Page 26

Coast

“Ask me again about the tattoo.”

“The tally marks?” Zoe asked, glancing up from Lainey to look at me.

“No.”

“The arrows?”

“Yeah?”

“What do the arrows mean?”

“There are fifteen of them,” he said. “Each one represents one kid.”

“Kid? What kids?”

“The ones I raised. Temporarily.”

“Did you come from a large family?”

“No. No, it was just me and my parents.”

“I don’t understand then.”

“My parents were—are—a bunch of losers. Never kept a job for long.

Longest was probably when he was a driver.

But there was no money, so we went everywhere with him, just staying out of sight if we were anywhere near the businesses.

But he was always mouthing off to bosses or saying offensive shit to coworkers.

Think we spent the first twelve years of my life nearly homeless.

“Actually, looking back, the ‘camping trip’ we took once—for three months—was just a way for them to romanticize us having no place to stay.”

“I’m sorry,” Zoe said, her hand giving my thigh a squeeze. “You deserved stability.”

“Yeah, well, there was no hope of that. When they weren’t working and were stuck at home, all they did was fight and drink. And come up with asinine schemes to try to make a buck that didn’t involve actually having to put in some work.”

There were a few months where they went around on trash day, picking up everyone’s crap, and swearing they were going to make a fortune selling it online or at local flea markets.

There were times when the only way we ate was if they did product testing or sold plasma.

They once filled the backyard with chickens, swearing they were going to start an “egg empire,” but never remembered to collect the eggs, let alone set up a stand to sell them.

They’d pretended to be home stagers for real estate agencies, despite all the furniture in our house being mismatched and straight from twenty years before.

They entered sweepstakes like it was a profession.

Oh, and then there was the time they wrote a fucking book called “How to Become a Millionaire in a Year (Without a Job)” and sold it for fifteen bucks a pop. Despite not having two nickels to rub together themselves.

They’d sold thousands of those, actually.

If there was one thing a hustler could count on, it was the gullibility of other desperate—and uneducated—people.

“Then, one day, my paternal grandfather died. And he left my parents his house. Why, I have no idea. They were no-contact for years. I guess he just had no one else to leave it to.”

“It must have been nice to have a steady place to live.”

“That part, yeah.”

To someone who’d been living in short-term rentals and camping tents most of my life, the place felt like a mansion.

It had been a two-story building with five bedrooms and four baths. I had a whole fucking bathroom to myself. No more pounding on the door when my parents were in the shower. Or having to go outside to piss in the yard.

“I’d been over the moon,” I admitted. “Until I realized they were working on yet another scheme.”

“Was it a daycare or something?” she asked.

“It was becoming foster parents.”

“But… isn’t there a law in place to prevent people from relying on the foster care system for income?”

“That’s where the scheming came into play.”

If there was one thing hustlers were good at, it was finding other hustlers to hang out with.

Back then, they had a whole network of other losers who were always looking for the easy way out, some get-rich-quick scheme, or even assholes who just fucked over people who didn’t know any better.

Enter Todd.

The sleazy mechanic who’d inherited a gas station slash repair shop from a family member.

He let the place fall down around him while gouging on gas and repairs, since he was the only game in town.

“What they did was get my old man’s friend to fake employment records, saying he worked there as a mechanic and my ma worked as a receptionist.”

The law stated that the money from foster kids had to go to clothes and shit like that. It couldn’t go toward lodging or bills.

So it seemed, on paper, that they were covering their bills with their “income.”

The house was big. They were close to a school. There was a good backyard. My parents, despite not having any sort of moral compass, had no criminal records.

They cleaned up nice.

Coached me to say all the right things when the lady from the government came to do a home study.

“The fucked-up part was I was actually excited to have siblings. Even if they were temporary ones. I’d always been alone. And hadn’t been great at making friends, since my parents were always moving me around from district to district.”

“I’m sorry,” Zoe said, leaning her head into my shoulder. “I don’t understand, though. I didn’t think the government paid much for foster kids.”

“It depended on the kid. Special needs and teens got more money. But it was a couple hundred per kid. But the more they took in, the more they made.”

The house was owned outright. Bills were pretty minimal. They weren’t rolling in it, but they were free to sit around and do whatever they wanted with their days. Which usually involved working on their next scheme.

“The first couple of kids were quick stays. I really don’t even remember much about them. They were teens who basically took care of themselves. They were only around for a few weeks before they went to some distant family members.

“It was the next group that had some staying power. Three siblings. Seven, four, and two.”

I still remembered the night they showed up at our door. They’d all been sporting red-rimmed, puffy eyes and dragging their belongings around in garbage bags.

They’d been ripped out of their home, away from their parents, with very little explanation. They were mourning and terrified.

The oldest, a little boy, had been trying to be brave, holding his sister’s hand and keeping a keen eye on the toddler.

My parents had played the doting parents until the child services woman headed out for the night.

Then they declared that they were heading out to poker night and that I was in charge.

“Of a toddler?” Zoe asked.

“Yep,” I said, popping the p . “I was used to being on my own. I think the first time they left me alone in the house for the night, I was six or seven. But I’d never been in charge of anyone younger than me before. I’d never even touched a baby at that point.”

But when you’re in charge and you’re the oldest and a baby starts to cry, you have to get over your fears and try to do something.

That night, I made my first bottle. I changed my first diaper. And I rocked a baby to sleep.

Then I put the other two to bed, trying to quell their fears and promise them that things would be okay.

“Because your mom and dad will take care of us?” the oldest had asked.

I didn’t have it in me to lie to them. Their life was hard enough. It felt kinder to give them the truth.

“Because I’m going to take care of you.”

Then that was what I did.

I got them all up in the morning. Made them brush their teeth and helped manage their hair. I picked out clothes for school, then made sure everyone ate breakfast.

“What about the toddler?” Zoe asked, snapping me out of the memory of those chaotic, scary, overwhelming first days. “When you were in school, what about the toddler?”

“At first, I thought I could trust my parents to at least watch him for a few hours. I mean, as fucked up as they were, they did manage to keep me alive as a toddler.”

“But?”

“But after the first week, I came home to find the baby beet red in the face, snotty, belly growling, and with a fucking terrible diaper rash. I didn’t know what that even was at first. But I knew it hurt when I tried to change his diaper.

It wasn’t until his brother got home and said there was ‘butt cream’ to fix it that I found the cream, looked up the product online, and understood what it was from. ”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. So then, it was clear I couldn’t trust my parents all day with the baby.”

“Did you drop out?”

“No. I mean, eventually, yes. But not then. I didn’t think it was an option.

So I made sure the baby was changed and fed and set up in the playpen with lots of toys and the TV going.

Then I’d go to school, sit through some classes and then play hooky with others, so I could go home and check on the baby. Then I went back and snuck back in.”

I was surprised how well it actually worked. Teachers occasionally remarked that I was absent a lot, but I managed to keep my grades up enough that no one could complain. And I tried never to skip the same classes more than once a week.

“Eventually, summer came. And I at least didn’t have to try to juggle school on top of parenting three littles.”

“That’s way too much to ask a kid to do.”

“Yeah, well, my parents were dicks. Took advantage of how little I knew about child welfare. They had me convinced that I might go to juvie if the littles weren’t taken care of right.”

“Wow. That’s just… wow.”

It turned out that the kids were doing pretty well, though. Because all inspections turned out fine. The kids stayed on.

“Then, at about three in the morning after I’d been up all night with a teething toddler, there was a knock on the door.”

“More kids?”

“More kids.”

“How old?”

“Four. And a newborn.”

“Oh, my God.”

“My mother cooed over the baby, loving all over it, listening to the spiel from the child services lady. Then, the second the door closed, shoved the newborn at me and went out back to smoke weed.”

Luckily, at that point, I had been doing a lot of research in my free time about babies. So while I’d only been taking care of a toddler at that point, I’d come across information about newborns—shit like supporting their heads, and their weird-ass belly button falling off. So I felt prepared.