The Last Chance Texaco Read Online Free PDF

I'm here." I had screwed up. Not the fighting part. The getting-caught part. That wouldn't happen again.
     
    Emil glanced down at the file. "And then there's this Mark Wolton incident. At Bradley Home, they caught you in his room after hours. Twice. What were you doing?"
     
    "What do you
think
?" I said. I knew I was making it sound like Mark and I were having sex. Well, why not? That's what everyone at Bradley Home thought. It was almost funny how wrong they were. Mark was gay. I'd been in his room after hours--a lot more than twice, actually--because he'd been planning to shoot himself, and I'd been trying to talk him out of it. But once we'd been caught, I couldn't tell anyone the truth without also telling them something that Mark didn't want anyone to know. So I'd let them think we were having sex, and I'd ended up with another big black X in my file. Two weeks later, Mark had ended up killing himself anyway--probably because he no longer had anyone to talk him out of it.
     
    But Emil had already moved on to the next page in my file. "Tell me, Lucy. You clean?"
     
    So he'd saved the best for last. My Oxy addiction. Yeah, it was a big deal, and I don't have any excuses for this one. But it was also ancient history. I hadn't had Oxies for over a year. I'd decided they just weren't worth the trouble.
     
    "Yeah," I said.
     
    "Yeah, what?"
     
    "Yeah, I'm clean. You've got my file. Isn't that in there too?"
     
    Emil stared at me, like now I was the fire in the night--but not a controlled one, not a bonfire. No, like I was a wildfire--violent, out of control, threatening to take everything down. It was only for an instant, and then his face became completely expressionless, just like mine. But it was that moment when I knew that he hated me. I didn't know why, but I knew it was true.
     
    Emil closed the file and set it to one side. Oh, sure,
now
he didn't want to talk about my file anymore. Now that he'd used it to put me in my place.
     
    "Lucy," Emil said, and his voice had that fake-gentle tone again. "I'll level with you."
     
    He was very worried about me.
     
    "I'm very worried about you," he said.
     
    He'd seen cases like mine before.
     
    "I've spent a lot of time around kids. And I've dealt with kids like you before."
     
    He didn't think the signs looked good. But I was being given one more chance at this new group home.
     
    "You've made some pretty serious mistakes," Emil said. "But you've been given a fresh start here at Kindle Home."
     
    But he didn't think it would matter, because I was a complete fuck-up, and I'd be out of here before the end of year.
     
    "I really want to help you," he said. "That's why I'm here, to help you."
     
    Okay, so maybe he hadn't
said
that last part about my being a fuck-up and that I'd be out of Kindle Home before the end of the year. But that's what he was thinking. I knew that for a fact. I also knew that if Emil got his way, I
would
be out of there, probably in less than a month.
     
    In other words, Eat-Their-Young Island, here I come.

Chapter Four
    The next day, Leon said he'd drive me to my new school. He told me it was so he could introduce me to the principal, and to make sure all the paperwork was in order. But he made all the other kids take the bus as usual, which told me he was looking to have some kind of bonding moment with me in the car.
     
    For a long time, we drove in silence. I stared out at the neighborhood surrounding Kindle Home. It was an older part of town where the thick roots of giant trees tore up the sidewalks in great big chunks. I saw now that Kindle Home had once been the biggest and most impressive house in the whole neighborhood, set back from the others like a king overlooking his court. But this king had since fallen on hard times, while his subjects had moved up in the world. With their fresh coats of paint and neatly trimmed lawns, the surrounding houses ruled now.
     
    Meanwhile, Kindle Home was still set back, making it look like the