you. I’ll try to use words to get it out instead of poop it out.”
“That’s my girl. You have to remember, if you don’t want to give me up, you can’t do things that will make Mommy West give you up. If you can’t have your mom, while you can’t have your mom, you want Mommy West, right?
“I WANT HER TO MAKE ME FEEL BAD!”
Montana grabs Tara and holds her tight. Tarasquirms a moment, then surrenders. How do you tell somebody that? How can she tell her mother that feeling bad feels right when everything in your world is wrong; that at first you need your foster parents to make things familiar, which in this case means fucked up. It makes such sense at a heart level, but even for a wordsmith like Montana West, it’s impossible to articulate. It’s so true, and it sounds so crazy.
“We’re going to get a hot wet rag and some cleaner,” Montana says, “and I’m going to lift up the bed and you’re going to scrub the poop off and then you’re going to go tell Mom what you did to get in the corner, which is you crapped in a no-crapping zone. Got it?”
The third period bell rings, and Montana hangs back. “I’m thinking of dropping this class,” she says.
“Look over there at the door,” Dr. Conroy says, and Montana does.
“At that area on the floor right in front of the door.”
Montana does that, too.
“Now picture my dead body lying there,” Dr. Conroy says, “because you will have to step over it if you try to drop this class.”
“I can’t write any of the stuff I want to write.”
“Well, then write the hell out of something you don’t want to write.”
“Like what?”
“You can’t think of anything you don’t want to write? How about the football playoffs?”
Montana looks at Dr. Conroy like she just dropped a dead fish into her latte.
“Looks like we’ve found it,” Dr. Conroy says. “The football playoffs.”
“Ronnie Jackson does sports,” Montana says. “What are you going to do, kick him over to fashion?”
“We don’t have fashion.”
“But you get the point.”
“No, I’m not taking Ronnie off sports,” Dr. Conroy says, “but you can do a human interest piece. Profile a player who doesn’t usually get a lot of attention, or write about some other aspect of the sport.”
Montana stares at the ceiling. “This so sucks.”
“Listen,” Dr. Conroy says. “I know passing everything through the principal’s office doesn’t reflect what the real world’s going to be like. But truth is, when you get to college, or if you join a major newspaper, they’re going to give you assignments that would make a football playoff piece look Pulitzer-worthy. They start everyone at the bottom. So instead of considering yourselfthe crack columnist of your high-school newspaper, consider yourself at the lowest level of the next step up. It’ll keep you ahead of the game.”
Montana walks away shaking her head. “Football playoffs.”
“This is a personality profile? What’s that?”
“It’s where I profile your personality.” Montana says.
“That definition would get you a C- in English,” Trey Chase says.
“I didn’t know football players took English.”
Trey smiles, and Montana almost melts. She understands where this guy gets his rep. “I’m just looking for a different angle on the football team,” she says.
“Coach told me to be careful,” Trey says. “He says you’re a muckraker.”
“Only when there’s muck to rake,” she says back. “Shall we get on with this?”
“Sure.”
“Mind if I record it?”
“Yup.”
“You do mind?”
“I do mind,” Trey says. “I only let people record me making late night 1–900 calls.”
Montana shakes her head, hits the record button on her digital recorder, and sets it on the table between them, closer to Trey than to her to accommodate the cafeteria background noise.
“So what made you turn out for football in the first place?”
Trey smiles and stares at the