“Get revenge. But they lied to me.”
“Who lied to you?”
“Those girls, Rae and Taylor. They said her father was going to arrest the boys for having drugs and for paying for sex.”
“Paying for sex? Is that why you went there?”
“Not to really do it. Just to pretend and get them in trouble.”
“And that’s the money you have?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. The waitress brought the coffee.
“Anything else?” she asked sullenly.
“No, thanks.”
She ripped off the check and dropped it on the table like a policeman giving someone a parking ticket.
“Trouble just seems to know your name, Phoebe. All the times you were in trouble in Atlanta, being arrested, going to court, we worried for you and for your daddy. I knew your mother wasn’t going to be much help in that area, being she was in trouble a lot herself most of the time. Mae Louise doesn’t know it, but your daddy called me first, called me at work and pleaded with me to get your aunt to agree to taking you into our home.”
I kept my eyes down and stirred my coffee.
“He was desperate, Phoebe. At one point he sounded like he was crying.”
Hearing that brought tears to my eyes, but I held them back for fear that if I didn’t, I would cry forever.
“He said he had no doubt in his heart and mind that you were headed for big trouble, that you were mixing with the worst sort of people. He said we’d be saving your life by letting you live with us.”
I looked up, but not at Uncle Buster. Instead, I gazed out the window and watched a white ambulance pull up and park. No one got out. All that was written on the ambulance were the words Emergency Transport.
“Mae Louise was very worried about Barbara Ann and Jake, but I turned her around so she would at least consider taking you in with us. We even spoke to my father, who helped convince her it would be the charitable thing to do.”
“I’m no one’s charity,” I muttered, still without looking at him.
“We’re all someone’s charity, one way or another,” he said. “Anyway, you can imagine how she feels now. First, you smoke in the house. Then you get into serious trouble in school after less than two days there and then get arrested and charged with a felony crime. On top of that, you violate the agreement I made with the authorities, and we look very bad in the community.”
“I get the idea, Uncle Buster. I’ll just get up and walk out of here and you won’t hear from me again,” I said defiantly.
“I can’t let you do that, Phoebe. Aunt Mae Louise wouldn’t take you in without your father assigning full guardianship to us, remember? She didn’t want any arguments down the road as to whether we had the right to do this or that. You know your daddy agreed to do that,” he said.
The tears were burning under my eyelids now. For some silly reason, a memory returned, the memory of Daddy and me going to a fun park together, I couldn’t remember exactly how old I was, but I wasn’t more than seven or eight at the most. He won a doll for me at the baseball game by knocking over milk containers and I carried that doll everywhere, clutching it as if it was a real baby sister. We rode a modified roller coaster and screamed and held on to each other. I thought we’d never let go of each other.
Now I was in that car alone, and I was going down very fast.
“Your mother deserted you, and she’s not capable of taking care of herself, much less a teenage girl like you.”
I looked at him sharply.
“Like me? I guess I’m just a curse on everyone I meet, right?”
He sighed deeply and looked down at his cup of coffee.
“You’re not a curse, Phoebe, but it’s not much of an exaggeration to say you’re a handful. Mae Louise is right about that, and she’s right that we just don’t have the time and the ability to change you.”
“So?”