sees me looking and folds them in her lap.
“So,” she says. “Everything’s okay where you’re staying? I didn’t have the number to uh, uh …”
“Jill’s?”
“Jill’s. The counsellor knew where to find you. I guess she called Social Services and they had it.”
I pick at the arm of the chair. “Jill’s mom got them to put her down as my temporary guardian. That way she gets child welfare money for looking after me.”
“Oh.” Marlene’s mouth opens again and hangs that way for a couple seconds. “I guess everything’s okay there?”
“Yup. I’m going to take the road test for my driver’s licence this week. Lou’s taking me.”
“Lou?” She repeats the name as if it makes her sad and confused.
“Jill’s dad. You met him.”
“I did?”
“Ruby and Lou. They went over to the apartment to look in on you.”
“Right.” Something like fear flashes across her eyes again. “That woman.”
“Ruby.”
She shakes her head and takes a big breath. “I’m sorry, I—”
“I called you a few days ago. Do you remember that?”
She stares. Her look is buggy and shiny like a cat’s when it’s hiding under the bed.
“You thought I was going to run away with Fat Freddy,” I remind her. “You said there was code scratched into the Freddy file card and that’s how you knew.”
Marlene closes her eyes.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said it so bluntly.
She keeps her eyes shut when she says, “I found that index card in the living room. I guess I got mixed up.” She glances out the window. “The last time I talked to Freddy he said you were turning into a nice-looking little broad.”
“Ew. He hasn’t seen me since I was, like, thirteen or something. Dumb-ass.”
She turns her head to me. “Did you just say dumbass?”
I shrug, smile. Must’ve picked that one up from Jill.
Her eyelids flutter and she smirks. “He’s a dumbass all right. Maybe he didn’t say it. Maybe I dreamed it. It’s hard to know what was … I remember people watching me from the TV. And the window blind … signalling.” She gestures with two hands as though she’s working the blind strings, opening and closing them. Taking a shaky breath, she looks into her hands, and picks at some chipped polish on her fingernail. “I didn’t think you’d ever leave me.”
“You said you were going to kill yourself. You said you didn’t want me to have to find you.”
“I don’t blame you. I just didn’t think you would. Seemed like I was really finished if you left. I dumped the last of the vodka and the rest of the tranquilizers. And then I had a grand mal seizure. Right in the middle of the Mac’s Mini-Mart. Ambulance came … the hospital gave me Dilantin for the seizures and a prescription for more Valium. Or Ativan. I forget … I went back home and downed the whole bottle. Apparently George found me out cold in the lobby and called an ambulance.”
“The lobby in our building?”
She nods, puts her palms on the edge of the bed and pushes herself up straight. She runs her teeth over her bottom lip and says, “What did I say to you? Something awful …”
“You told Drew about a plan to make me famous with a pink Cadillac and pink roses.”
She looks embarrassed and suddenly I’m not sure if I’m picking on her about the Cadillac stuff or trying to say something nice. If you think about it, it was pretty decent of her to want to make me famous.
“You wanted to send a picture of me in a pink car with the roses to Phil Donahue because he was Scottish. It was only going to work if all the stuff was pink and all of us were Scottish.”
Marlene’s not Scottish. Sam is. I’m half.
“Isn’t Donahue Irish?” she asks.
I snort and so does she. We’re both looking for a place to make a joke but nothing quite works yet. Or maybe it’s just not funny any more.
I suck in air until my chest hurts and then let it out. “How long do you have to stay here?”
Marlene keeps looking into her hands. “I thought they were going to send me home. I didn’t want to go. I guess I panicked. We had a group session and I—” She covers her face with both palms for a second and then puts them down. “I put green eye shadow all over my face. To prove—So they’d see that I definitely …”
I look at her. “Seriously?”
She tucks in her lips like a kid who’s