THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: IN THE SHUFFLE

B. called for the second time at just after 9, less frantic this time, to tell me they were ten minutes out. Same deal? I asked. Same deal, he confirmed. I told him I didn’t want to hear it when he got here. If he turned up with just the kid, I wasn’t going to do it. Not on credit. I’m not risking this job for a fucking favor, I don’t care what it’s for.

B. hung up and then called again at about 945 to say he was ten minutes out. More like forty minutes out. Why should I give a fuck? While I waited, I popped on Disraeli Gears. Then, Who's Next. Finally, lights on front lawn at like, 1040. A truck.

B. looked fucked up. No suit this time, but a Mets blazer (tag still on) over a button down shirt. It was too cold for that, but I never ask B. questions. He held out the envelope and I counted it. $4500, just like before.

“Ok. Anything else I need?”

“Little girl. Nothing else. Won’t talk,” B. mumbled, looking back at his lights. “Age?”

B. let out a noise like balloon being emptied, “I don’t know. Six?” There were black, tiny, burn marks all over the front of his shirt. I once saw him wearing a Homeland security jacket and a gun. But I couldn’t see a gun now. I knew he was a fed, though. Someone was in the truck out beyond the light — a shadow only, and I heard a door slam.

“Six?” and then there was the girl. Tiny. Thin, wispy blonde hair. Six was about right. Empty, slightly yellowed eyes. Dressed up in new hospital pajamas and deck shoes with no socks. I’d seen that outfit before. I’d seen everything before. I drive the bus, after all. That’s how I got hooked up in this gig, anyway.

I pick them up. I drop them off. I buckle them in and wipe their faces and make sure that if they shit themselves someone knows or hell, I clean them, because the pay is that good. The clientele quiet and uncomplaining, the drives, usually relaxing. The State hospital to the children’s hospital. Wynette psychiatric to Massachusetts State Hospital. Around and around. Nine years at Mosent Inc, patient movement solutions, LLC. Just the kids.

In the last four years, Mosent had taken on more and more responsibility. It used to be the hospital would make the lists. Now the driver did that. That list of kids was wholly editable and controlled by me. I don’t know how B. knew that, but he did, when he first rang me up. After he told me that he sometimes had to “hide” kids into the system for the government, we worked out a price. Shuffled them in like a card trick. Three times in four years we’ve done it. A pre-teen girl. A teen kid who had obviously lost his shit, and now, the little girl.

So, you leave one hospital with 9 kids, stop, alter the paperwork, and arrive with 10. Then it’s the hospitals’ problem. You’d be amazed at how fights like that loop in on themselves and never come back to the driver. No one listens to the kid. No one ever wants to admit a mistake like that and open up a facility audit. Especially when they figure out they can’t even identify the kid. Who would want to leave a kid, after all? And fuck, the kids were all coming from shit situations anyway. The kid facilities were all good, now. They were monitored. Watched.

Just not the buses.

B. turned with a nod, and went back to the truck. In the shadows, I saw the back of his slacks were covered in mud, like he had been crawling around in the dirt. And then the kid was in. The door shut. I put the money on the highest shelf. I put Rubber Soul on, and gestured to the couch. Already, I knew she’d be at the state hospital tomorrow afternoon, coloring and watching TV maybe, or playing a board game.

“Honey, you can sit,” I said, and I could see her react to my voice. A woman’s voice.

She looked up at me, and then sat.

“What’s your name honey?”

“Liesal,” she whispered, and her voice was dry and strained at the same time, like a lisp and a wheeze.

“Such a pretty name. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

We went into the bathroom. She followed me in careful, little, steps. I turned on the bath and let it run until it steamed and turned to find myself alone in the room.

“Liesal?”

She was out in front of the record player, where John Lennon was singing "or should I say, she once had me..." Liesal was shaking and covering her face, terrified. As I stepped towards her, she took a step back.

“What’s wrong?”

She said something. I kneeled down. “What honey?”

“I can’t.”

“The bath? It’s okay honey.”

“It’ll hurt.”

“What honey? What will hurt?”

“My cut.”

"Show me, honey."

And with that, she took off her shirt, revealing a jagged autopsy Y-stitch across her pale, still chest.