Free Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands by Chris Bohjalian Page B

that statue of the kids playing leapfrog. And sometimes you can find me at Muddy Waters—the coffee place on Main Street.”
    It was right about then that Edie and another staffer, a young guy in his twenties named Bret, came over and stood over us. I thought Edie was going to cry when she looked at Andrea. But the dude? Way too tough. He looked more like a Marine than the sort of crunchy granola types who usually tried to help us. Practically a buzz cut and serious guns for arms. He was wearing a black T-shirt and it was almost a second skin.
    “Hello, Andrea,” Edie said.
    “Hey,” she murmured, and she looked down at her phone, instead of making eye contact with the social worker. She pretended to be very focused on a text.
    “Why are you here?”
    “Why do you think I’m here?” she answered. “Life skills. That’s what it’s all about, right?”
    “Where are you living?” the guy with Edie asked.
    “I have a place,” she answered.
    He folded his arms across his chest. “Where?”
    “Girl’s gotta have a little privacy,” she mumbled.
    “Are you clean?”
    “Of course,” she said. “Wouldn’t be here if I weren’t, right? Isn’t that the rule?”
    Edie leaned in to get a closer look at Andrea’s face. I guess she wanted to scope out Andrea’s pupils. But Andrea jumped up from the couch and swiped Edie out of her way, knocking the social worker off balance and sending her to her knees. Somehow, the girl also sent her phone flying onto the hard wooden floor of the drop-in. It slid like a hockey puck into the baseboard radiators. Edie and Bret froze, and everyone in the room just went silent—except Andrea.
    “My phone!” she shrieked. “Goddamit, my phone!” She ran to the radiator and picked it up and immediately started checking to see if it still worked. Then she turned back to the two staffers andhissed at them, “You could have broken it. You know that, right? You could have broken it!”
    I expected one of them to say something to her. Maybe point out to her the detail that they hadn’t done anything. She was the one who had accidentally hurled her phone across the floor like a skipping stone. But Edie just got back on her feet and stood there next to Bret, taking it all in. Totally chill. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when Andrea finally broke.
    “I don’t need your sympathy!” she said, and she started to cry. “Stop looking at me! I don’t want your fucking help. I can take care of myself! Besides, you don’t want to help me. You don’t want to help anybody. You say you do, but you’re like everybody else. So, fuck you! Fuck you all!” She was sobbing suddenly, the mascara running down her cheeks like raindrops on glass. “I need money and if you don’t want to help me, then fuck you! Fuck you all!”
    “Andrea—” Edie said.
    “No, don’t take that tone with me. I don’t need your condescending bullshit! I just don’t need it!”
    One of the boys who was watching this train wreck unfold walked past me toward Andrea. I don’t know what he had in mind, but Andrea put out her hand like a crossing guard signaling a kid to stop. So he did. Then Andrea kind of gathered herself. She turned toward the drop-in entrance to leave, but on her way out she said to me—and she said it really loud so everyone could hear—“Hey, Bliss, you remember where to find me, right? I’ll get you that phone and whatever else you need, since these fuckers are no help whatsoever.” Then she was out the door.
    It would be three days before I’d leave the shelter myself. But when I did, she was the first person I thought of.

Chapter 5
    The first time I saw Cameron, he was dragging a black plastic garbage bag that might have been as big as he was. I’m not kidding. He was like this Green Mountain Gavroche—you know, from that musical? The bag was filled with everything he owned, which wasn’t much because most of the space in it was taken up with something he called his