The Echo Park Castaways, page 1
Dedication
For every child in the Los Angeles foster care system, and all the caregivers, social workers, attorneys, CASAs, and other advocates who fight every day to improve their lives
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Author’s Note
About the Author
Books by M. G. Hennessey
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
QUENTIN
“Are you ready to go, Quentin?”
I shake my head. The lady’s mouth pinches at the corners. Her lips are pink, too pink, and her face is brown even though she’s white, which means she does not apply proper sun protection, at least thirty SPF! The lady’s lips match her sweater, and she is wearing white pants even though it is April. No white pants until Memorial Day—without rules, we have chaos.
“No white pants,” I say helpfully, because this is useful information for everyone to have.
“What?” She gives me a funny look. “Did you forget to pack something?”
I shake my head again.
“Okay, then. We really have to go, Quentin,” Pink Lips Lady says, looking at her phone. She is always looking at her phone, even though as a grown-up she should know that is very rude, especially when other people are there. No phones at the table especially; dinner is for nice conversation.
Pink Lips Lady tries to take my backpack, but I hold it tightly because it is my responsibility.
She makes a face and sighs. “Do you really want to stay here, Quentin? Trust me, the next place is much nicer.”
I look around. This room is not nice. It is too cold and the furniture seems dirty and I do not like it at all. None of my things are here, not my bed or my R2-D2 clock or my comforter or my desk with the matching chair. I want to go home, where everything has a place.
“Home,” I say.
“It’s a lovely home,” she agrees. “Let’s go there together.”
She holds out her hand. I do not take it, I do not like touching, and besides you are not supposed to even talk to strangers. But when Pink Lips Lady walks toward the door, I follow her.
“This is going to be fun!” she says to her phone, but I do not think it will be fun at all.
VIC
Here’s the thing almost no one knows about me: I actually work for the government. See, when I was just a kid (well, I’m technically still a kid, but you’d never guess my age. Go ahead, guess. All right, I’ll tell you. I’m eleven. But I’m totally mature for my age, right? And that doesn’t even count my mad ninja skillz. . . .)
Okay, so I was telling you about my super–top secret job. I mean, I shouldn’t even be sharing this, obviously (top secret, right?), and it’s that old “If I tell you, I have to kill you” thing, but I swear I won’t kill you. I figure you can be trusted with something this important.
Anyway. When I was ten, I noticed that a black sedan was tailing me home from school every day. Of course, as soon as I realized this, I took some serious countermeasures (and, like, totally lost them). It became a kind of game for me: spot the sedan, then see how fast I could get away from it.
And it’s a good thing I did, because it turns out that was actually a test. And I passed! So a few weeks later, I walked out of school and found a guy waiting for me. Now, normally I wouldn’t go near some creepy guy in a suit who was lurking outside a school (Logan Street “Elementary,” even though it goes through eighth grade). I was planning on shaking him, too, but then he said the magic words that got my attention.
“Victorio Quintero,” he called out. When I stopped, totally shocked that he knew my name, he added, “I know where your father is.”
So I went with him. I know what you’re thinking: Vic, that’s nuts! Stranger danger! Even someone with a twentieth-degree black belt shouldn’t go off with a crazy white dude!
Listen, I completely get where you’re coming from. But if your father had vanished on a secret mission four years ago, then someone showed up and said they knew where he was, you’d want to hear what they had to say, right?
Besides, I wasn’t a total idiot. I stayed close to school, just going a little way down the block with the guy and keeping an eye on that sedan in case it came any closer.
“You know I can outrun you, right?” I said.
That made him laugh, and he said, “Vic, my boy, that’s just one of the many fine qualities we’ve observed in you over the past few weeks.” Then he pulled out a brand-new iPad and showed me all these videos. There were clips of me practicing my parkour (you know, leaping off benches and climbing buildings like Spider-Man), whipping around my nunchucks, and totally killing the obstacle course I set up in our backyard.
“What are you, some kind of creep?” I asked suspiciously (because who takes videos of a kid unless it’s their own?). I was getting ready to scramble up the chain-link fence and vault over the other side in a perfectly executed maneuver when he showed me the only video that mattered: my father, in a prison cell. The image was dark and kind of greenish, like it had been taken by a night-vision camera. My dad was tied to a chair, with a blindfold over his eyes. He’d grown a shaggy beard and was a lot skinnier, but I could still tell it was him.
“Let him go!” I yelled.
“Easy, now. We’re not the ones holding him prisoner,” the guy said, trying to calm me down (and looking a little scared).
“Then tell me where he is!” I demanded, my hands balling into fists. Seeing my dad like that made me want to rush right out and save him.
“He’s in El Salvador.”
My heart totally sank when he said this. I mean, it made sense, since my dad was originally from there, and had only gone back because the country needed him. “Sometimes we have to make hard choices, son,” he’d said, clapping a hand on my shoulder as a single tear slid down his cheek. “But I swear on your mother’s grave, God rest her soul, I will return as soon as it’s safe.”
Even though I was only seven years old then, and I was bummed that he was leaving, I totally understood. My dad’s a hero, and heroes have a calling.
I’d thought he’d be back by that summer, though, and now it was four whole years later. So seeing that video of him in a prison cell in El Salvador explained everything. He’d been captured! It wasn’t his fault!
I started to storm away, and the guy hurried to keep up with me. “Where are you going?”
“To El Salvador,” I said through gritted teeth.
“That’s far away, Vic,” he said. “How do you plan on getting there?”
“I’ll figure it out,” I said.
“I can help you.”
I stopped dead. “Why would you help me?”
“Because I believe we can help each other.” The guy put a hand on my shoulder and leaned in, looking into my eyes. “You’re a remarkable boy with a very special skill set. A hero, just like your father. And if you devote yourself to serving this country, I’ll make sure he’s rescued.”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked suspiciously.
That’s when he told me all about this new government task force they were forming, made up of kids like me. The government finally realized that kids are practically invisible; people will say all sorts of crazy stuff around them, figuring they’re harmless. So who should be doing the spying? Kids, that’s who! Which is precisely why the government formed the Delta Elite Eagle Corps (we call it the DEEC), made up entirely of kids like me who are even better at stuff like fighting than most adults.
To be honest, pretending to be a normal fifth grader has been tough. I have to sit through boring classes, when I could be sparring at the DEEC center instead, learning the ancient secret art of wushu kung fu from Master Shei. But my boss (the guy from the sedan, Commander Baxter) insists that my cover is perfect: after all, who would suspect that a foster kid in LA was really a spy?
I’m getting antsy, though. I’ve done a whole bunch of missions now, breaking up Russian and Chinese spy rings, even totally destroying a terrorist plot and saving, like, a ton of lives. But still, according to Commander Baxter, every attempt to rescue my father has failed. It’s getting to where I’m going to have to insist that next time, they take me along. Otherwise, I’ll threaten to quit, and they can’t afford that; I’m their best agent, the other kids even nicknamed me Ace because I’m just that good.
Hopefully, it won’t come to that. I’ll give them one more month, then I’m going after my dad on my own.
After all, he’d do the same for me.
NEVAEH
“Oh my God, what is he doing?” Jada squealed.
I turned just in time to see Vic running along a park bench. He tried to do a somersault off it, and ended up face-planting in the grass on the other side. I rolled my eyes. “Being an idiot, as usual.”
“I’m okay!” Vic yelled, popping back up. The knobby knees poking out from his basketball shorts sported some new raw scrapes, but otherwise he looked fine. Thank God, because I was not in the mood for another trip to the ER.
“Be careful, loser!” I reprimanded him. “If you get hurt again, I swear you’re on your own.”
“Like I need your help.” Vic scoffed, but he returned to the sidewalk.
“So embarrassing,” Jada said sympathetically. “Man, and I thought my brother was bad.”
“He’s not my brother,” I mumbled as Vic fell back in step behind us. He didn’t stay there long before jumping onto the concrete wall that separated the sidewalk from the park. He held out his arms to the sides like he was walking a tightrope, mumbling his usual monologue: “Parkour means training not just your body, but your mind. Just an instant of lost focus can mean the difference between life . . . and death. . . .”
I sighed. Jada laughed and said, “It sucks that you’re stuck with such annoying kids.”
“Totally,” I agreed. “Could be worse, though. I had this one foster brother who was always lighting fires—”
“Yeah?” Jada was tapping away at her phone again.
“Never mind,” I said, annoyed. Half the time I was jealous of the kids my age with fancy phones, and the other half I was creeped out by it. It seemed to turn them into zombies. I wasn’t sure I’d ever want one—not that it was even an option. I was lucky to get a new pair of jeans for Christmas last year.
“Hey, Nevaeh!” Vic always talked a little too loudly, like his volume button had been set wrong at birth. “Tell Mrs. K I might miss dinner. I’ve gotta go on another mission. Top secret, need-to-know only.”
“Ignore him,” I groaned.
“Sure,” Jada said. “OMG, you should see this video Aliyah just sent, it’s totally LOL. Want to hang out after you drop him off?”
I shifted my backpack to my other shoulder. “Can’t. Mrs. K is working late.”
“Oh, right,” Jada said sympathetically. “I swear, it’s like you’re the mom over there.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered. We called our foster mother Mrs. K because Kuznetsov was hard to pronounce. The past few months, Mrs. K’s work shifts usually started before we got out of school, and ended way past our bedtime. Which meant that I was basically in charge of raising Vic and Mara.
I first moved in with Mrs. K almost a year ago, after being pulled out of one of the worst foster homes ever (and believe me, after living in seven over the past eleven years, I’m an expert). So when I walked into Mrs. K’s relatively clean house in a decent neighborhood and saw a couple of sweet-looking younger kids, it was a huge relief. As a bonus, the local school was good, too; if I kept my grades up, I’d qualify for one of the best high schools in the city next year.
But that all depended on Mrs. K, and at the time, she was clearly a mess. Honestly, I was surprised that our caseworker, Ms. Judy, hadn’t yanked the other kids out of the house, but that’s the LA foster care system for you: they were so desperate for places to put kids, they accepted pretty much anyone as a foster parent.
Not that Mrs. K was bad; she was nice enough, and there was always food in the fridge. But she barely got out of bed for anything except work, and she kept muttering about foster kids being more trouble than they were worth now that her husband was gone.
So I set out to change her mind. It started small. I’d get up early to make breakfast and pack school lunches. That seemed to make her happy, so I offered to make dinner, too. Before I knew it, I was shuttling Vic and Mara to and from school, nagging them to do their homework, and getting them ready for bed.
I don’t know any other eighth grader stuck with all that. But the more that I helped out, the less Mrs. K grumbled about quitting the foster system. She still spent most of her time in bed when she was home, but she wasn’t missing work anymore, and she occasionally even made it downstairs for dinner.
As long as I kept her happy, I’d have a roof over my head until it was time for college. And after that, when I headed off to UCLA on a full scholarship, well . . . maybe Vic would pick up the slack. Regardless, he and Mara wouldn’t be my problem anymore.
Although it would be a lot easier if he weren’t so annoying. I frowned as Vic nearly tripped an old lady when he dodged in front of her.
“Apologize,” I barked at him.
“Sorry, ma’am!” Vic yelled at her.
She muttered at him in Russian and kept toddling down the sidewalk. There were lots of Russians like Mrs. K around here—lots of other immigrants, too. Echo Park was still one of the poorer neighborhoods in LA, although it was generally pretty safe, and lately I’d seen a lot of flashier young people hanging around the new cafés and restaurants. Mrs. K was always grumbling about how they had no respect for the neighborhood. But old people always hated anything new. And as far as I was concerned, an overpriced café was a lot better than a pawnshop with steel gates and graffiti. Echo Park definitely felt a lot safer than some of the places I’d lived, and it wasn’t like the neighbors were exactly neighborly anyway. Everyone pretty much kept to themselves, which was fine by me.
I grabbed Vic’s arm to stop his constant motion and asked, “Did you take your meds today?”
His eyes slid to Jada and he frowned. “What, my superpower pills?”
“Yeah, those,” I said, repressing a sigh.
“Nope. Ran out.”
That explained why he was even more hyper than usual; without a regular dose of his medication, Vic acted like someone had just pumped him full of a candy store’s worth of sugar, topped off with energy drinks. “We’ll stop at the drugstore after we get Mara.”
“I still don’t get why she’s at a different school,” Vic said. “I mean, if she was at Logan, I could keep an eye on her.”
“That’s above my pay grade,” I muttered, although I’d wondered the same. It would make my life a lot easier if we didn’t have to walk an extra half mile to her bus stop, but Ms. Judy had insisted that Mara finish third grade at her current school to “lessen the negative impact on her.” It was hard not to feel a little resentful about that; my other caseworkers had no problem yanking me out of schools every time my placement had changed. Ms. Judy was still too nice because she was new.
We stopped at the corner where Mara’s bus pulled in every day at quarter past three. Mara barely talked, which was a big plus in my book. She also did what she was told without being asked a dozen times, which made her easier to handle than Vic. He’d become distracted in the middle of getting dressed and end up wandering the house in shorts and a single sock until I threatened to drag him to school like that.
I checked my beat-up watch: 3:10 p.m. We were right on time, despite Vic’s dawdling. I leaned against a brick wall flanking a yoga studio. On the other side of the plate-glass window, a bunch of super-skinny women were contorting themselves on brightly colored mats. Yup, the neighborhood was definitely changing. Three storefronts down the street were under construction; one sign proclaimed, Fresh Organic Produce Coming This Spring!
“Did you hear? They’re putting in a Sephora!” Jada said. “How awesome is that?”
“Awesome,” I agreed, even though the chances of me ever walking into a fancy makeup store were slim to none. Sephora was replacing a little market that had been totally run-down, but the owner would give us candies sometimes when she was in a good mood. I wondered what had happened to her.
“So, which superhero is he now?” Jada asked, watching Vic talk into an invisible receiver while holding his ear.
“No more superheroes, I guess he outgrew them. Now he thinks he’s a superspy.” Vic existed in his own dreamworld, employing what Ms. Judy called “coping mechanisms.” It didn’t hurt anyone (except himself occasionally, thanks to all his acrobatics), so I let it slide. Of course, it meant he was pretty much a pariah at school, but that didn’t seem to bother him. Or if it did, he didn’t complain about it. Not that we ever talked about anything other than what we were having for dinner; we shared a house, that was all. My job was to make sure he was still alive and relatively whole when Mrs. K got home every night; anything beyond that was his business.
Jada’s phone buzzed. Checking the screen, she broke into a grin. “Aliyah’s parents are working late again; she wants us to come chill.”
“Have fun,” I said mechanically.
“You could come later, maybe?”
I let myself imagine it for a minute: watching a dumb movie with a bunch of other eighth graders, eating snacks and joking around. It’s not worth it, I reminded myself. “Maybe next time.”
