Page 19 of What Maple Heard

I caught up to Maple’s fast steps. “We’re not together,” I said to Maple. Quickly. Clearly. “Me and Sapphire. We are not together and we have not been together.”

Sapphire laughed. Not a nice laugh. “No, we’re not together now. But we were. Weren’t we, Cade?”

She looked at Maple.

“I was a great fuck too. Ask him.”

Maple looked at me for one long second.

“Whatever,” she said. And she went inside. I stood on the town hall steps and stared at the door she’d disappeared through. Sapphire was still there. I could feel her next to me. “She’s not right for you,” she said. Quieter now. Almost gentle. “I did what I did because I care about you. You know that.” I turned and looked at her. “Get lost, Sapphire.” I said.

I walked into the town hall.

Jasmine Simmon’s office was on the second floor. I took the stairs. I was more sure of what I was doing than I had been of anything in years. Maple had just seen me with Sapphire, and Sapphire had said what she’d said, and Maple had walked away, and I still had a meeting to get to and a plan to execute, because giving up was not something I was going to do.

She had spent her whole life around people who gave up on her.

I was not going to be another one.

***

Chapter 6

Maple

“I don’t want to do this lame dance.” Marcus said.

At thirteen, he was the oldest of the kids, and had zero interest in anything that required him to move. I sensed it the first day when he sat through the entire warm-up party I had planned as an ice-breaking event for the kids. I had tried to involve him in other parts of the play, from dialog writing to administration work with Nancy. Nothing had worked. I looked at the ceiling for a moment.

Then I looked back at him. “Okay,” I said. “I get it. I genuinely get it. I hate doing things I don’t want to do too. It’s the worst. You know what I hate? Doing laundry. I despise it. I would rather do almost anything else in the world than laundry.”

Marcus’s eyes were on me. He was listening intently.

“So here’s what I’m going to say to you,” I continued. “You don’t have to dance. I’m not going to make you dance. But I need someone to be my official set designer for the Fall Festival performance. Someone who builds the props and tells me if the stage looks right.” I paused. “That’s a real job. I need a real person for it.”

His eyes went wide. Then he crossed his arms, and looked at me with deep suspicion.

“Set designer,” he said.

“Official set designer. I’ll put it on the program.”

He uncrossed his arms. Just slightly. “Will I get to cut things?”

“Things that need cutting, yes.”

“Fine,” he said, and there was a small sliver of a genuine smile on his face.

Yes! That was a small win.

But a win nevertheless.

With twelve foster kids and seven weeks until the Fall Festival, I was counting everything as a win.

On the other side of the studio, Jordan and Devon, both eleven, were sitting against the mirror with their arms crossed and their expressions set to we are not moving. They had informed me on day one, in those exact words, that they had been sent here by force and had no interest in dancing. They had maintained this position with impressive consistency.

I let them sit. Forcing kids who’d had things forced on them their whole lives was not my strategy.

My strategy was to wait.