Loser's Bracket

  “They’ll find him,” Tim says. “A kid doesn’t just vanish.”

  “Kids vanish all the time,” I say. “Somewhere, I have a brother. I have no idea if he’s even alive. His bio dad snatched him and left the state, then lost him to CPS. Kids disappear.”

  “C’mon, Annie,” Leah says, “this is different.”

  “Yeah, well, tell you what’s about to happen with my drug-crazed whore of a sister. She’ll get on TV and cry and say what a wonderful little guy her Frankie was and how desperate and brokenhearted she is, and when it dies down she’ll double her drug use and Frankie will just be another awful Boots memory.”

  “You’re running way ahead. The cops have his picture and he’ll be all over the news.”

  “There’s no license number or car description. Unless someone actually spots Frankie, there are no clues.”

  Leah can be optimistic all she wants, but a kid gets grabbed from a public park for two possible reasons and they’re both bad.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Leah says. I expect her to say Don’t think it. “I’d be scared, too. I am scared.”

  I have a rule about crying, like maybe twice a year in really bad times, but I burst into tears. I mean, my eyes are raining. Leah pulls me to her. My losers bracket antics are supposed to cause groundings and family discord and chance meetings that turn out empty—the normal chaos of a Boots’ kid’s life. They are not supposed to end in a lost child.

  When I’m emptied out, Leah says they’ll take me home and then keep looking, but I do not want to have the confrontation that is surely waiting there, and I don’t need anyone saying the bad things I’ve already said about Sheila. I don’t want to go on the attack the way I do when I’m scared or threatened, and I sure don’t want to sit in front of the local news on TV, learning that nothing has been learned.

  So we cruise the neighborhoods a couple more hours, then Tim drops Leah and me at Revel 77, a local late-night coffee place on the South Hill, where I text Momma because I know she’ll back Pop off from demanding I come home so we can talk this to death. Pop always thinks he has to teach you the lesson you just learned.

  I get a latte and Leah gets a coffee and sits on my side of the table where we stare out the window, happy that the tattooed barista doesn’t know us from Adele and Beyoncé.

  “I hate my family.”

  “And you love your family and you hate your family and you love your family,” Leah says. She squeezes me, like, tight. “We don’t pick ’em.”

  “Frankie’s like me. If he had a brain he’d scream bloody murder until someone besides a kidnapper got him away from my sis. But two days at our place and he’s aching to get back. I did exactly the same thing. Mr. Novotny told me they’d have pulled the plug before I hit kindergarten if I hadn’t sabotaged every placement so I could get back to my clueless parents. I just wanted to give them one more chance to want me.”

  “You were a little kid,” Leah says. “Kids go back to what’s familiar, and besides, you know and I know Nancy’s not all bad.”

  “Sometimes I know it and sometimes I don’t.”

  “Well, when you don’t, come ask me,” Leah says. “You gotta give her points for wishing. She wishes she could be different, and I’ll bet she tries really hard, at least in her own head.”

  “Nothing lasts with her, Leah. I mean, you’re right; every promise she makes is heartfelt. But the shelf life of a Nancy Boots promise is, like, twelve hours.”

  “Well that’s twelve hours more than a lot of kids get. I landed in the sweet part of my family, but I have relatives who’ve crapped on their families in ways even you wouldn’t believe.”

  I know she’s right. I don’t have to spend much time in the library to read stories that make me feel lucky. Still . . .

  She bumps me with her shoulder. “Family holds the strongest pull. It’s brain science. Ask Seth. We get a nine-month head start with our mothers, no matter how messed up they are. Rhythms; heartbeats. We eat what they eat, share their fluids.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “and whatever else they put in while we’re there.”

  “There’s that,” she says. “Biology doesn’t separate vitamins from drugs.”

  “All I know is, Nancy couldn’t choose any of us over herself, and Sheila’s the same way. How is Frankie not chained to her when they go out in public?”

  “Not everyone should be allowed to have kids,” Leah says.

  “It was worse for Sheila than me.” I hate to stop trashing her because it’s the only thing that feels good, but right now I want Leah to understand, even though I’ve already told her this a thousand times. “I went back to the same placement every time; Momma and Pop always left the door open. Sheila blew out of every placement, and some of them were way worse than living with Nancy. But either way, they’d put her back when no way Nancy was ready, because there was just no other place. And now look at her. She’s not even two years older than me and she seems fifty. And dumb—lets every new guy be Frankie’s dad, drags him all over town, forgets he’s with her if she’s not tripping over him.”

  Leah says. “Maybe your fosters shouldn’t have given her cover. They might have found him a good place by now, like they did for you.”

  “Maybe, but who keeps a kid with his, what do you call them . . . maladaptive behaviors? I mean, how do you explain Frankie to some unsuspecting foster home?”

  “C’mon, how hard could he be to handle?”

  I remind her of some of his less ingratiating habits.

  “I see what you mean.”

  “Hey, Annie. Thought I might find you here.” We look up to see Walter. “This party private, or one or the other of you want to buy me a coffee?”

  Leah stands, gives him a light bop on top of his head, and walks to the counter.

  Walter picks up a napkin reaches over and wipes a tear from under my eye. “Rough day, huh?”

  “You hear anything?”

  “Heard your mom and sister screaming at each other,” he says.

  “That’s always pleasant.”

  “They’re supposed to be sitting by the phone waitin’ for news, but it’s your momma screaming at Sheila for not taking care of her kid, Sheila screamin’ back at your momma for not taking care of her.”

  “My old social worker calls that ‘shit rolling downhill.’”

  “Guess social workers are good for somethin’.”

  I watch Leah coming with Walter’s coffee through a nearly empty shop. “How did you know where we’d be?”

  Leah sets the coffee in front of Walter, who picks it up and grins. “I keep an eye on you,” he says. “I know you sneak off here when you want to be alone.”

  “You follow me?”

  “Sometimes. Don’t worry; it ain’t creepy.”

  “When did that start?”

  “Believe it or not, your mom likes to know you’re okay. Be a little harder to track you, now that I told you.”

  “I’ll make it easy. You have my permission.”

  “Listen,” Walter says, “you saw the marks on Frankie’s arm, right? When they were fresh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How bad?”

  “Dark, swollen. Pretty big. Not as bad as Sheila’s face.”

  “And you think it was this last boyfriend, Butch something. . . .”

  “His name doesn’t matter,” I say. “They’re all the same guy. Love and assault are the same to Sheila.”

  He sips his coffee, thanks Leah. “He best not let me catch up to him.”

  I ask, “What’s going to happen, Walter?”

  “I don’t know. I went over to the police station to see if I could add any information; you know, told them I spend time with the kid’s grandmother. They weren’t all that interested. Don’t guess I carry a lot of weight anywhere near the courthouse. They file me under ‘vagrant.’”

  Leah says, “Vagrant?”

  “I’m an old biker,” Walter says. “Only way my opinion could mean less
is if I could be identified as black.” He catches himself. “No offense.”

  Leah just shakes her head. “You ain’t tellin’ me nothin’ new, Mr. Multicolored Biker. Even rich black chicks with four-point-oh grade averages who could save their kids from drowning get stopped by the cops more often than coincidence should allow.” She glances at her phone. “Tim’s on his way to pick us up—five minutes.”

  “Walter, do you think it would help if we went to the police and backed you?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt,” he says. “This thing’ll only be hot awhile. Best give them ever’thing we can. I was impressed they were right on top of it.” He finishes his coffee and stands. “I’ll leave you young ladies to your rat killin’. Got a bit of a hike home. Thanks for the coffee.”

  Leah stands with him. “We’re done here, Walter. Tim will give you a ride.”

  “’Preciate it,” Walter says, just as Tim pulls up outside.

  We drop Walter at his place instead of at Nancy’s because he needs a breather before connecting with Nancy again. After you hear the ten ways Sheila has of calling Nancy a bitch once or twice, it just gets tedious.

  Before he walks into his place, he puts his hands on my shoulders and says, “Don’t you worry too much, Annie. Got a feelin’ this’ll turn out in the long run.” It doesn’t seem realistic, but I appreciate it.

  I tell Leah and Tim I’d treat them to a movie or something, just because I don’t want to go home, but Leah’s heard enough from me about my struggles with Pop to know I’m stalling.

  “That would be cool,” she says, “but all you’d be doing is putting off a conversation with your foster dad that you’re going to have sometime; plus Tim and I swim early.”

  “Way too early,” Tim says.

  “Look,” Leah says, “when he starts in about your messed-up family, just tell him later and get to your room. I don’t know about you, but my room is the safest place on the planet, and I’m not at war with anyone.”

  Pop asks where I’ve been before I can even close the front door.

  I say, “With Leah and Tim.”

  His eyes narrow. “It would have been nice had we known where you were.”

  I say, “And Walter.”

  “Walter? The Hells Angel? What were you doing with Walter?”

  “Planning our next big ride. C’mon Pop, he’s not a Hells Angel. We ran into him at Revel.”

  He sets his jaw.

  Marvin sits on the end of the couch, nose buried in a book, which he closes with a pop! and says, “Bedtime.”

  Smart boy, and I take his cue. “Pop, can we do this tomorrow?

  “What will be different tomorrow?”

  I don’t know, Pop your better angel will visit in your sleep. “Maybe they’ll find Frankie.” I walk toward my room, avoiding all the ways this conversation could go bad.

  I’m staring at what would be the ceiling if it weren’t so dark in here, voices from this crazy day fading in and out, struggling to make sense of all that doesn’t, when a sliver of light cuts across the ceiling. “Hey. You awake?”

  “Yeah, Marvin. I’m awake.”

  “Can I come in?”

  He sits on the end of the bed. “I’m really sorry about Dad,” he says.

  I say, “He’s not your fault.”

  “Yeah, but I should stand up for you when he attacks like that. I always bail.”

  “There’s nothing you could say that would make it one bit different.”

  “How about, ‘Why is everything about you, Dad?’ Or, ‘Why aren’t you hurting for Frankie?” He sighs. “Do you think he’s . . .”

  “Dead?”

  He grunts like someone kicked him. “Yeah.”

  “I can’t let myself think that. Everyone there saw more than I did. I came out of the water to all kinds of crazy.”

  “I was mean to him.”

  “Don’t you think like that, either. Frankie’s really hard, Marvin. Everyone gets irritated with him.”

  “Yeah, but I knew that. I knew he couldn’t help it, like, he has obsessions. You can’t be mean when you know stuff.”

  “Marvin, whatever was going on with Frankie was about Sheila and the rest of my weird-ball family. He likes you and me better than anybody. You think he would have played like he was playing the other day when I snuck up on you guys, if he was within a hundred miles of Sheila? Or any of her so-called boyfriends?”

  “I guess . . .”

  “And stop talking about him in the past tense. Us being afraid he’s dead doesn’t mean he is. Cops are banging down doors of all the registered sex offenders in town; they’re the ones that usually kill kids. It’s been all over TV that anyone in the park who took pictures or videos on their phones should contact the police. Somebody had to think of YouTube with all that going on.”

  “But the longer he’s gone . . .”

  “Stop. Okay?”

  He’s on the end of the bed with his back to me and I hear him sniffle as he gets up to walk out. Dang! “Come here.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Come here.”

  He comes back and sits next to me on the edge of the bed. I pull back the covers and push him down beside me, put my arms around him from behind. “Sleep here,” I whisper. “We’ll both feel better.”

  Chapter

  Ten

  “So now you can say you slept with a girl,” I tell Marvin at breakfast.

  “Do I get to brag?”

  “If you want a fat lip to go with your fat head.”

  Pop is at work and Momma is upstairs getting ready to go to hers.

  “What are you doing today?”

  “Passing out fliers for Frankie later,” he says. “First I’ve got three lawns to mow, but that shouldn’t take too long. How about you?”

  Marvin shames me when it comes to the world of work. He doesn’t just mow lawns; he’s like a full-care lawn service. He pulls this makeshift trailer behind his bike, with his lawnmower and an edger and a hedge trimmer. I filled out the application for a job cleaning up at the multiplex when I turned sixteen, but Pop thought he could finally talk me into turning out for club basketball and the application was never turned in. At some point I need to kick the employment thing into gear. If I had my own money, Pop would have less control.

  “The police asked me to stop by so I’m headed over there, then over to social services,” I say now.

  “Whoa. You scared?”

  “Why would I be scared?”

  “You know; they might ask questions that put your family in a bad light, Sheila at least.”

  “My family doesn’t need me to shine light on them, bad or any other kind. They shine their own lights.”

  “Why are you going to social services?”

  “Mr. Novotny asked me if I could stop in. That’s cool; he’s one of the good guys for sure.”

  Marvin places his spoon in his cereal bowl. “What can I do?” He seems . . . desperate.

  “Marvin, we’re just gonna have to feel this way until something happens.”

  “You’ll let me know, though, right? Like if they think of a new place to search where kids can be of assistance?”

  I hold up my phone. “You’re at the top of my contacts.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Contacts are alphabetical.” He stares at his cereal.

  “The Quakers went to a lot of trouble to make that,” I say. “Eat.”

  He sinks his spoon in.

  “Then go do your fliers and make the neighborhood neat and green again.”

  Marvin finishes his oats, places his bowl in the sink, and starts for the garage to get his mower. “Listen,” he says at the door, “thanks. For last night. I was afraid of my impending dreams.”

  Impending dreams. “Welcome to my life,” I say. “Anytime.”

  “I can sleep with you anytime?” Marvin is getting his sense of humor back.

  “Go forth and mow.”

  “Your sister’s a piece of work,” Officer Graham says.
r />   I say, “Half sister.”

  “Bet you wish it was a smaller fraction,” he says. “At any rate we’re hoping people who know her can fill in some blanks. What’s the best way to get in touch with her mother?”

  “Create an app where you can get rich blaming other people for your crappy life.”

  He smiles.

  “And if you think my sister is a piece of work . . .”

  “Apple and tree?” he says, then catches himself. “I’m sorry. That was . . .”

  “You’ll have to work harder than that to offend me,” I tell him. “Yeah, apple and tree. That apple didn’t fall. I fell and rolled.”

  “You were in the pool when your nephew disappeared?”

  “Uh-huh. Embarrassing as it is, I’m the reason everyone was there.”

  “How so?”

  “My entourage,” I say. “Or entourages. I have followers from both the Montagues and the Capulets. They were all there to watch me swim.”

  “You must be a pretty good swimmer.”

  “Let’s don’t go there.”

  He nods. “So you had a different point of view from the others.”

  “I did, but I never saw Frankie. By the time I finished my race, the chaos was on.”

  “We talked to the librarian and some of the kids from your book club,” he says. “She was helpful to the point that she could be. She said you all had been reading a book about a swimmer, so they all came to watch you.”

  “Yeah. The swimmer in the book is the exact opposite of me.”

  He writes in his notebook. “I understand Frankie spent quite a bit of time with your foster parents, the Howards?”

  “My sister used to bring him . . . brings him over when she’s headed out to do other-than-motherly things,” I say. “It’s her way of staying out of the line of fire of CPS.”

  “They have no problem taking him?”

  “No. I mean, they’ve got me, and I can get him to behave—well, kind of behave—when I’m home. Plus, he likes my foster mom; and their son . . . my foster brother.”

  He puts down his notebook. “Do you have suspicions? Any gut-level stuff, fears gnawing in the back of your mind?”