The Last Chance Texaco Read Online Free PDF Page A

woman led me down to the little room that used to be the library, just off the foyer. The door was closed, but there was a little bench just outside.
     
    "Wait here until he comes out for you," she said.
     
    I took a seat. I could hear muffled voices through the door, and I figured the therapist was in the middle of a session with one of the other kids, who'd since come home from school. I tried hard to make out the words, but it was all a garble.
     
    Just when I'd gotten tired of trying to listen, the door opened and Juan stepped out.
     
    His face was a complete blank. I knew that look well. I'd used it on Leon and Yolanda.
     
    "Lucy?" said a voice, and I turned to see a man in a beige jacket and Hush Puppies standing in the doorway.
     
    "Yeah," I said.
     
    He stepped back into the office. "Come on inside."
     
    Once inside, I saw he'd taken the armchair, leaving me the couch. He had a clipboard in his lap and was busy jotting down notes. "Go ahead and have a seat," he said, without looking up. "Give me just a second, okay?"
     
    I took a seat on one end of the couch. The therapist was the kind of guy who is hard to describe unless you're looking right at him, mostly because there wasn't anything very unusual about him. He had brown hair and a medium nose and average-sized feet and skin that was white, but not quite pale. He looked liked the actors who play ordinary dads or postal carriers in the commercials on television.
     
    I kept sitting there, minute after minute, listening to the scratch of a pen against paper. He would write, then stop and stare at what he had written, fascinated, like it was a bonfire in the night. Then he would write some more. Mrs. Morgan hadn't introduced herself right away either, but this felt different from that. This felt like I was being ignored.
     
    Finally, he stopped writing. He made a big show of putting his notes into a file and putting that file to one side.
     
    "There," he said. "Sorry about that. Now, then." Then he made just as big a show of reaching for a second file--my file--and taking out the papers and putting them on his clipboard. He took a long time, making sure they were lined up, perfectly even, in the very center of the clipboard.
     
    Only then did he finally look up at me and say, "So! I'm Emil." He almost sounded sincere.
     
    "Oh," I said. I would have told him my name again, but I knew he knew it. Since he had my file, I knew he knew everything else about me too.
     
    "So?" he said. "What do you think?"
     
    "Of what?"
     
    "Well, Kindle Home." His voice was earnest and gentle--so why did he seem so impatient?
     
    '"Sokay," I said.
     
    "And the counselors?"
     
    "They're okay too." Suddenly, I knew my expression was even blanker than before. The window that was my face was locked, with the curtains drawn and the shutters barred. But it wasn't my fault. I was just getting a worse and worse feeling about this session.
     
    "Glad to hear it," Emil said, looking down at his clipboard again. "So. I've been looking over your file."
     
    My file already? So much for building rapport.
     
    "There are a couple of things that caught my eye," Emil said, settling back in his chair, flipping through the pages of my file. "I see you like a good fight."
     
    "I hate fighting," I said.
     
    "Oh? Linda Woodhorne might have something to say about that. Eight stitches and a broken index finger?"
     
    "She started it." She
had
started it. She was a kid in one of the foster homes I'd stayed in, and she'd had it in for me from Day One.
     
    Emil said, "Is that right? What about Moni Wright and Jessica Birgel and Jose Hernandez? Did they start their fights too?"
     
    As a matter of fact, they had. Moni had attacked me in the showers, and Jose had jumped me from a tree. Okay, so maybe I had punched Jessica, but she'd deserved it. Of course, no therapist had ever understood any of this. So I didn't bother trying to explain it to Emil.
     
    "I screwed up, okay?" I said. "That's why