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Overview
Drawing the line between what we want and what other people want for us
A woman with a forehead full of acne scars and a New York edge to her voice crosses the courthouse floor with her hand out. "Erika? I'm your lawyer. Call me Jean. Can we talk?" You're fourteen, with a play to try out for, a crazy best friend with a ton of money, a boy whom you can't get out of your heart, and parents who hate each other and are dragging you through court in a custody case. You follow your lawyer to the elevator, and five minutes later you're in her beat-up car and she's asking you who you are and what you want. Why tell her the truth when right now all you want is space and time to figure it out for yourself without hurting the people you love?
Written in alternating points-of-view, Bruce Clements's What Erika Wants is a sharp and disarmingly understated novel that charts the course of a caring and careworn teenager who is discovering that the first step to breaking free of a bad situation is to realize she's trapped in one.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466874374 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 06/24/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Lexile: | 720L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 245 KB |
| Age Range: | 12 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Bruce Clements is the author of I Tell a Lie Every So Often, a National Book Award Finalist, and its sequel, A Chapel of Thieves, which was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. The author is a board member of the Children's Law Center of Connecticut, to which all royalties from What Erika Wants will be donated.
Bruce Clements is the author of I Tell a Lie Every So Often, a National Book Award Finalist, and its sequel, A Chapel of Thieves, which was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. The author is a board member of the Children’s Law Center of Connecticut, to which all royalties from What Erika Wants will be donated.
Read an Excerpt
What Erika Wants
By Bruce Clements
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2005 Children's Law Center of Connecticut, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-7437-4
CHAPTER 1
The policeman opened the door and Erika stepped out of the courtroom into the hall. "You can't stand right here," he said. "People want to get in and out. You can sit on that bench next to the window."
"I'm sorry," she said. She crossed the hall, put her backpack behind the bench, and stood looking at a bus going down the street.
The policeman followed her. "I'm not arresting you, if that's what you think," he said. "Judge Gifford doesn't want you in there, that's all."
She smiled so he wouldn't think she was mad at him. He was just doing his job.
"I'm fine," she said.
He felt around in his pants pocket, pulled out a bent package of gum, and put it under her nose. "Chew?" he said. "It's okay. It's sugar-free."
She took a step back and sat down. "No. Thank you."
"Pretty bracelets you have."
Erika said nothing.
Two men with briefcases came down the hall and stopped at the elevator. The older one was telling a joke, and the younger one was smiling, waiting for the punch line. She watched them in front of the elevator. It came and they stepped inside. Then, just to have something to do, Erika opened her backpack, got out her algebra workbook, checked inside the cover to make sure the two pages the Stork had given her were still there, and pushed the workbook back inside, careful not to catch it on the torn place in the lining. As she zipped her bag shut and put it back between the bench leg and the wall, the policeman leaned over her. She could smell he was a smoker.
"It's always better out here than it is in there," he said. "I've worked criminal court and I've worked family court. You want to know the difference? In criminal court the worst people act their best, and in family court the best people act their worst. Judge Gifford's probably signing up a lawyer for you right now. It's an honor. How many teenage kids you know have lawyers?"
She thought of Carrie's lawyer, Larry L. Lawrence. "Larry the Loser," Carrie called him. He had been in juvenile court with her four times. Maybe he was a loser, but he had kept her from being sent away to Longmeadow State School.
A woman with round glasses and a black suit pushed open the courtroom door and came across the hall. She had acne scars across her forehead, real pits. She put out her hand. "Erika? My name is Jean Rostow-Kaplan. I'm your lawyer. I'd like it if you called me Jean. Can we go downstairs to the parking lot for a few minutes and talk? There's something in my car I want to give you, and I need to get a little information."
Erika turned away, reached behind the bench, pulled her backpack out, and put it on. When she turned around, the policeman was gone. Jean went to the elevator, pushed the Down button, and they stood side by side waiting for it to come. "Here's what I know already," Jean said. "You can straighten me out where I'm wrong. You live with your father. Your mom was in Arizona until late last year? Is that where she was?"
"Phoenix."
"And we're here because she would like the court to make changes in your current custody arrangements."
"She came back before Christmas. She would have asked for me sooner, but she had to find just the right apartment and everything first."
Jean smiled and nodded. "I know her lawyer. Jack Klecko. He's very good at his job. I don't know if your father has a lawyer or not."
"No, he doesn't." Erika looked back toward the bench, angry at herself. What right did she have to talk about her father to this stranger?
"There was a young woman with your mom," Jean said.
"My sister, Karen."
"Mr. Klecko said your mom had a child from her first marriage. Is that Karen?"
"I don't think of her that way. She's just my sister," Erika said. She looked at the elevator door. Why wasn't it coming? Was the old lawyer holding the door open on the first floor, still telling his joke? It was possible.
Jean shifted her briefcase from her right hand to her left. "You got a glimpse of Judge Gifford," she said. "He's the best there is. He stays awake nights getting at the truth."
Erika remembered an experiment she had done one Saturday morning years ago. Take identical bowls, write the letter C on the bottom of one with a crayon, put true Cheerios and milk in that bowl, store-brand Cheerios and milk in the other, shut your eyes and move the bowls around until you don't know which is which, then take a spoon and try to figure out which is the true one. It was hard, and when she made her choice it didn't have a C on the bottom.
Jean reached out and pushed the Down button again. "They always take a long time," she said. "Let me tell you a little bit more about me. I'm an attorney, as you know. I work for the Children's Law Center on Orchard Street. Seven or eight blocks on the other side of the interstate. The center pays me a salary, so you or your parents won't ever get a bill. My job is to keep you informed about what's happening with your case, to give you advice, which you can take or not, as you decide, and to argue in court for what you want."
The elevator came and they stepped inside. Jean pushed the ground-floor button and the doors slowly slid shut. When she turned to Erika and spoke, there was a slight echo. "Whatever you say to me is confidential, unless you tell me you're planning to rob a bank, which doesn't seem likely."
Erika tried not to smile. What kind of idiot would tell her lawyer she was going to rob a bank?
"We have two other lawyers. Sometimes I ask them for their ideas on how to help a client. I hope that's okay."
"Sure," Erika said.
The elevator stopped, the door opened, and Jean started down the hall toward the door out to the parking lot. Erika had to walk fast to catch up. "Does my mom know where we're going?" she asked.
"I told her she could meet you on the front steps of the courthouse in fifteen minutes," Jean said. She led the way past the security guard, who gave her a little salute, and then out the door and across the lot. The sun was setting between the courthouse and the main post office, and the wind was cold. Erika had her sweatshirt balled up in her backpack, so she was glad when they got inside Jean's car, an old Dodge with rust spots on the doors. An empty plastic bag blew against the windshield, caught on a wiper blade for a second, and then flew away.
Looking through the windshield, Erika saw her mom and Karen come out of the courthouse door and stand at the top of the stairs. Her mom was wearing a blue dress and a string of pearls. The dress was a little tight on her. Mr. Klecko came out behind them, then walked around and stood in front of her, waving his arms and talking in her face. It made Erika want to jump out of the car and run across the lot and up the stairs three at a time, grab him and stop him. Men who waved their arms and yelled shouldn't be allowed to be lawyers, or if they were allowed, they should be allowed to work only for guilty people who had done really bad things, not for moms who just wanted to get their children back home.
Jean had thrown her briefcase onto the backseat and was feeling around under a pile of newspapers, candy wrappers, sweatshirts, and soccer equipment. "I'm sorry this is taking so long," she said. She grabbed what she was looking for and swung around holding it up in the air. It was a diary with a picture of a log cabin on the cover. In front of the cabin a woman washed clothes in a tub, a man chopped wood, and a little boy and girl played with a dog. Smoke curled up from the chimney.
"This might be useful to you," Jean said, "or it might not. It's for writing down what you're thinking, how you're feeling, ideas, things you want to remember, things you want me to do."
"Thank you."
Erika tried not to stare at the acne scars on Jean's forehead. They made her think of Candice Boyle. In eighth grade Candice hadn't had any, and now she was the pimple queen of Hoover Junior High. She had them everywhere, even on her shoulders. Some kids said it was a sign she was taking steroids to make her better at basketball.
Jean handed the diary to her. "I won't ever ask to look at it, so I won't know if you write in it or not, but you might be glad to have it to help you remember later."
Erika nodded her head and shifted her body around so she was leaning against the passenger door.
"The picture on the front's a little hokey," Jean said. "I bought a box of twenty-four of them at the Christmas Tree Shop on Cape Cod last year for a dollar apiece. I couldn't resist. I love diaries. I kept one when I was in sixth grade. I made believe I was writing letters to a friend who had moved away to California. I even began to believe in her."
Erika knew what she was talking about. For a long time her friend Carrie had had a make-believe friend named Bonnie. Sometimes when Carrie's mom was driving them to the mall or somewhere, Carrie would bend over and ask Bonnie a question and then tilt her head and listen for the answer. A lot of times Bonnie would give her ideas of different things to do, and she'd do them. It drove Mrs. Ives crazy.
Erika looked toward the courthouse door. Jack Klecko was gone and Karen was running down the stairs. She must have asked Bernie to drive them home. Sell the right stuff, or better yet get other guys to sell it for you so they're the ones to get arrested and sent to jail, and you can afford to pay cash for a Jaguar.
"May I?" Jean asked. She took back the diary and opened the rear cover. "I'm putting down the address and phone number of the Children's Law Center. The second number is my cell phone, which I never turn off except in movies and at church. Please don't let anyone else have it, not even your parents. I'm going to be in touch with them soon and give them my office number. Access to my cell phone belongs only to my husband, my children, and my clients. Nobody else."
An ambulance went by the entrance to the parking lot with its lights flashing but no siren. Jean closed the diary and gave it back, and Erika stowed it in her backpack.
"They're not going to hold it against Mom for bringing me, are they?" she asked. "It's just that she wanted me to see what was happening."
Jean reached her hand out but stopped before she touched her. "It's a simple misunderstanding about the rules. Judge Gifford saw what had happened, decided to assign me to you, and moved on to other things. It won't get in the way of the case. It can be helpful to have your own lawyer. You can call me day or night. I like to get calls from clients, and my husband can sleep through anything."
"Are most of them around my age?" Erika asked.
Jean smiled. "You're old. A lot of my clients are five and six. Three, some. When they're that young, I usually get appointed guardian. I go to court and say what I think is best for them and why, and the judge decides. When I'm the attorney, the children tell me what they want, and I try to get it for them."
Erika wondered if Jean really believed that. A lot of adults believed what they said about themselves. Mr. Janik, her guidance counselor, thought he knew everything about every kid in the ninth grade. He also thought they all loved him. Amazing. Still, he was better than the ones who told you they wanted you to be free to choose for yourself, but really just wanted to push their plans for you.
"I know what I want," she said.
"You don't need to tell me what it is right away," Jean said. "It'll be at least November or December before Judge Gifford rules. You have plenty of time."
"I want to go home to Mom," she said. "I mean, I'd still see my dad every week, but I'd live at home. My dad's really great. Every year he bakes me a birthday cake."
Jean looked at a paper in her briefcase. "October twenty-first you'll be fifteen," she said. "Is it the same flavor cake every year?"
"Chocolate." Erika took hold of the door handle and rubbed her thumb back and forth on it, but then pulled her hand away and put it down between the seat and the door. She didn't want this woman to think she was in a hurry to go. She looked toward the courthouse. Mom was still standing at the top of the stairs waiting for her.
Jean took a legal form out of her briefcase and held it out so Erika could see it. Halfway down, under all the names and seals, were the words MOTION FOR MODIFICATION OF CUSTODY. She saw her mom's quick, scrawly signature on the bottom.
"Just so I'm certain," Jean said, "is this address and phone number for your mom still correct?"
"Yes."
Jean lifted the form. Underneath was a small square of yellow paper. "And this is your father's home number? Is there a way I can reach him at work?"
She handed a pencil to Erika, who hesitated a second and then wrote the number on the paper. "It's Pace Brothers' Ford," she said. "They're the biggest Ford dealership in the eastern half of the state. He's assistant manager in the body shop. You have to ask for him."
Jean put the papers in a folder, put the folder back in her briefcase, and looked at Erika's mom standing at the courthouse door. Erika prayed that Bernie wouldn't come running up the stairs where Jean could see him. You could tell a mile away he was bad news.
"Will your mom be dropping you off at your dad's?" Jean asked.
"No. I'm taking the bus. It's easier." Erika pushed the door open an inch. Cold wind blew into the car.
"One last thing before you go," Jean said. "I need to make an appointment with you. I'm in court all day tomorrow. Would next Monday or Tuesday work?"
"There are tryouts for the school play both days."
"Are you an actress?"
"All I've been is on stage crew so far, but Mr. Stork makes a big thing of the way you look. He needs somebody tall with long hair, and there aren't too many ninth graders like that, so he gave me some lines he wants me to be ready to read. I don't know if I will."
"I think you should."
How would you know? Erika thought.
"When does the play go on?" Jean asked.
"In forty-two days. I know because the Stork already has a countdown sign on his door. He thinks it helps sell tickets. I guess it was silly, but I thought the judge would decide everything today."
"Court business never moves fast," Jean said. "I need to know a lot more than I do now. So, if you tried out Monday, would you be free to see me Tuesday? Maybe around four-thirty?"
Erika got out of the car. "I guess so. Sure."
Jean took out another piece of paper, a map with the law center in the middle of it and the bus lines marked, wrote "Tuesday, 10/11, 4:30 p.m.," across the top, and handed it to her. "Maybe you could bring pictures of the people in your family with you? You think that might be possible?"
Erika smiled, opened the door all the way, got out, slammed the door, waved goodbye, and started moving between the cars toward her mother, walking fast. Halfway there, with the paper flapping around in her hand, she stopped. There was one more thing she needed to say. She put the map in her pocket and went back. When she got near the car, Jean rolled down her window and put her head out.
Erika brushed her hair out of her eyes. "Just one other thing," she said. "I didn't just decide today about wanting to go home. I've been wanting to go home ever since my mom and my sister came back from Arizona last year. Before that. Always, really. Also, I don't think anybody should hold it against Mom for bringing me into court. She just wanted me to be able to see what was happening."
Jean smiled up at her. "Don't worry. It's no big deal." Her cell phone, lying on the passenger seat, began to ring. She picked it up and checked the caller ID, then put it on the seat again. Erika looked down at it.
"It's not a client, so I don't need to answer right away," Jean said.
Erika shook her head. "No, that's okay, I'm going," she said. "You can call the person back if you want."
Erika crossed the lot and ran up the courthouse stairs. When she got to the top, her mom grabbed her and put her mouth to her ear. "Tell me the truth now, sweetie. You're not mad at me for bringing you, right? You got a lawyer out of it. That's something. Or maybe you don't want one."
"It's fine." Erika looked around. "Where's Karen?"
"Gone to find Bernie. You can have a ride, too, if you want. There's plenty of room. Don't tell Karen, but sometimes I think Bernie likes you best of all of us."
Erika shook her head. He was a snake. He hated her as much as she hated him. At least, she hoped he did.
"Suit yourself," her mom said. "You're a big girl now. Are you sure you're not mad at me for taking you into the courtroom? I don't think the judge liked me. Do you think I put on too much eyeliner? Karen says I did, but maybe she's just mad at me because I borrowed hers. You don't have to tell her that, okay? It goes on like a dream. Remember when you were little, telling me my eyes looked spooky?"
"No," Erika said.
"Well, you did. Moms remember little hurts like that. We can't help ourselves. You think that's the real reason he gave you a lawyer? How I looked?"
Erika shook her head. "I'm sure that wasn't it, Mom."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from What Erika Wants by Bruce Clements. Copyright © 2005 Children's Law Center of Connecticut, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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