Page 82 of Tempting as Sin
“No,” Bailey said.
“I didn’t think you did,” Hermione said. “At least, I’ve never seen you at any of the games. You should sign up this year. You’re good at football, but there aren’t very many teams for that, and it’s almost all boys. Soccer’s really fun, and there are lots of girls. You get to play in the fall and in the spring, too, not just one time. If you signed up, we could practice. I practice all the time, except in the winter. Then I play basketball. That’s cool, too.”
Bailey didn’t want to say that being in soccer cost money, so she didn’t say anything, just looked down at her book again.
“What are you reading?” Hermione asked.
Bailey held the book up. The title was on the cover in big white letters.Animal Battles!“It’s not really about animal battles,” she explained. “Not real ones. It’s about who would win if theyhada battle.”
“Oh,” Hermione said. “Cool.”
“Yeah,” Bailey said, “especially because they don’t tell you right away. They ask you, and then they give you facts about the animals, and you have to think about it, andthenthey tell you. Like if it’s a tiger and a lion, which one would win?”
Hermione thought about it. “The lion,” she said, “if it’s two males. They’re about the same size, but they’re both hunters, and a lion has a mane. Animals attack each others’ necks, so a lion’s mane would protect him.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Bailey said. “But it’s not right, because tigers are heavier, and they hunt alone. They have to be faster, because they have to kill their prey by themselves, and they’re more dangerous in captivity, because they don’t have a group like lions do, so they’re kind of meaner. The Romans used to have animal fights in olden days, and the tigers won, so you actuallydoknow, which is cool. Even though I don’t think there should be animal fights. Lions and tigers are both endangered.”
“Oh,” Hermione said. “Those are good clues.”
“Yeah,” Bailey said. “I’m reading about a crocodile versus a great white shark now.”
“Crocodile,” Hermione said. “It has, like, armor.”
“But a shark has lots of rows of teeth,” Bailey said. “Also, a crocodile kills its prey by taking it down for a death roll and drowning it. A shark can’t drown.”
“Yes!” Hermione sat up straighter and started rolling the soccer ball under both her feet. “It can! A shark has to keep swimming to get oxygen in its gills, like breathing. And I think a crocodile would be meaner. Its teeth would be stronger, too, if it has to hold onto its prey.”
“That’s what this guy I know says,” Bailey said. “Clay. He’s sort of, like, a friend of mine, even though he’s old. He knows all about Australian animals. Crocodiles are Australian, and Australia has tons of sharks, too. He got bitten by a shark once. He showed me the scar. But the shark left him alone after that, he said, like it bit him by mistake. A crocodile wouldn’t leave you alone. So maybe I say crocodile, too.”
“So what does the book say?” Hermione asked. “What’s the answer?”
Bailey turned the page. “Ha! We’re right! Probably crocodile, but it’s closer than the lion and tiger one. A crocodile can even lose a leg and not die, but the shark would die if it got bitten too much.”
Hermione held up her hand, Bailey high-fived her, and they both laughed. Bailey had never high-fived with a girl before.
“Do you want to learn how to play soccer?” Hermione asked. “We could go to the park. It’s more fun to practice with somebody.”
The social workers might be there, but maybe they wouldn’t see. Maybe they’d expect Bailey to be wearing her jeans and her old T-shirts and playing football, like she’d used to do. It could be almost like she was in disguise now. “Yeah,” she said. “That would be cool.”
She waited a long time before she went home. Practicing soccer was fun. You had to run fast, like in football, but you had to keep the ball going with your feet at the same time. You’d have to practice a lot to get good at it.
Hermione finally said she had to go home to dinner, though, so Bailey knew it was probably time for her to go, too. Her grandma always wanted her to be home for dinner. Her mom hadn’t cared so much, not always, but her grandma had dinnertime, and she also woke Bailey up for school so she didn’t sleep too long and be late. That was better, too. It was embarrassing when you were late.
She felt bad, like always, when she thought about her mom, especially bad things, because her mom was dead. Ray had killed her in his car, by accident, and now he was in jail. You were only supposed to think good things about dead people, so Bailey tried to remember those. Her mom had used to kiss her forehead and brush her hair back with her hand when Bailey was little. Before Ray had come to live with them, her mom had let Bailey sleep in her bed if she’d had a bad dream, and she’d always sung along with the radio when she was feeling happy. Sometimes she’d danced with Bailey, holding her by the hands, and said, “We’re going places, Bailey Blue. You and me.”
Being with her mom had been a lot better than being in a foster home. That was the scariest, except for sometimes once Ray had been living with them, when he was drunk. With a foster home, though, you were surprised when the social worker came to your house to get you, and sometimes you came home from school and had to go to a whole different house, and you didn’t know if the other kids would be mean or not, or what the parents would be like.
The first house had been the best, when she was little. At least she thought it was the first house. It was the first one she remembered, from when she was in kindergarten. The lady had been named Sam, like a boy name, the same as Bailey’s, and she’d had short hair and glasses and smiled a lot. The man had been named Joe. He was quieter than Sam, but he was nice, too. Bailey had thought she lived at their house now, but then, halfway through kindergarten, her mom had come home from jail, and she’d gone back. Her mom hadn’t talked or laughed as much after that, but she’d been the same every day, not sometimes awake and crashing around in the night, and other times asleep even though it was daytime.
The next time the cops had come and the social worker had taken her, she hadn’t been as scared as the first time, because she’d thought she’d go back to Sam and Joe’s house again. But it had been a different house. There were five or six kids all the time at that one, not just her. Two of them always stayed the same, because they belonged to the family. They were boys, and they had their own room. There were two other bedrooms with bunk beds, one for girls and one for boys. Bailey had been there with one girl who was old, like a teenager, who climbed out of the window a lot at night, and then that girl had left and another girl had come who was about the same age as Bailey. She cried a lot, though, and wet the bed, which made the mom really mad. She said the girl had to sleep in the wet bed, but Bailey had let her sleep in her bed instead, like her mom had used to do. That hadn’t been a good house.
When the social worker had picked her up from there, she’d thought she was going home, but it turned out to be a different family. At that one, they always had cookies. They were soft, chewy and with raisins, from the grocery store. That was almost as good as the one with Sam and Joe. After that house, she’d gone home with her mom for a while. That was first grade, though, when she was little.
If the social worker or the cops were at the trailer, she decided, riding faster because she could tell she was late, she’d stay away until they left, even though her grandma said she should be home for dinner. They couldn’t stay very long. They had lots of other things to do. And if they came when she was there, she could run out the back door really fast and hide. They always knocked on the door first, unless it was cops, and cops only came if you were going to jail. Her grandma didn’t take drugs or steal or get in fights or anything, so they wouldn’t put her in jail, probably. And even if they came in like cops, without knocking, at night, Bailey could escape fast if she kept her bedroom window open. She could sleep in her clothes, and she could put her bike under her window. She’d gotten away really fast today from Lily’s.
They probably wouldn’t come, though. They might not have come to Lily’s for her at all. Maybe. Her grandma hadn’t done anything, and she was her guardian. They didn’t take you if you had a guardian, not unless your guardian was going to jail. So she’d still get to play with Hermione tomorrow afternoon. They were going to meet at the library, and then go to the park and practice soccer later on when it wasn’t so hot. Bailey still had Lily’s library card, so she could get Harry Potter. Hermione said Book One was the shortest, and Bailey was a really good reader, so if Hermione could read it, she probably could, too. She’d have Chuck tomorrow once Clay brought him to Lily’s shop, and she’d probably have to tie him up when they played soccer, but that was OK. He’d want to play, but he still wasn’t supposed to run.
Nobody was at the trailer, and no extra cars. Just her grandma, like usual. She still had the blanket over her, and she was still coughing a lot, but she was awake and smoking a cigarette. Bailey made hot dogs for dinner and ate two, plus a lot of peas and tomatoes that she’d picked in Lily’s garden. She was hungry from all the soccer. Her grandma only ate part of one hot dog and then watched TV some more, and Bailey took a shower. Lily took a shower every night. She said she felt better when she was clean.
