasn’t had a job for a year, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he does get an unemployment check, which pays some of the bills and buys us food.”
“That’s good.”
“But sometimes the food runs out before he gets his next check. That’s what happened this month. It’s not a big deal.”
I still didn’t know what to say.
“He’s getting paid again on Monday, so we’ll go shopping then.”
This was Thursday. Now I had something to say.
“Are you telling me you don’t have anything in your house to eat until Monday? That’s horrible!”
Rusty looked at the ground. “We have a box of rice and some gravy. I think we’re having that tonight. It’s okay.”
“No, that’s NOT okay! You’re gonna faint if you go that long without food.”
Then I remembered the game.
“The first softball game is Saturday. How are you going to have energy to play?”
I also remembered that I wouldn’t be there on Saturday. I was flying to Arizona with Swiftriver for an appearance at Arizona State University. The college softball team was putting on a workshop for the girls’ teams in the area, and it was going to be this big deal with entertainment, food booths, demonstrations, and companies that sell stuff, like Swiftriver.
“Riley, please don’t tell anyone what I told you, okay?”
“Why not? There are people who can help.”
“No! My dad would be so embarrassed. He’s trying hard to take care of us. People might not understand. He’s afraid I might get taken away from him.”
“Why would that happen?”
“I don’t know. He just said it could.”
That would be horrible. I couldn’t imagine being taken away from my parents just because they didn’t have a job.
“Okay. I won’t say anything. But I have to do something. You need food.”
The bell rang then. So annoying.
Rusty opened the door to her class. “I’ll see you at practice.”
I bought an extra burrito at lunch and looked all around so I could give it to Rusty. I couldn’t find her. I didn’t think it would stay good until practice, so I ate it. I was full by the third bite, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, knowing Rusty was hungry. So instead, I felt like a pig.
I had to fix this problem for Rusty. All I needed was a plan — by the end of practice.