Orphan Train(73)
“I don’t think it’s that much more,” Ralph says.
“Plus the extra cost in general,” Dina says under her breath.
Let it go, Molly tells herself, but . . . fuck it. “Wait a minute. You get paid for having me, right?”
Dina looks up in surprise, her fork in midair. Ralph raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know what that has to do with anything,” Dina says.
“Doesn’t that money cover the cost of having an extra person?” Molly asks. “More than covers it, right? Honestly, isn’t that the reason you take in foster kids at all?”
Dina stands abruptly. “Are you kidding me?” She turns to Ralph. “Is she really talking to me like this?”
“Now, you two—” Ralph begins with a tremulous smile.
“It’s not us two. Don’t you dare group me with her,” Dina says.
“Well, okay, let’s just—”
“No, Ralph, I’ve had it. Community service, my ass. If you ask me, this girl should be in juvie right now. She’s a thief, plain and simple. She steals from the library, who knows what she steals from us. Or from that old lady.” Dina marches over to Molly’s bedroom, opens the door, and disappears inside.
“Hey,” Molly says, getting up.
A moment later Dina emerges with a book in her hand. She holds it up like a protest sign. Anne of Green Gables. “Where’d you get this?” she demands.
“You can’t just—”
“Where’d you get this book?”
Molly sits back in her chair. “Vivian gave it to me.”
“Like hell.” Dina flips it open, jabs her finger at the inside cover. “Says right here it belongs to Dorothy Power. Who’s that?”
Molly turns to Ralph and says slowly, “I did not steal that book.”
“Yeah, I’m sure she just ‘borrowed’ it.” Dina points a long pink talon at her. “Listen, young lady. We have had nothing but trouble since you came into this house, and I am so over it. I mean it. I am so. Over. It.” She stands with her legs apart, breathing shallowly, tossing her blond frosted mane like a nervous pony.
“Okay, okay, Dina, look.” Ralph has his hands out, patting the air like a conductor. “I think this has gone a little far. Can we just take a deep breath and calm down?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dina practically spits.
Ralph looks at Molly, and in his expression she sees something new. He looks weary. He looks over it.
“I want her out,” Dina says.
“Deen—”
“OUT.”
Later that evening Ralph knocks on Molly’s bedroom door. “Hey, what’re you doing?” he says, looking around. The L.L.Bean duffel bags are splayed wide, and Molly’s small collection of books, including Anne of Green Gables, is piled on the floor.
Stuffing socks into a plastic Food Mart bag, Molly says, “What does it look like I’m doing?” She’s not usually rude to Ralph, but now she figures, who cares? He wasn’t exactly watching her back out there.
“You can’t leave yet. We have to contact Social Services and all that. It’ll be a couple of days, probably.”
Molly crams the bag o’ socks into one end of a duffel, rounding it nicely. Then she starts lining up shoes: the Doc Martens she picked up at a Salvation Army store, black flip-flops, a dog-chewed pair of Birkenstocks that a previous foster mother tossed in the trash and Molly rescued, black Walmart sneakers.
“They’ll find you someplace better suited,” Ralph says.
She looks up at him, brushes the bangs out of her eyes. “Oh yeah? I won’t hold my breath.”
“Come on, Moll. Give me a break.”
“You give me a break. And don’t call me Moll.” It’s all she can do to restrain herself from flying at his face with her claws out like a feral cat. Fuck him. Fuck him and the bitch he rode in on.
She’s too old for this—too old to wait around to be placed with another foster family. Too old to switch schools, move to a new town, submit herself to yet another foster parent’s whims. She is so white-hot furious she can barely see. She stokes the fire of her hatred, feeding it tidbits about bigoted idiot Dina and spineless mushmouth Ralph, because she knows that just beyond the rage is a sorrow so enervating it could render her immobile. She needs to keep moving, flickering around the room. She needs to fill her bags and get the hell out of here.
Ralph hovers, uncertain. As always. She knows he’s caught between her and Dina, and utterly unequipped to handle either of them. She almost feels sorry for him, the pusillanimous wretch.
“I have somewhere to go, so don’t worry about it,” she says.