Escape Velocity by Robin Stevenson Page B

he talked about it, looking up at the ceiling like that was where he kept his memories. “She called me from the hospital a few hours after you were born and said that she was leaving. She was already dressed and packed up. You’d never have known she just gave birth. She said if I wanted you, I could have you.” He got teary when he talked about it. “She’d already talked to a social worker at the hospital. If I didn’t want you, she was going to put you up for adoption. Either way, she didn’t want to see me again.” Dad hugged me tight. He’s always been a hugger. “I never saw it coming. But of course I wanted you. There was never any doubt about that.”
    I’ve asked Dad so many times about all this, but I’ve never talked to my mother about it. I wonder what her side of the story is.
    I can’t imagine asking.

    I flag down Justine in the hallway after my first class. “I found some places for homeless people. Street people and stuff like that.” I pull out the list I made from the places I found online. “I searched shelters and drop-ins, but there’s kind of a lot of them.”
    Justine takes the paper from my hand. She sucks on her lower lip while she scans the list. “Well, some of these are shelters for, you know, women in abusive relationships or whatever. My mom works in this one.” She taps the page with a heavily silver-ringed finger. “Transition House. They won’t tell you who’s staying there.”
    â€œYour mom does? She’s a counselor or something?”
    She gives me a look. “So?”
    I shrug. It seems bizarre that Justine lives in a group home if her mom is a counselor. It doesn’t say much for counseling if a counselor can’t even work out things with her own kid. “So nothing,” I say. “Anyway, I don’t think she’d be in one of those places. I was thinking more like places where someone might hang out if it was cold, or get a free lunch, that kind of thing. I mean, I don’t really know if she’s even homeless.”
    â€œWhy do you think she might be?”
    I explain the whole thing about the clapping woman and my mother’s reluctant admission. “She looked scruffy. Poor. And my mother said she was drunk the one other time she saw her.”
    Justine raises an eyebrow skeptically.
    â€œI know, I know. Maybe she has a job and a nice apartment and she just likes to wear old clothes and gets drunk sometimes.” I shake my head. “Look, I don’t know the first thing about any of this, okay? But she looked pretty rough. Besides, I want to find her, and unless she shows up again at another one of my mother’s book things, I don’t see how else I can. So I might as well try this idea.”
    â€œAnd you want to find her why?”
    I shrug. “Just do.”
    â€œYou want to try to help her, don’t you? Get her off the streets?”
    â€œI don’t know. If I can, I guess. But I think my mom should, really,” I say. “I mean, it’s her mother. Even if they don’t get along or whatever, she shouldn’t let her be homeless.”
    â€œYour mom doesn’t know you’re looking for her, I take it.”
    â€œRight.”
    Justine shakes her head. “We better get to class.”
    â€œWhich of these places would you try? If you were me?”
    She makes a face. “I’m not exactly an expert, you know. Before I moved where I am now, I used to stay at friends’ places mostly. Sometimes I crashed at St. Andrew’s or the Y. There’s a youth shelter that uses a bunch of different spaces.”
    â€œWhat about older people? Do you know where they go?”
    â€œI haven’t even heard of some of these places,” she says, looking at my list. Then she taps the paper with one finger. “Try StreetLink, or the place on Pandora. I guess those are the main ones. The one on