31.

I said, “How the hell did you find me?” Smiling, though. Glad Wyatt had come looking for me again. Just…not sure why, exactly.

I could tell LeeAnn wanted to know how and why she was there, though. With good reason. I mean, she knew we’d met. But when she last saw us, Wyatt was just my English teacher. And she didn’t know me well enough to suspect anything else might go down between us. She did know Wyatt well enough to think all I’d ever be was one of her students.

So her sudden arrival didn’t add up any kind of way. The little equations she was running in her head were all probably ‘way off. But her cell rang, and the conversation got so serious so fast that she sighed, gave us this little shrug and headed for the back door that led to the inner offices.

“No, he was not. No. Because there was no—what?” she was saying. “Are you listening to me? That’s--there’s—lemme send it to you.”

“I’d better go find out what that’s about,” Chase said. And then to Wyatt, with a hand stuck out, he said, “Chase.”

And I said, “Wyatt. Taylor.”

They shook, and Chase said, “Okay, that’s a name. You got this guy?”

She looked up at me and took in all the clues—probably saw I’d been crying, of course. Because her eyes got all worried.

But she said, “I think so.”

And Chase gave me a last slap on the back.

“Go do your thing, man—just keep that cell on, okay? It’s not fatal, but it’s serious.”

“How serious?” Wyatt asked him.

Chase looked at me. What I said next would tell him who Wyatt was to me. And to him.

I said, “Let’s get into it when we get home. The girls’ll want the scoop, too. After I give ‘em hell for letting you slip one past ‘em.”

She and Chase were both relieved to see me smile when I said that. And I don’t know if it really helped him figure us out. But he smiled like he was happy she was there, too. Whoever she was.

That’s when I knew how badly I’d freaked him out when I started sobbing like that. Guys get weird about crying anyway, but seeing me cry had been a serious “red alert,” I think. Like I said, he tunes into everything, always figuring out how it will affect his case. Me falling to pieces was not a good sign. So if Wyatt could put me back together again that fast, she should be on the team for sure.

Chase said, “Give ‘em hell, son—nice meeting you, Wyatt!”

And when he rushed off, I went back to the first question.

“So how in the world did you get here?” I said.

“Uber,” she said. “One of my former students. He doesn’t charge me. But I pay him a little something anyway.”

“No, I mean…how did you know to come here, though?”

“Let’s…do all that when we get home, too.”

“When we get home, huh?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Hope so,” I said. “You’re a tough sell.”

“And yet here I am,” she said. With this sort of bewildered lilt to it. Like she kind of didn’t know why she was there, either.

“Thank God,” I said. Sincerely.

So she smiled, took my arm and headed us down the hallway. And just the feel of the place, that dingy, institutional vibe took me back to the whole horror show my life was becoming. Reminded me of DeGrazia, a little bit, actually. How the dread came down over me when I first walked in. Before Wyatt--B.W. I think I’ll make that a thing. Between me and my friends.

But this place was truly hard core. No murals. No Muzak. Hard plastic chairs. No attempt to soften the blow. It’s was like a “fuck up” factory. All these beat up souls moving from one faceless, clueless paper pusher to the next.

The “fuck ups” of society, I mean. The people we all don’t want to wind up like—the ones parents point at at holiday gatherings and say, “You wanna wind up like her/him? Keep smokin’ that shit/doin’ what you’re doin’!” The ones that make everybody’s smiles go weird.

I heard the voices of the people at the counters and behind the glass windows. How they spoke in these tired monotone voices and repeated the same things when each person stepped up. If they didn’t get the answer they expected, you could hear that little edge come in. You were making them go off script. Making them think—making them really see you. Pissed them off.

Okay, yes, it’s hard to do those jobs. I’m sure you do get numb over time—maybe you even need to be numb, so you don’t bleed to death dealing with all the sad, sick shit you hear all day long. I get that. And yes, they’re not all victims of society—I’m not that deluded.

A lot of the people who wind up incarcerated need to be locked up somewhere—those ones who just aren’t wired right. The only time I’ve ever been really afraid for my life was when I ran into people like that in the shelters and squats. My mother was one, but she wasn’t homicidal or anything. Talking to her, you just knew you could only go so far. And then her face would go blank.

I’m talking about the ones who seem programmed to do heinous shit to every living thing they run into. Like the kid we knew who liked to kill cats and keep their eyes in a water bottle, for instance. He killed a little kid later. To nobody’s surprise. Nobody who knew him, anyway.

You can’t talk them out of whatever’s on their minds—they can’t be “fixed.” What I saw in their eyes I can’t even describe. Or…what I didn’t see in their eyes was the problem. I just knew to run like hell and hope to God they got distracted by something or someone else.

I don’t think any of the people we saw were like that. Or were even related to anyone like that. But whoever they were, they deserved to be dealt with better than what I saw. Because in these particular places, courts and all the other offices that deal with what happens before and after you go to court, that form you handed someone isn’t just paper.

Think about it. That form on the clip board they shove at everyone who steps up may be the beginning of the end for somebody. Or at least of a totally life changing event. Maybe their kid’s going to jail or they’re losing their home or their kids or someone they love may have just died, even. So that, “Just take the damned clip board and siddown,” voice…that just seemed so wrong to me.

Where we were, the area where they take in mostly juveniles, there were a lot of Mexican people there that night for some reason. A couple of white ones, one black. Mostly mothers. Weary looking women who’d had to leave work or find somebody to watch their other kids so they could come down and deal with whatever had happened. Again.

There were the little nervous looking “earth mothers” wearing big box store pants and tops or mismatched everything. I mean, the confused, really indigenous looking ones just up from Mexico and scared to death because maybe they or that kid they’d arrested wasn’t legal or something.

They look totally out of place in the city—you can see them in the little village they come from. And the contrast sort of blows your mind. The bravery, too, of making that trip across not just countries but whole cultures. Making it all the way here, maybe sitting on top of some freight train full of people out to steal from you or kill you or both. And now living in a city where it wasn’t much better. Where that dream you had died the minute you got here and saw what America was really like. And that it didn’t want any part of you.

I could see the dread in their faces. Even if America wasn’t the paradise they expected, they didn’t want to go back. Even the legal ones know they can be sent back. It’s happened so many times. Something goes wrong, and you’re gone.

I knew kids whose parents got hauled off and they didn’t know where they went for weeks. Until some relative down in some Mexican town called and said their parents were down there. And there they were, a bunch of kids, with no adults in their lives—what were they supposed to do?

But there they were, the little Indian women. Waiting for whatever. I felt like their eyes were pleading with God. And I was angry with God for not being merciful to them. Or to me, that day.

There were also a couple of serious Crips babes leaning against one wall with their arms folded over their blue t-shirts. They had the tear drop tats and and angry, turned down mouths. In Spanish they were talking about the “pinche” teacher who’d decided to press charges against one of their kids for something stupid. That they had no balls, these teachers today.

“Every little thing, they want to press charges,” one of them said. And the other one snorted and called the teacher a “fucking faggot” in Spanish. And they laughed, and talked about how the whole school knew this guy was a “fucking faggot.” They said the kids made jokes about not bending over in class if you were a boy. That he glanced at their dicks when they went up to his desk. That they said, “Eyes up here,” sometimes, to embarrass him. Wow.

I wondered if any of it was true. And I wondered if Wyatt was listening. But she seemed to be so concerned with getting me out of there that I was pretty sure she wasn’t seeing or hearing anything. I was kind of glad. The way they laughed…that was the kind of shit teachers had to deal with now. It’s like people actually hate them, in a way.

I don’t like schools as they are now—they’re totally irrelevant, most of them, that’s true. But we get what we pay for, basically. And the teachers aren’t the whole problem. Even if they’re not trained as well as they should be, the ones who love your kids make a real difference. They do.

Sometimes more of a difference than parents do—sometimes other people at school can save your life, also. I had a janitor who kept me sane for a whole year. Saved me the food kids threw away, to take home for my family. He died not too long after I got all that money.

I tried to find him, wanting to give him something. But he was gone already. So I sent his family on this really cool tour of all the archeological sites he used to dream about—the pyramids, Mayan ones. Places he told me he wanted to go. They bought all these little replicas of those pyramids and statues and whatnot, and put them on his grave. Sent me pictures. That was the coolest thing, ever, that they shared that with him that way. And me, too.

I started poking the little elevator “Down” button like mad, wanting to get Wyatt out of there before she could feel how those women felt about that teacher. All teachers, maybe. And when we got in, alone, my head started to pound and the panic came back.

I wanted to crawl into a corner and cry some more, to be honest. But I managed to stand there staring at the buttons, watching them count down to Lobby.

“I need to see my kids,” I told her—I blurted it out before I knew it, actually. There were lots of other things I really needed to do, but that’s what I yearned for most at that moment. I’d been good for the past couple of weeks, trying not to upset the case workers and all. But now, I didn’t give a shit. I needed to be with my kids.

Only…in a way I was afraid to. It would make me crazy, just thinking that they might be in danger in some way. And they’d pick up on that. The last thing I wanted…

My head started spinning again then—what the fuck should I do? Could I do?

“You’re picking them up tomorrow, aren’t you?” Wyatt asked.

“I mean now,” I said. And after a second or two I went, “No, just—I don’t know what I’m saying. Yes, tomorrow I get them for two weeks. ‘Til the first, I mean.”

She said, “Maybe she would consider letting you pick them up tonight,” trying to keep calm herself. I think she could hear and feel that I wasn’t all there.

“No, she can’t. I mean, especially now. We have to go by the numbers. I’ve already screwed everything up enough.”

I could feel those sad eyes, watching me. She didn’t know what to say—or wanted to be sure everything she said was the right thing. She looked like one of those Mexican women. The scared ones, just up from their little villages.

I felt bad that I was acting so weird—so much drama, right off the bat, you know? For her to deal with. But then something floated to the top of my aching brain. Some one. Someone who could do a whole lot more than Chase. Someone who could make Friendly roll over and play dead.

I took out my cell and started texting like mad. And Wyatt pressed her forehead to my arm, and rubbed the place she’d touched. Rubbing in the “good juju,” Cat called that. When I was little, they used to kiss my cheek and rub it in, the girls, before they left me or I left them to go out into the world. Or to go home and face one of my mother’s bat shit crazy boyfriends.

I wanted to be with them. Curled up with them all around me, making a big fuss.

I looked down at Wyatt and smiled—she was there. But she was new to all this. And we didn’t have those kinds of memories yet. Not many. So I kissed the top of her head. And hoped to God she’d be able to stick with it.

And when she looked up, her eyes told me that she wouldn’t let go. I was the only thing keeping her holding on at all—I just knew that, suddenly. The reason didn’t matter to me. Knowing it was all that mattered—knowing I wasn’t the one being saved here.

She was here because she couldn’t lose me. Because if she lost me, she’d be lost. She was lost. But she was trying for me.

“Tomorrow, we’ll go do a few churchy things and then I’ll pick up the kids,” I said. “Christmas Eve’s amazing. We go all out—you’ll see.”

She smiled and pressed her forehead against me again. And I could’ve taken on the whole world for her after that.