“The welfare of children is the state’s first concern.” How many times had she heard that bullshit in her life? Always by some harried-looking adult, clasping a folder or a case sheet in their useless hands. She knew what it meant. It meant a facility with concrete walls and hard-to-place kids—mental kids, violent ones. As for the possibility of another stint in foster care? Some “nice family”？ Fuck that. That’s what she thought of that whole thing.
She’d had her fill of state benevolence when she was ten. Sure, she had needed help back then. She would admit that. Her mother had been gone a week when a lady knocked at the apartment door late at night. Evangeline didn’t answer at first, but the lady kept shouting, claiming to know something about her mom.
Evangeline hesitated. She had tried to bring her mother back on her own. She had put on her shirts and slept in her bed, attempted to conjure her by breathing in her scent. She’d drunk all the milk, scraped clean the peanut butter, and finished off the cereal. But her hunger hadn’t yielded her mother up either. So when the lady knocked again, when she said she was from the state and could get Evangeline something to eat, bring her somewhere safe, she had held her breath and opened the door.
While her mother detoxed off heroin, Evangeline spent six months in foster care, crying in her room’s small closet. And her mom did manage to get out clean. Well, except for a new addiction to Jesus, which didn’t seem to concern the state. Evangeline fell for Jesus too at first, the way he gazed at you with those all-loving eyes, promising eternal life.
Turns out, there are only so many times you can pray for a small toy or shoes that fit or a mother who comes home every night, only so many times your prayers can go unanswered before you figure you’ve been duped. It was these things—foster care, her mother, the betrayals of Jesus then and now—that Evangeline had longed to share with Jonah, to whisper into the dark of his cab, his heart beating against her ear. She had wanted it with an intensity she couldn’t explain, a ragged-edged yearning to be rid of secrets she had, until then, gone out of her way to protect.
But there was no Jonah, and her mother was gone. All she had now was the man and the dog, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to let the guy with the jaw send her away with a few bureaucratic forms.
* * *
—
THOUGH THE CLASSROOMS WERE DARK, the front doors were unlocked and light shone from the main office. A tiny woman dressed in a suit emerged from the vice principal’s office. Evangeline, who’d been peeking in, stepped back into the dark of the hall. The woman poked around the front desk, then returned to her office. Evangeline slipped in and made her way to the principal’s open door.
He was writing at his desk, his back to her. When he heard the soft click of the door, he swung around. It took a moment for him to recognize her, and when he did, all the blood drained from his face. She’d never seen anything like it—a stopper pulled from a sink. Her own face likely blanched too. She hadn’t been a hundred percent sure until now. She’d spent the past two months trying to forget the day she’d met him, and on Monday she’d seen him mostly from the side.
It was interesting watching him, how he shifted his face around as if trying to get the blood to refill. She should have expected what he did next. If she’d had more time to consider all the possible scenarios before she raced, heart pounding, to school, she would have been more prepared.
The man set down his pen, smiled a genuine-seeming smile, and said, “You must be the new girl. The one Mr. Balch told me about. I’m glad you stopped by. Anything I can do to help you settle in?”
It almost worked, this crazy-making turn. He looked different with the tie, the big office, the table between them. Evangeline went over what she remembered from Bremerton: the man behind the wheel leaning over to open the passenger door, let her in. The afternoon sun, hanging low behind her, had lit a battle-ax of a jaw, made dark-blue eyes glow. How many men could have a jaw like that? And those eyes?
“Yeah,” she said, “you could help me ‘settle in’ by getting off Isaac’s back about those stupid forms.”
He lowered his gaze, considering, then looked back up. “The state wants to protect—”
“That’s total bullshit and you know it!”
He studied her, getting his bearings. “I can see you’re distressed,” he said, using that adult tone of fake concern. “But these aren’t my rules. The superintendent is very strict—”
“Listen!” She stopped, gulped, slowed herself. Seeing him now, really looking, she wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe this man’s eyes were brown. It was hard to tell in this light. And this guy had a mole on his cheek, not huge or hairy, just a regular mole, but still, she would remember that, right? She picked her words carefully, wondering if any would catch.
“The superintendent’s pretty strict? This strict thing, is it just about paperwork or does he take an interest in other aspects of his students’ well-being? Because, see, I’m thinking he probably does.”
Principal Thibodeau stood then, took a step as if to come toward her, but she glared at him and he stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My secretary told me, but could you remind me of your name again?”
“Evangeline,” she said. “Evangeline McKensey.” And that made her the angriest of all, the way he did that, made her complicit in pretending they had never met, forcing her to wonder if she was nothing more than a new girl whose name had been collected by the staff.
“Well, Evangeline. I’m glad you’re here at Port Furlong High, glad you’ve got Mr. Balch looking out for you. It can be a little rough coming in with classes already under way, so please let us know if there’s anything we can do to help. Vice Principal Marsten is the person to see with any academic concerns.”
With that, he sat down again, turned away from her, and started typing. Evangeline refused to move, just stood staring at his back. After a minute, he said without turning around, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Evangeline was shaking now, afraid to speak for fear of crying. She turned, walked out the door, retreated to the nearest restroom.
Later, when thinking back on the morning, she pictured the vice principal walking through, and the image of a prescription bottle rose in her mind—hydroxy-something-orother. She wondered if Vice Principal Marsten had a mother named Dorothy and if her mother had any trouble with her heart the day her meds went missing.
26
Evangeline’s dread of state involvement struck me as extreme. I wondered if she was hiding from an abusive relative or guardian, someone she worried would be notified by the state. Or maybe there were warrants out for her arrest. The girl was clearly a petty thief. But it was likely simpler than that. She’d probably been in foster care and wasn’t planning on going back.
I decided to track Peter down after my final class, but when the noon bell rang, he was waiting at my classroom door. “Grab your lunch,” he said. “I’m hoping you’ll take a walk with me.”
It was one of those rare October days, cool and cloudless, leaves flashing bright as jewels. Peter led me off campus, chatting about nothing more weighted than his youngest child’s talent for toddler gymnastics. “I’m know I’m biased, but even the instructor said she’s never seen a three-year-old with balance like that.”