League of American Traitors

Chapter Two

Jasper woke up shivering on the living-room floor. He'd rolled off the mattress again; the night terrors were getting worse. He climbed back on and pulled the covers to his neck. Her portrait stared down at him from above the fireplace. He wouldn't let the bank take it. He'd murder anyone who tried.

Somebody banged at the door. Jasper zipped his hoodie and peeked out a window. A big lady in khakis paced around the secluded gravel driveway.

"The bank notice said I don't have to be out for another week," he called through the window.

"Hello? Are you Jasper?"

"Yeah. What do you want?"

"Oh, hi. I'm Janine Tallison, your court-assigned guardian."

"I didn't ask for one."

"That's not how it works."

"How does it work?"

"When a minor enters the system, I help with the transition."

"What does that mean?"

"I place you with a foster family."

Jasper's stomach lurched. "Janine, I can tell you with a hundred-percent certainty, that's not going to happen."

"I realize this is hard, Jasper."

"Do you?"

"I've helped many kids transition—"

He gripped the windowsill. If she said "transition" one more time, he was going to throw a lamp at her. "Leave, please."

"Jasper—"

"Seriously, get out of here."

He slammed the window shut.

Janine paced around the driveway for another ten minutes, made a phone call, then left.

****

Jasper's high school guidance counselor called the landline an hour later. Jasper let it go to message without listening to it. The guy called back at eleven, so Jasper ripped the phone from the wall. A couple kids from school texted, but he didn't respond. He ate ten pancakes and watched half a season of Law and Order before passing out. He dreamed somebody was after him, and woke up screaming around midnight.

The cable cut out the next day. Jasper figured that was probably because somewhere in the three-month mountain of mail was the cable bill he had no money for and no idea how to pay. The electricity went next. After the cable, that wasn't so bad. He'd been rereading his mom's guilty pleasure collection of Danielle Steel, anyway. It was the natural gas being cut off that led to the transformation of his home into a legit hermit's den.

Jasper spent that morning chopping wood and the afternoon worrying about what to eat. He'd cleaned out the perishables weeks ago and was working his way through the mountain of whole-wheat pasta that his mom had hoarded in the storage closet. Boiling water over an open flame in the fireplace was actually really hard/super dangerous, but he made it work. It was all he had left.

One week after Jasper buried his dad, the agent from the bank finally showed up to repossess the property. Or, at least, Jasper guessed it had been a week. The days had started running together since Janine stopped coming. Jasper had parked the Volvo behind the shed in an attempt to convince her that he'd taken off. The living room was a rat's nest cluttered with books, clothes, and heavy blankets, and Jasper smelled like a bum. He'd also grown pretty comfortable with the outdoor toilet situation, which is exactly where he was—whizzing in the high weeds beside the driveway—when the guy arrived.