I let her go but put an arm around her shoulders and walked her toward the office. The whole time my head was bent to hers and I told her about my morning.
“Praise be to Jesus!” she shouted right before we disappeared into the hall.
All the kids (luckily, there weren’t that many of them that early in the morning) stared.
* * * * *
The morning was its usual madness.
I called my doctor to make an appointment to discuss birth control because I was done with the condom business. There might be ways to make it fun but Vance and I were kind of active (okay, really active) and spontaneous and enough was enough.
My cell rang mid-morning. The display said “Crowe calling”.
I flipped it open. “Hey,” I said.
“Got time for lunch?”
I didn’t and that sucked. “Not really,” I told him.
“I’ll bring something to the Shelter.”
I smiled into the phone. “That’d work.”
“See you around noon.”
My pug gave me a sleepy, puppy cuddle.
“Okay,” I said.
I went in search of Martin and Curtis and hustled them into the yellow room. It was time to get to the bottom of why they’d run away so I could start fixing it but even though I knew I had their respect, they gave me nothing.
We walked out of the yellow room and one of the tutors, Stuart, was coming at me. The boys took off. Most of the kids avoided the tutors like the plague.
“Hey Stu,” I said.
“Got a problem,” he told me. “Roam and Sniff had an appointment with me yesterday and today, they missed them both.”
Hmm.
Not good.
Roam seemed all fired up to get an education so he could become a badass mother. Clearly he’d lost interest when he thought Vance was out of my life.
“I’ll take care of it,” I said to Stu and I went in search of the boys.
Not stupid, they knew I’d come after them and I caught them making their getaway. I cornered them outside in front of the building.
“You missed two tutor appointments,” I said to them.
“What of it?” Roam asked, all lip and attitude.
“You need to get caught up so we can enroll you in high school, get a foster home sorted, get your life sorted.”
“Life’s good,” Sniff put in, in an attempt to assure me they knew what they were doing.
My eyes sliced to him and the look in them made him clamp his mouth shut for once.
I looked back to Roam. “I thought you wanted to get your diploma.”