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  “They say you’re getting along with the two other foster girls. That’s good.” Since Jada was the youngest, and her brothers never brought her nieces and nephews around, she wasn’t used to being with younger kids, but it was actually kind of fun. It was the only fun she had at the Markhams’, since everything else—having a phone, being online, watching cable, hanging out with friends—wasn’t allowed. Instead, they’d eat together and play board games. I don’t need to play board games, Jada thought. I’m already bored and playing the Markhams’ rules game.

  “And how about school?” Mrs. Terry continued. “How’s that going?”

  “Alright,” Jada muttered.

  “If you were a writer and got paid by the word, you’d starve.” Mrs. Terry laughed at her own joke. Lots of white people behind desks did that, Jada had noticed.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say,” Jada explained.

  “Well, is Rondo better than Central?”

  Jada nodded.

  “Can you give me an example of how?”

  “At Central, most of the teachers act like they care, but there’s just too many kids,” Jada explained. “I get it, because at Central the teachers gotta care about the good ones, the bad ones, and the ones in between. But at Rondo, all they got are us bad kids, so maybe—”

  “Stop right there. You’re not a bad kid,” Mrs. Terry said. “You’ve made bad choices.”

  “Fine,” Jada said. She’d heard it all before.

  “So you think the teachers at the alternative school care more?”

  “Seems like it, but maybe that’s just because there’s a lot less of us to care about,” Jada answered. “At Central, we’d have like forty kids in a class, and I didn’t even know half of ’em. What, those teachers have, like, six classes? How many kids is that?”

  Mrs. Terry started to speak, but then stopped. “You tell me. What is forty times six?”

  “I didn’t come here to do math,” Jada said, and Mrs. Terry laughed. “At Rondo, there’s maybe a hundred in the school. I don’t know everybody, but the people there seem alright.”

  “I’m glad to see that you’re not online, and that you’ve not contacted your old friends, as you agreed to,” Mrs. Terry said.

  Jada looked at her wide-eyed. How’d she know that?

  “Have you written the apology letter to your mother like the judge required?”

  Jada said nothing. Even with her new word list, she didn’t know what to write. She could write “I’m sorry” in a hundred languages, but she doubted it would be enough.

  “Look, while the judge was moved by your letter to him, he decided time away from your mom would be best for both of you,” Mrs. Terry said. “Fighting at school, shoplifting, possession, truancy—your record was full of small stuff, but aggravated assault is a serious crime, especially—”

  “Given the vulnerable nature of the victim,” Jada repeated the judge’s harsh words.

  Mrs. Terry nodded and then paused. “Have you thought about after you graduate? It’s early, but it’s good to have a goal.”

  Jada sat up in her seat. For once that was something she liked to talk about. She started talking about playing in the WNBA or becoming an actress, but Mrs. Terry interrupted.

  “Those are nice dreams, but I asked if you have any goals. Something more short-term, closer to home.”

  Jada felt like she’d had a shot blocked. Rejected. Her hands went back over her chest, and she slouched back in the chair.

  “What does your mother do?” Mrs. Terry asked.

  Not much anymore, Jada thought, but knew she couldn’t say it. If she was ever going to get back home, Jada knew she’d need to show a little more respect, especially toward her mom.

  Mrs. Terry answered her own question by checking her computer screen. “By my records, last time I spoke with her she worked third shift in a laundry.”

  Jada stared at the floor. “I don’t wanna work in no laundry at midnight.”

  “If you don’t stay in school, that’s likely to be one of limited options. You’re making progress, but if you mess up and don’t get an education, then your mom’s hard life could be your hard life. Is that the life you want?”

  Biting her dry bottom lip, Jada flipped her street-stare at Mrs. Terry. “No.”

  “Let’s have you focus on something between working in a laundry and winning an Oscar. We’ll talk about that next month when we meet. Now, before you go, you need to take a UA.”

  “Why?” The adult world was alphabet soup: UA, JDC, PO, CO. FU, Jada thought.

  “Condition of your probation, I told you.” “You won’t find anything.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Why don’t you trust me?” Jada countered.

  “Trust is earned.” Jada thought all adults in her life should get T-shirts with those three words on them and point to the shirt every time they wanted to rub salt into her wounds.

  “I smoked a little weed, everybody does that,” Jada said. Problem was, Jada knew, she was high one time she was arrested, so they were always going to make her pee into the cup. If she’d been high and mellow the last time too, Jada thought, maybe things wouldn’t have turned violent and ugly.

  “The bathroom is down the hall.” Mrs. Terry handed her the UA kit.

  Jada wanted to throw it against the wall, but she took it. She wished she could get credit for making that good choice along with the bigger ones. “I’ll do your garbage UA, but I ain’t lying to you about being clean. It’s the truth.” She wasn’t like a lot of girls back home. Maybe I don’t know forty times six, Jada thought, but I know real-world math. Get high or drunk, get freaky, get pregnant, get a kid, and get a check. Rinse and repeat.

  Jada’s real-life math was different. Counting days in the JDC, subtracting doctor’s bills from paychecks, measuring out her mom’s pain meds, deciding what to lift from the store and what wasn’t worth the risk. But somehow, it always added up to the same thing: peeing in a cup to prove herself to some PO.

  6

  “Slam dunk!” Jada yelled as the ball went through the hoop nailed up on the Markhams’ garage. On her shoulders, Heather screamed in delight. “Feather, now it’s your turn.”

  Jada bent down and carefully helped Heather off her shoulders. Then, just as carefully, she helped the younger sister, Feather, up. The two girls were small for their ages—seven and six—and couldn’t shoot a basketball worth anything. Jada tried playing horse and other games with them, but the only way the girls could make a basket was sitting on her shoulders. It wasn’t much of a game, but it was better than nothing.

  Which was kind of how she felt in general about life at the Markhams’. With more rules than the Bible, and more Bibles in the house than other books, Jada toed the line under the Markhams’ watchful eyes. She played along with their rules to avoid going back to JDC. She had her own room, but she missed her friends and her things from her old life. Mrs. Terry talked about making a home visit, but she’d told Jada she’d have to earn it. Typical adult behind a desk, she didn’t say how, other than “marked improvement.”

  “Do me again!” Heather shouted after Feather completed her dunk. Jada’s shoulders ached from carrying the girls, who seemed to be growing by the week. Jada could feel herself packing on the pounds at the Markhams’ too, since there was always food, a lot of it, and all of it good. But she had to admit it wasn’t bad coming home from school and knowing there would be dinner and people to eat with, instead of eating fast food all alone in front of the TV or her phone.

  “Girls, ten more minutes, and then you need to get ready for church!” Mr. Markham yelled from the front door. Jada sighed. She didn’t want to go to church. Again. What was with these people? Church on Sunday, then Sunday school afterward, and church and teens-only class on Wednesday. They also read from the Bible every night. It’s not that Jada didn’t believe in God. As she looked at her life and her mom’s life, it just seemed like God didn’t believe in them.
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br />   The younger girls ran inside, while Jada stayed in the driveway, shooting baskets. One after another a perfect shot, nothing but net. If she got back to Central next year, maybe she’d make varsity. Maybe she’d be a starter, and by her senior year, she’d get a college scholarship. Maybe. As she dribbled the ball, the bounces seemed to spell out that word: maybe, maybe, maybe. Nothing was certain, everything was maybe, hanging on her choices.

  “Wanna hit?” A rail-thin white girl in a pink hoodie motioned to the joint in her hand as they stood behind the church. Like Jada, the girl must’ve bolted from the teens-only program held right after the church service. As long as Jada was at the van to meet the Markhams in an hour, she’d be fine. Better than fine, now.

  Jada took the joint into her hand, inhaled, and let the smoke fill her mouth.

  “You new?” the girl asked. Jada liked her hair: long, dyed blond with pink stripes.

  Jada returned the joint. The girl sucked it like an asthma kid with an inhaler.

  “Were you at JDC last summer?” the girl asked as she handed the joint back to Jada.

  Jada still said nothing. If the girl asked the question, she knew the answer. Jada inhaled and drifted. Her other stays had been short until Mom took her home, but not the last time. Over the summer.

  “They got me for stealing a car,” the girl said. “Stole my fosters’ car with them in it!”

  “What?” Jada asked. She now had a vague memory of the girl at JDC.

  “They were teaching me to drive, and we got into it, like always.” The girl sat on the grass behind the south side of the church, which faced the highway. She motioned for Jada to sit with her, but Jada keep her distance and stayed standing. “So I just kept driving. Hippies. They had one of those hybrids, so we made it almost through Iowa before it ran out of gas.”

  Jada handed back the joint, sat next to the girl, and tried to focus on her story.

  “Then I got out and hitchhiked. Made it as far as Houston, Texas, but I came back.”

  “Why?”

  “Like, who did I know in Texas?” the girl laughed, inhaled, enjoyed. “I ran away a hundred times, but I guess I always end up back up here. I’m in a foster out in Whitebury.”

  Jada laughed. She’d heard the nickname for Woodbury from her friends. The joke was that the suburb had a blackout once—but the cops made him get back in his car and leave.

  “What’s your name?” the girl asked, friendly. “Mine’s Alicia.”

  “Jada. Like the actress.”

  Alicia offered the joint to Jada, but she waved it away. “More for me, Jada.”

  “I got to be careful. I have to do a UA with my PO.”

  “OK.” The alphabet soup made both girls laugh. Jada smiled; it had been a long time since she’d really laughed. Back with her girls, all the time. Now, not so much.

  “I better get back in there. Never know who’s gonna snitch on you,” Jada said. She brushed the grass from her ill-fitting, knock-off brand jeans. “I gotta stay clean, you know.”

  “For the UA?”

  “No, for the M-O-M,” Jada said. “I wanna get back home.”

  Alicia took the last hit. “Must be nice, to have a home.” She buried the joint in the dirt. “Here’s my number.” Alicia wrote ten digits on Jada’s left hand. “Hit me up.”

  “I don’t have a phone right now,” Jada confessed.

  “Next Wednesday then,” Alicia said. “We’ll get our God on out here.”

  Jada laughed. So far she hadn’t “found a friend in Jesus,” as the Markhams vowed she would, but maybe she’d found a kindred spirit.

  “So, what did you learn tonight?” Mr. Markham asked when Jada climbed into the van. Heather and Feather sat in the back seat, so Jada had the middle row to herself.

  “You don’t learn things in church.” Jada snapped her spearmint gum, which Alicia had handed her. That, along with the some perfume samples she’d ripped out of fashion magazines at Walgreens, probably gave her enough to mask the weed stank.

  Mr. Markham said nothing as he put the van into gear. He often opted for silence. Mrs. Markham talked a lot, but not so much to Jada, the girls, or her husband. She lived on her phone, talking to who knows who about political stuff. As long as she doesn’t talk to me, Jada thought, my prayers are answered.

  “I need to finish an essay on the computer when I get home,” Jada said.

  Mr. Markham sighed. “No screen time after 9:00 p.m.,” he said. He didn’t ask her about the letter to her mom that she’d started and stopped at least ten times since Sunday.

  “I didn’t get it done after school because I was playing with the girls,” Jada snapped.

  “Then you need to manage your time better,” Mr. Markham said. “And make better choices.”

  Jada didn’t argue because it got her no place. There is no place for me, she thought. Not here, not home, not JDC. Jada tried to fall asleep in the van because those thoughts did her no good. The more she thought, the nastier her mind got. It was like peeling off the wallpaper in a squat: ugly on top, but with even more hideous layers below.

  7

  “Can I use your phone?” Jada asked the thin mixed-race girl who stood smoking on the side of the road in front of Rondo.

  The girl replied the same way Jada did when she was asked a question at school: just a blank stare.

  Jada explained her no-phone situation to the girl, who she thought was named Jessica. Jada recognized her and remembered that she talked even less in class than Jada did.

  Jessica motioned to the cig in her hand. Even outside, Jessica stood apart from everyone, near the road. The other smokers hung in the smoking area.

  Jada didn’t have a smoke to give in return for borrowing the phone. She opened up her purse to Jessica, but like her room at the Markhams’, it was mostly empty.

  Jessica took a step closer and shopped Jada’s purse. She grabbed the nail polish from inside it even quicker than Jada had lifted it from the Walgreens shelf. Jessica put the polish in her pocket, handed Jada the phone, and said, “Just five minutes.”

  Before she closed the purse, Jada grabbed the paper where she’d written down Alicia’s number. She dialed, but it went right to voice-mail. “Damn!” Jada handed back the phone.

  She saw Jessica almost smile, but not quite.

  “You want some eyeliner next time?” Jada asked. Jessica nodded and tossed the cigarette butt to the ground.

  Jada buried her smile. She’d wanted to hit somebody up for a phone since she had started at Rondo, but she couldn’t get a read on most people. Like at all schools, there were cliques, and none of them seemed open to her. The Hispanic girls went their own way. The other black girls talked too much and too loud for Jada’s taste, but the queen bee, Yvette, was the worst. Every morning at breakfast, she jumped to the front of line. Today Jada had pushed back—and pushed herself out of any chance of joining up with Yvette’s group. Some of the white girls seemed okay, but Jada could tell most were troubled—and trouble—except maybe Jessica. No doubt she was troubled too, but it seemed like she meant no harm to anyone else. Like me, Jada thought.

  “Jada, a minute, please,” Mr. Aaron said, just before the bell rang for fifth period. She was making an effort to be on time for classes, but in particular for biology with Mr. Hunter. Unlike a lot of the other teachers, who tried to act cool, Mr. Hunter was pretty strict. But at the same time, Jada thought his class was actually fun. Rather than just talking or reading, he made the students do lots of group projects and demonstrations and make PowerPoints. It was hard, but Jada was into the hands-on approach.

  “What is it?” Jada asked. Mr. Aaron waved her into his small office. On Mondays and Wednesdays, Mr. Aaron and Mrs. Howard-Hernandez did a check-in with Jada, asking her how things were going and all that, but it was Thursday. Jada frowned.

  “Sit down, please,” Mr. Aaron said, and Jada complied.

  “What did I do now?” Jada snapped. But she had known this was coming, so she hunkered
down in the chair.

  “What happened between you and Yvette this morning?” Mr. Aaron asked.

  Since there were no adults around when it went down, somebody must’ve snitched to Mr. Aaron. “I don’t like people pushing me, disrespecting me, and acting like I’m garbage.”

  “But pushing back just makes it worse. You need to come to us. Me, Mrs. Baker, Mrs. Howard-Hernandez … Everybody here cares about you. You know that’s true, right?”

  Jada took a deep breath, followed by another and another, but said nothing. Mr. Aaron sat just as quietly. He sat across from Jada, eyes wide open and hands on the table. The ticking of the old clock on the wall filled the silence until Mr. Aaron finally spoke.

  “While I understand that things didn’t escalate, they could have, and the police would have been called. You would have violated probation, and you’d be back at the JDC.”

  “Maybe,” Jada mumbled.

  “And if that happens, then your chances of reaching your goals, like graduating from high school or going back home to live with your mom … ” Mr. Aaron stopped talking, like it was a test and he wanted her to finish the sentence with the right answer. Jada stared at the white table.

  “I have the incident report here.” Mr. Aaron pushed a sheet of paper across the table. “I’d like to hear you tell your side of the story. Can you do that?”

  “I got nothing to say … ” Jada sighed like her lungs hurt. “’Cept it won’t happen again.”

  “When you came here, we laid out our expectations, but I forgot an important one: tell the truth. I don’t care about what happened, but why it happened and what you learned from it.”

  Jada took the paper in her hand. She started to read it, but it was hard with tears from her eyes blurring the page. She handed the paper back to Mr. Aaron. “I’ll try harder.”

  “No, tell me exactly what you’ll do differently.”

  Jada wiped her eyes. “I don’t know. Just tell me what you want me to say.”