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“Good,” Helen said. “I was thinking three hundred dollars a month.”
“Seems fair.”
Helen eased the key off her key ring and handed it to Annie.
“I’ll pay for my part of the phone bill, of course,” Annie promised.
“All right.”
Annie took the key with a strong wave of relief. The baby gurgled into her neck.
* * *
On the last day before the quarter started, she spent the morning packing up her motel room. She had a voucher for another week, but the place was noisy and small. She just wanted to be settled, even if it was in someone’s garage. Obviously, it was not ideal to live on a concrete floor with no kitchen, but she could eat on campus. And how cold did Los Angeles get anyway? Compared to Toledo—hell, compared to Eastern Europe—it might feel like a tropical vacation.
The whole school thing didn’t even feel real. The housing situation had eaten up the time she’d buffered in for adjustment, and now here she was, waist-deep and unprepared like always. She still only half believed she’d gone through with this harebrained scheme of applying, then driving across country alone just so she could figure out a way to help people instead of hurting everyone around her.
She’d signed up for three classes this first quarter, all required core classes, including Criminal Law and Legal Research. She hoped that would leave her enough time to get a job. Something part-time. She had some money saved and had gotten a loan, but it’d be nice to have a little extra money coming in. Something for groceries and gas. She wasn’t sure what kind of job, though. She was not cut out for retail, was overqualified to wait tables. Maybe something on campus?
Most of the clothes strewn around the room were dirty, so she shoved everything back into her suitcases. She’d forgotten to ask Helen about laundry. Hopefully, there was a washer and dryer in the house. Hopefully, Helen wouldn’t mind if she used it.
It took longer to get everything back into her car because her meticulous dad had packed it the first time. Now there were things piled on the passenger’s seat, but she just had to go ten miles, so it should all hold for now.
When she pulled up to the house, it looked locked up and empty. The other night, a red Jeep Cherokee that Annie assumed belonged to Helen had been parked in the driveway. Annie pulled around back, easing her car up the alley and parking where the garage door used to be.
Luckily, the gate to the backyard wasn’t locked. She used the key that Helen had given her to open the door. It was cool inside and kind of dark, but when she turned on the light, she saw that the area rug had recently been vacuumed. And the bathroom smelled like bleach. Helen had cleaned. That was sweet.
It took an hour for Annie to carry everything in from her car and line it up against one wall. She spent another ten minutes sitting cross-legged on the floor and making a list of what she needed. There was no closet, so she needed someplace to hang or fold her clothes. Also a bed. A table. A hot plate. Everything, basically.
She was just pulling out of Helen’s street to head back downtown when she passed the red Jeep going in the opposite direction. Helen didn’t glance her way, but then she probably wasn’t familiar with Annie’s car.
Helen’s house was right on the edge of Inglewood, a little closer to the airport than to campus. Annie had looked up a lot of the addresses on the list the residential advisor gave her, and most were within a few miles of campus, some within walking distance even, but Helen was far off the map. It would never work for international students who couldn’t drive in a foreign country, so she must have intended it for postdocs or wayward souls like Annie. It was strange; Annie was usually good at reading people, but she couldn’t quite get a read on Helen. Whotakes in a foster baby as a single mom with a young family and then rents out a room to a stranger?
And would Social Services really entrust Zach to a woman who was suddenly on her own?
Still, Annie had to be careful about asking too many questions in case Helen had questions of her own. Annie had what she needed—a permanent address—so she’d simply steer clear of Helen and her children as much as possible. She wouldn’t give them any reason to regret letting her camp out in their yard for a single quarter. At worst, she could live in the former garage until January or until it got cold, if it ever did.
It certainly wasn’t cold in the army-navy surplus store, where she bought a cot and a sleeping bag, or at Sears, where she bought plastic bins for her clothes and a hot plate. The place with the best air-conditioning was WalMart, where she bought cans of soup, spiral-bound notebooks, shampoo, and a new backpack.
Nothing made her feel every single year of her age like buying a backpack for a new year of school. She could throw a rock and practically hit thirty. Was she really doing this? Too late for second-guessing now, so she threw the forest-green backpack into the cart and kept moving.
She filled up with gas before she headed home, unloaded her car from the alley, and then drove around to the front of the house and parked on the street.
It felt weird to walk through the house, so she let herself in at the side gate by the trash bins and edged along the side of the building, wishing herself invisible as she crossed the yard and disappeared into the garage. She surveyed the pile of goods she had purchased and the green army cot that was still folded up to fit in her trunk.
She held the pillow she had brought with her to her face; it still smelled like home. Something twinged in her chest, and she thought for a moment that she might cry. Instead, she clearedher throat, swallowed her tears, and figured out how to open the cot. Then she dragged it to the corner away from the window and tossed her sleeping bag and pillow on it.
“Home sweet home,” she muttered. It was temporary. Maybe she’d buy a real mattress. Maybe the cot would be fine. Everything was temporary if you thought about it long enough.
Someone knocked and opened the door before Annie could decide whether to let them in. It was Helen’s daughter, Ashley, her hair tied up in a high ponytail. She was wearing jeans and a sleeveless shirt with an attached hood—normal kid clothes. Though skinny, Ashley didn’t look underfed or scrawny like Annie always had at that age, no matter how much she ate.
“Oh,” Annie said, surprised at the sight of her.
“Mom says come in for dinner.”
“Oh,” Annie said again. “I hadn’t—I wasn’t going to intrude.”
Ashley stared at her blank faced and sighed. “It’s enchiladas. Wash your hands first. She can always tell.” She turned and walked out the door.
