could have been ten years old. He wasn’t much over five feet tall, and so skinny even his elbows were knobby. His voice wasn’t yet cracking, or even deepening. He wanted to be a man, and didn’t even look like an adolescent.
Yeah, tough age.
Bruce, a homicide detective with the Seattle Police Department, had volunteered to be a Big Brother and had been paired with Trevor DeShon a year ago. He’d made the decision to offer his time as a form of payback. A cop had befriended him as a kid, making a huge difference in his life. What went around came around, Bruce figured.
Trev’s mother had struggled to keep them in an apartment after Trevor’s father was arrested for domestic violence. Her jaw had been wired shut for weeks after that last beating.
His dad had never hit him, Trev said, but that was because his mom always signaled him to go hide when Dad walked in the door drunk and in a bad mood. He’d huddle in his room, listening to his parents scream at each other, and would later get bags of frozen peas or corn to put on his mom’s latest shiner.
Bruce didn’t want Trevor growing up to be just like his dad, or turning to drugs like his mom. Maybe Bruce, by being a role model, showing Trevor there was a different kind of life out there than what he saw at home and in his rough neighborhood, could change what would otherwise be an inevitable outcome.
What Bruce hadn’t expected was to worry about the kid as much as he did.
After the game of horse, they practiced layups and worked on Trevor’s defensive moves, after which Bruce let him pick where to go for dinner.
That always meant pizza. Their deal was they both had a salad first so they got their vegetables. Bruce pretended not to notice how much cheese the boy put on his.
They did their best talking while they ate. Tonight, Bruce asked casually, “You heard from your dad lately?”
Trev shrugged. “He called Saturday. Mom wasn’t home.”
Mom would have hung up on him, Bruce knew. Trevor hadn’t seen his father in two years, although the guy had tried to maintain contact, Bruce had to give him that.
“You talked to him?”
“He asked about school ’n stuff. Like you do.”
“You tell him about that A in social studies?”
Trevor nodded but also hunched his shoulders. He stabbed at his lettuce with the fork and exclaimed, “Mom and me don’t need him. I don’t know why he keeps calling.”
“He’s your dad.”
Ironic words from him, since he hadn’t spoken to his own father in years and had no intention of ever doing so again. But Trevor didn’t share Bruce’s feelings toward his father. The boy tried to hide how glad he was that his dad hadn’t given up, but it shone on his face sometimes.
“I wish you were,” Trevor mumbled.
Bruce felt a jolt of alarm. He’d been careful never to pretend he was a substitute father. He didn’t have it in him to be a father of any kind, even a pretend one.
“If you were my dad,” Trevor continued, “I could tell everyone my dad has a badge and a gun and they better watch out if they disrespect me.”
Thank God. The kid didn’t want Bruce as a father; he wanted him for show-and-tell.
Diagnosing the true problem, Bruce asked, “You still having trouble with that guy at the bus stop?”
“Sometimes,” the twelve-year-old admitted. “Mostly, I walk real slow so I don’t get there until the bus is coming. ’Cuz if the driver sees anything, Jackson gets detention.”
Bruce had tried to figure out what he could do to help, but he couldn’t walk a middle schooler to the bus stop and threaten a thirteen-year-old kid. A couple of times, he had picked Trevor up at school, making sure to drive his unmarked vehicle, which even an unsophisticated middle schooler would still spot as a squad car. Mostly, his goal was to help Trevor gain the confidence to handle a little shit like Jackson by himself.
He glanced at his watch and said, “I’ve got to get you home. I’m teaching a self-defense class tonight.”
Scrambling out of the booth, Trevor chopped the air. “Like karate and stuff? Wow! I bet you have a black belt.”
Bruce appreciated the boy’s faith, but he laughed. “No, in my neighborhood how we fought didn’t have a fancy name. Anyway, this class is for women. I teach them how to walk down a street and not look like a victim. How to break a hold if someone grabs them.” How to fight dirty if things got down to it, but he didn’t tell Trevor that. He wasn’t going to teach him how to put out an assailant’s eye. Jackson might be a bully, but he didn’t deserve to be blinded.
Bruce was volunteering his time to teach this class for the same reason he’d signed up to be a Big Brother: his own screwed-up family. If he could help one woman choose not to be a victim the way his own mother was, he didn’t begrudge sparing any amount of time. He couldn’t change who he was, and he’d long since given up on trying to rescue his mother. But he was bleeding heart enough to still think he could rescue other people.
Trevor lived in White Center, a neighborhood on the south end of Seattle known for high crime and drug use. Bruce had guessed from the beginning that MaryBeth DeShon, the boy’s mother, was using. At twenty-eight, she was pathetically young to have a kid Trevor’s age. She hadn’t finished high school and lacked job skills. Since Bruce had known them, MaryBeth had worked as a waitress, but she was constantly changing jobs. Not by choice, Trevor had admitted. She didn’t feel good sometimes, he said, and had to miss work. Bosses weren’t understanding. Still, she’d managed to bring in something approaching a living wage, and had food stamps, as well.
Often Bruce didn’t see her when he picked up and dropped off Trevor. The last time he had, two weeks ago, she’d looked so bad he’d been shocked. She’d always been thin, but now she was so skinny, pasty and jittery he’d immediately thought, Crack. He’d been worrying ever since.
“Your mom—how is she?” he asked now, a few blocks from Trevor’s apartment building.
The boy’s shoulders jerked. “She’s gone a lot. You know?” Trev was trying hard not to sound worried, but his anxiety bled into his voice. His instincts were good. He might not know why he was losing his mother, but he was smart enough to be scared. “She says she’s looking for work. Sometimes Mrs. Porter checks on me.”
Sometimes? Bruce’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. A kid Trevor’s age shouldn’t habitually be home alone at night, especially not in this neighborhood. But he was twelve, and leaving him without adult supervision wasn’t a crime.
Bruce pulled into the apartment parking lot, and noticed that MaryBeth’s slot was empty. “Doesn’t look like she’s home right now,” he observed. Although it seemed possible to him that her piece-of-crap car had finally gone to the great wrecking yard in the sky.
Trevor shrugged and reached for the door handle. “I have a key.”
“If you get scared, you call me, okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks. I’m okay, though.”
Bruce reached out and ruffled Trevor’s brown hair. “You’re a great kid. But you are a kid. So call me if you need me.”
He was usually in a good mood after a day spent with Trevor, but this time his eyebrows drew together as he walked back to his car after leaving Trevor at the door and waiting to hear the lock click home.
I should have asked if the kitchen was decently stocked, he thought repentantly. MaryBeth sure as hell wasn’t eating these days. If she was hardly ever home, would she remember to grocery-shop? Assuming she hadn’t traded her food stamps for crack.
He’d call tomorrow, Bruce decided. Check to see if she’d reappeared, satisfy himself that Trev was okay. Frustrating as it was for him, a man