My Alternate Life
Lee McClain

I didn't plan to jump out of a moving car. And I definitely didn't plan to land in a cow pie.
     It's just that Fred wasn't listening when I said I really, really, really didn't want a new family.
     Fred's streaky grey hair flowed down the back of his tie-dyed shirt, and his voice was classic social worker. "There's your new high school," he said. "It's small. Homey. You'll make friends fast."
     But I saw the squat, light-brick building a different way. Small schools are cliquish and nosy, and there's not a lot of space for different.
     And I, Trinity B. Jones, am different.
    Not to mention that I'm totally urban. So when I saw the field full of cows right next to the school, I lost it and jumped.
    Fortunately, I was wearing my leather jacket and jeans, so I didn't get scraped up by the strands of barbed wire I flew through. And I'm not totally stupid -- I grabbed Fred's cell beforehand. My plan was to call Nate, my boyfriend back in the city where I so fully belonged, and get him to beg, borrow, or steal a car and come rescue me.
    The cow pie gunked up my plans. "Euew!" I screamed and knelt there in the tall grass, trying to wipe off my jacket. It was the most expensive thing I owned. A gift from Nate.
    Behind me I could hear Fred's old Ford screeching to a halt.
    "Are you okay?" asked a girl's voice above me.
    I looked up to see a line of girls dressed in workout clothes. They were leaning over the fence that separated the school from the cow pasture, squinting in the late-afternoon sun.
    Fred came panting up behind me. "Trinity B. Jones," he said, "What do you think you're doing? You could have been killed, and just when-" He squatted down in the tall grass beside me. "Are you all right?"
    "I'm fine," I said, "but my jacket isn't. They need to curb their cows around here."
    "She landed in cow crap!" giggled one of the girls.
    "Don't talk trash," said another girl.
    I rolled my eyes. If that was trash talk, this place was even more backward than I'd thought.
    "Trinity," Fred said, taking hold of my clean arm, "get back in the car. You know I'll have to write an incident report about this."
    "And get me sent to Saint Helen's?" I asked. That would be cool. Saint Helen's Home for Girls was in the same neighborhood as my old foster family, which meant the same neighborhood as Nate.
    "In your dreams," he said. "Come on, back in the car."
    "Flag Team! Line up! Competition is one week away!" came a voice behind the line of girls.
    I sighed and headed back toward the car, letting Fred fuss with a little scrape on my knuckle while I used his bandanna to wipe off my smelly jacket.
    After we were inside, Fred started driving again, but he was at least taking me more seriously. "Trinity, listen to me. This family is perfect for you. What's more, Susan is interested in adopting you, if everything works out well."
     "Yeah, right." I knew that would never happen, not at my age. I'd been to enough adoption picnics to know that adoptive parents wanted a cute little baby to hold, not a fifteen-year-old with brown skin, a 34-C, and a nose ring.
     "I thought you liked Susan." Fred cut off the main road and turned right in between two fields. A pickup truck drove by and the driver waved a little wave. Three fingers, toot-toot of his horn. Where I was from, that would have been a gang signal.
    "Susan's fine." I said. "It's not that."
     "She thinks you're more than fine," he said. "She's very impressed with your academic achievements and she thinks she has a lot to offer you. She's a lawyer, you know."
     "Yeah, big deal." My regular social worker had already given me the lowdown on how Susan worked a lot in family court, and that's why she got interested in foster care. Susan had come into the city to meet me a couple of times. She was a real businesswoman, all suits and sensible shoes, and she talked smart. Nice enough. But I didn't want to be her good deed for the year.
    We were getting closer to the house, I could tell from how Fred turned onto another, even more narrow road.
    My heart started pounding harder. This was really going to happen and I didn't want it to. I just wanted Nate, so he could wrap his big arms around me and tell me everything would be okay.
    But there was something else I wanted even more, and because I was pushed into a corner, I blurted it out. "I don't want a new family, I want my real mom."
    He glanced over at me. "Trinity, that's not going to happen."
    "Why not? If she knew the Holmsteads put us all out on the street, she'd take me." The Holmsteads were my latest foster parents. I'd been there for five years and it was nothing great, but it wasn't bad.
    Fred shook his head. "She couldn't take care of you. She would want nothing more than for us to find you a permanent adoptive family." He turned into a long dirt driveway.
    We approached a big white house. The front porch had rocking chairs and a swing. A couple of big trees stood in the yard, and an old Volvo was parked beside the house.
    Balloons bobbed on the front porch railing and a computer-generated banner read "Welcome, Trinity!"
    That made me feel funny. Sort of happy, in the babyish part of myself, because I'd never had birthday parties and all that, and when I was a kid, I'd really wanted to.
    But it also seemed kind of fakey. Susan didn't know me and she didn't know how it was all going to work out, so why act like everything's beautiful?
    And the front door was opening, and there was Susan, plus a teenage girl about my age. Oh, yeah, her real daughter. She'd been too busy with all her social activities to meet me when Susan had.
    They were both smiling and waving.
    I felt like I might get sick. Everything was moving along faster than the race car video games Nate and I loved to play. But I was going in the wrong direction. Away from what I wanted, and toward what I didn't want.
    Fred stopped the car but thankfully, he didn't open the door right away. He turned to look at me. "You okay, kiddo?" he asked.
     I had to swallow a couple of times before I could answer. "No."
     "Look," he said, reaching into his shirt pocket, "Before we go in, I have something for you. It might make you feel better about everything." He handed me an envelope.
     "Thanks." I was surprised. He'd only taken over my case a month ago. And in a whole long string of social workers, not one had ever given me a gift. I hoped it was money. "Can I open it now?"
     A funny smile crinkled his face, and a sparkle in his eyes made him look like a mad little elf. "No, wait until later, when you're on the computer," he said.