Dandi Daley Mackall

Wherever we’re going, I won’t be staying. That much I can promise. I’ve run away seven times—never once to anything, just away from. Maybe that’s why they call me a “runaway” and not a “run-to.”

The way I figure it, these “ideal placements” by Chicago’s social services never add up to much. And anyway, so far, my life has been subtraction. Two parents and a brother and me. Take away one brother, and that leaves two parents and me. Take away one parent, and that leaves one parent and me. Take away another parent, and that leaves me, Dakota Brown, age almost 16, trying not to wonder what it will be like when I’m the one taken away.

Bouncing in the backseat of the social worker’s car—the front seat has too many papers and folders about me to fit the real me in it—I decide it’s time for a list. I love lists. You can take a mess like Ms. Social Worker has going for her in the front seat and, in a few minutes, turn it into a list that fits on a single sheet of paper. Lists bring things under control. My control.

I take my list-book out of my backpack and turn to a clean page. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I catch the frown of concentration on the social worker’s face. She’s too busy trying to get us out of Chicago traffic to worry about what I’m doing in the backseat.

I know her name is Ms. Bean, but in my head I keep thinking of her as “the social worker” because things are easier that way. She’s not a bad person, and I’m not trying to get her into trouble or anything. But because I’m so good at what I do—running away—I’m bound to make her look pretty lousy at what she does. She thinks she’s driving me to my new foster family, where I’ll live happily ever after and forever be a pleasant anecdote for her to share with friends and family and future fosters everywhere.

Poor Ms. Social Worker. She is doomed to fail. The State of Illinois has not invented a foster family from which I, Dakota Brown, cannot escape.

In my list-book, I form an action plan.

The Plan:

A. Pay attention to the route leading to my new location. It is also my route out.

B. Control reaction to new setting. It’s important that the social worker believes I like my new digs.

C. Headache. This will be my medical weapon of choice, the only complaint I’ll voice, my one excuse to get out of whatever needs getting out of.

D. Observe. Knowledge is power.

E. Never cry. At least, never let them see you cry.

F. Never get angry. (Yeah, right.) Don’t let them see the anger.

G. Never “confide,” as the social worker likes to call it.

H. Be friendly, but do not make friends.

“Dakota, what are you writing?” Ms. Bean asks.

“Sorry.” I close my list-book and flash a smile to the rearview mirror.

“Don’t be sorry,” she says, smiling back at the mirror. This action makes her come up too fast on the little sports car in front of us.

“Ms. Bean!” I shout.

She slams on the brakes, forcing the car behind us do the same. Horns honk. “I hate traffic,” she admits.

I wonder how she ended up in Chicago when she hates traffic so much. But I don’t ask. My mind reaffixes the Ms. Social Worker label, and I stare out the window.

Ms. Bean is not the clichéd social worker. She’s a stylish, 24-year-old college graduate with light red hair, funky earrings, and clothes I wouldn’t mind wearing myself. I know she’s engaged. But other than the fact that she’s a lousy driver, I don’t know much else about her. That’s the way I like it.

I lean back and close my eyes, hoping she’ll drop the subject of my writing notebook, her driving, and everything else. After a minute, I open my eyes and stare out the window again. Cars whiz by all around us. Every car window is closed. Heat rises from the pavement between the lanes. Even with the air-conditioning blasting, I can smell Chicago, a mixture of tar, exhaust fumes, and metal.

The social worker slams on her brakes again, but I can’t see any reason for it this time.

“Sorry about that,” she mutters. Maybe to me. Maybe to the guy behind her, who rolls down his window long enough to scream at her.

“Don’t stop writing on my account, Dakota,” she says. “Unless it makes you carsick. It always makes me carsick.”

I’m thinking that if I get carsick, it will have more to do with her driving style than it does with my writing style. But Rule #11 on my “How to Handle Social Workers” list is “Don’t criticize. It puts them on the defensive.”

I say, “You’re right, Ms. Bean. I really shouldn’t write while I’m in the car.”

“My sister is a journalist,” Ms. Bean tells me.

It’s more information than I care to know. I don’t want to picture her as a person, with a newspaper-writing sister.

“Charlotte has a mini recorder she carries with her everywhere,” the social worker continues. “Instead of writing notes, she talks into that recorder, even when she’s driving. My dad keeps telling her not to record and drive, but she won’t listen.”

She hits her horn when someone changes lanes right in front of her without signaling.

“How far out of Chicago is this place?” I ask.

“Nice?”

I know this is the name of the town they’re dragging me to, but it takes a second to register. “Yeah. Nice,” I say. “Only are you sure they don’t pronounce it ‘Niece,’ like that city in France?” Both cities are spelled the same, but I’m guessing the similarities end there.

“That would make sense,” she admits. “But no. You’ll be living in Nice, Illinois.” She giggles. “And going to Nice High. And I’m sure you’ll be a nice resident of Nice.”

I manage to smile, although I can only imagine how old this play on names must get. I’m already feeling not so nice about it. “So, are we getting close?”

“It’s still a good ways,” Ms. Bean answers. “The board thought a rural home might be a nice change for you.” She smiles, then lets the “nice” thing fade without comment.

Neither of us says anything, so her last words bang around in my head. The board thought a rural home would be a nice change? The board doesn’t know me well enough to know how ridiculous it is to think a rural home would be just the ticket for Dakota Brown. The “ticket” for me is a one-way ticket out of there.

“Are you writing a book?” Ms. Bean asks.

“No,” I answer, hoping she’ll leave it alone.

“No? A letter, maybe?”

Those files scattered all over the front seat have enough information on me that she should know there’s nobody in the world I’d write a letter to. “It’s just lists,” I say to get her off my case.

“Like a shopping list?”

“Just a list,” I answer, trying not to let her see that this conversation is getting to me.

“Like what, for example?” Ms. Bean can turn into a little kid sometimes. She reminds me of this girl, Melody, who was in a foster home in Cicero with me for two months. Melody would grab on to a question and not let it go until she shook an answer out of you.

“Read me one, will you, Dakota?” she begs.

I’m pretty sure Ms. Bean will keep asking me about lists until I either read her one or get so angry I won’t be able to keep up my cheerful act. That, I don’t want.

I open my list-book and flip through dozens of lists until I come to a social worker–friendly list. “Okay . . . here’s a list of five cities I want to visit one day.” This is a real list I’ve made, but I have a hundred cities on it. Not five.

“That’s awesome!” she exclaims. “Which cities, Dakota?”

“Paris, Vienna, Rome, Moscow, and Fargo.” I stop and close the notebook before she can peek in the rearview mirror at the next list, because it looks like this:

Top 8 Cities I Never Want to See Again

1. Elgin, IL

2. Evanston, IL

3. Aurora, IL

4. Glen Ellyn, IL

5. Kankakee, IL

6. Cicero, IL

7. Chicago, IL

8.

Ms. Bean was my social worker in only the last two cities, but she’s got files on me from the other five. So she’d pick up on this list right away and make a big deal of it if she saw it.

I wait until she’s totally confused and trying to study her map while avoiding crashing into trucks. Then I open my list-book and fill in that blank by #8 of the cities I never want to see again.

When I’m sure she’s not looking, I write in big letters:

Nice, IL

Copyright © 2008 by Dandi Daley Mackall. All rights reserved.

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Chapter 1 Going to the Dogs



My wife and I have been thinking about getting a dog, lately, and discussing what type we might get. For me, there is really only one possibility—and that, of course, is a real dog.

For the uninitiated, there are three basic types of dogs:

1] Real dogs. These are dogs as God originally made them—monstrous, made-for-the-outdoors hunting machines that are perfect for intimidating neighbors and attracting lawsuits.

The ownership rule for guys and dogs is simple: the bigger the dog, the cooler you look. Walk down the street with a Pekingese and you might as well be wearing a tutu.

When you observe a man walking down the street with a massive real-dog, his message to you is clear. “Yes, I’m overcompensating for my insecurities and lack of masculinity but I’ve got a really big dog.”

Now that’s the kind of attitude I can get behind.

2] Mutant rat-dogs, otherwise known as Chihuahuas. These poor creatures are the unintentional result of secret experiments conducted by the Mexican army in a failed attempt to create the ultimate weapon by cross-breeding bats and Great Danes. The only surviving result of these experiments is a group of nervous, angry little rat-dogs that decided to take their revenge on humanity by being annoying on just about every level known to mankind.



If you are approached by one of these aberrations of nature, know that it despises you with a hatred rarely seen outside the Middle East, and that it won’t hesitate to tear your ankles to shreds. These dogs are the piranhas of the canine world and would nuke


mankind tomorrow if they thought they could get away with it. Under no circumstance should one of these animals be allowed to run for public office.

3] Kitty-dogs, which is every kind of dog that does not fall into one of the first two categories. I’m all in favor of this type of dog because, hey, girls have to have dogs, too.

The curse of the kitty-dog is that there are those who take a warped delight in dressing them up like people. Most dogs would rather be subjected to Mexican weapons experiments than go through this type of torture.

I cannot say this in strong enough terms: You should never, ever dress up your dog for any reason whatsoever. Take it from me—even if it were thirty below outside, your dog would rather die with dignity in his own fur coat than live while being seen in a little poochie parka.

If you dress your dog, you need to know two things:

1] The rest of us are making fun of you behind your back.

2] Every day your dog prays for a heaven where he gets to dress you up in humiliating costumes while he and his doggie friends point at you and laugh for all eternity.

If you feel you absolutely must dress an animal, go dress one that at least has a chance of defending itself like a cougar or a wolverine or a Chihuahua.



One of the most amazing things about the three dog types is that for every one of them, there is someone that likes that kind of dog. At this very moment, there are people risking the loss of fingers and eyes while they stroke their vicious little rat-dogs, all for the sake of love.

That’s a mysterious kind of love, isn’t it—the kind that embraces the unlovely, that sees through the imperfect and loves without regard?

Let’s face it, the human heart isn’t very attractive either. Every thought we have is consumed with self. If you peel away the layers of even our most noble deeds and acts of kindness, you will find thoughts that circle back to ourselves like homing pigeons. In our hearts, we are all mutant rat-dogs.

And yet God loves us.

In the Bible, you find that same theme of an indefatigable, undefeatable love reaching out to a vicious, ungrateful humanity over and over again. I’ve found it’s a love well worth pursuing.

And so the great dog debate rages in my household, and I think my wife is coming around to my point of view. But, if by chance, you happen to see me in the neighborhood walking a Pekingese that is wearing a teeny hat and sundress, you may safely assume things did not go my way.

Excerpt used with permission of Multnomah Books © 2008


PROLOGUE


Richard: Subra—look out! That car is coming straight at us!


Subramaniam: Relax, my friend. This is how people here drive all the time.


Richard: Ooooh! Here comes another one—watch out! Is that guy drunk or something?


Subra: Just hang on. We will be there shortly.


Richard: I thought this was a divided highway… Where did all these cars come from all of a sudden? There are more coming!


Subra: It is a divided highway. I’m sure that guy is just dropping off workers who live on this side of the village. To drive another several kilometers to turn around is a waste of money and time. You see, in England they drive on the left, in America on the right. But here in India we drive in the shade…or wherever else is convenient.


Richard: I don’t believe it! I simply don’t believe it! This could kill a fellow…


Subra: [Laughing] Now you know why we don’t need a Disneyland in India. Driving provides all the scary rides we could ever want. What were we talking about a few minutes ago anyway?


Richard: Uh…let me unclench my fists first. You were telling me about your background. It’s hard to pray and listen at the same time, but I’ll try. Please carry on with what you were saying…


Subra: Ah yes, now I remember. It was the hardest thing I ever did, Richard—to question what was so deeply ingrained in my family’s faith. Everything in my family was built around our faith. On the most important day of my childhood, it was hard to see my mother absent from the ceremony.


Richard: The most important day of your childhood? I think in such Western terms that I hesitate to even ask what you mean. What day are you talking about? You certainly don’t mean the day you were

born.


Subra: Well almost, but not quite. Let me explain…


As you know, society in India is built on the caste system. There are four main castes: Brahmans (priests); Kshatriyas (warriors); Vaisyas (merchants); and Sudras (servants). Beyond these four castes is actually a fifth, the Panchamas, the outcasts.