Page 3 of Heart of the Race

“Kinda.”

“What about your other arm with the tree coming out of it?

His gaze met mine. “Nuh-uh.”

“That’s good.” I nodded.

He looked around and groaned. “Man, she’s gonna murder me.”

I was pretty certain of that fact myself. “Your mom is calling an ambulance, or firemen, maybe.”

He swiveled his head back to me. “You think maybe they’ll hafta cut down the tree?” he posed sadly, like that was the worst thing he could think of.

“Or they get you with a helicopter,” I offered brightly.

“You think?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. Have you been stuck like this before?”

“Yeah, but not this high.”

“It was awesome,” I assured him.

His smile was blinding, and that fast, I was addicted to seeing it on his face.

Firemen brought a ladder with one of those baskets at the end that they stood in, and one of the men held Varro still while the other used a small jigsaw to cut the branch instead of pulling him off it. Paramedics wrapped the hand and the piece of the tree up together. Both Varro and I were disappointed that there was no helicopter.

We all followed the ambulance to the hospital. Me too, since I was alone in the house. It turned out that Varro and his older brother, Nico, were big believers in speed. Even as we rode to the hospital in the minivan, Nico was considering modifications to the ramp. Meanwhile, Mrs. Dacien sounded like she was having a heart attack.

From the passenger seat, I reached over and put my hand on her thigh, patted it gently, and told her everything would be all right. Once we were there, she took my hand in hers, rolled it palm up, kissed it, and pressed it to her cheek.

She then parked where I wasn’t sure we were supposed to and marched through the emergency room doors after the paramedics. The fact that the nurses there greeted her by name, the looks on their faces sympathetic and not judgmental, clued me in that her boys, or maybe just Varro, were frequent visitors.

What was nice was that she had taken hold of my hand on the walk in and did not let go.

Five hours later, she, Nico, and I were home. Mr. Dacien—Ancel, Varro’s dad—was at the hospital with him, in Varro’s room keeping vigil over his son, crooning soft words in lilting French. I hugged Mrs. Dacien good-bye, waved to Nico, and headed back to my house, still dark even though it was after seven at night.

I never made it out of their yard. Mrs. Dacien came after me, took hold of my hand like she had all day, and pulled me back inside with her. She was on the phone to Child Protective Services minutes later. I never went back to the empty house next door.

People came—a social worker, a policeman—and my things, which fit in my one duffel, were moved into the Daciens’ guest room. There was no fanfare, just Mrs. Dacien with her flashing eyes and crossed arms. Everyone scurried around her, intimidated by the woman talking about neglect and nonsupervision, my weight for my age, and the holes in my clothes. Who was supposed to be checking on me? What in the world was going on? Her voice rose with righteous indignation and judgment, and because no one had ever been mad for me, only at me, it was a revelation. It turned out her lawyer was a great deal scarier than anyone working for the State of California, so what normally would have taken months happened very quickly. Mrs. Dacien was not a patient woman, a trait she had passed on to both sons.

I saw the Rossers after that, but only in passing. They were nice people, both in their mid-sixties, and if they missed the money I brought in, they never acted like it. They still waved when I walked by their house for another two years before we moved, the Daciens and I, from Dublin, California, back to Great Neck, on Long Island, in New York, where the family was from originally. Mr. Dacien was a DOD contractor and had been working at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory but moved to the Brookhaven National Laboratory. I had no idea what he did there. I didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell me. All I knew was that when they moved, I went as well.

New York was a big change for me, but I fell in love with it very quickly. First with Long Island, and then with Manhattan, where we moved a year later. Central Park, the Met, the neighborhoods, the food, ice-skating in the winter, and the subway. I told Mrs. Dacien it was exciting.

“No.” She shook her head. “The real adventure is the three of you.”

Just getting me and Nico and Varro to all our various activities took up a good portion of her day. At least one of us always had a game or a meet. Nico played football, basketball, and baseball; Varro played lacrosse and ran track, and played soccer with me. I played hockey, which neither Varro nor Nico liked, as well as tennis. I also swam, which I loved the most. How she kept all our schedules together and kept us fed, I had no idea. It was a full-time job she always said she was thrilled to do. She loved her boys—me included—and was thrilled her family, as well as her husband’s, treated me the same as her birth sons.

I loved my new family. I had never known my own. My mother had turned me over to foster care when I was an infant, and there was no father listed on my birth certificate.

Supposedly blond-haired, green-eyed little boys were in demand, but no one ever wanted me, so I got passed around the system until the day I saw Varro on the roof.

It turned out I had fallen in love at first sight.

When Varro came home from the hospital and saw me in the room across the hall, he was more than happy to have another brother to plot escapades with. When he found in me a willingness to follow, blindly, wherever he led, I quickly took Nico’s spot as his preferred partner in crime.

The bond just strengthened the older we got. It was always me and him, inseparable, and while Nico had at first been upset about being replaced, when he discovered girls, we were forgotten anyway.