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  “Did your car break down somewhere out here?”

  “No.”

  “You got family that lives around here?”

  “I don’t have a family.”

  Despite his passenger’s brusque tone, Charlie, who had three grown sons of his own back in New York, had the distinct feeling the boy was exerting every ounce of his control to keep his emotions in check. He waited a few minutes before asking, “You got a name?”

  “Zack . . .” he replied, and after a hesitant pause, he added, “ . . . Benedict.”

  “Where you headed?”

  “Wherever you’re going.”

  “I’m going all the way to the West Coast. Los Angeles.”

  “Fine,” he said in a tone that discouraged further conversation. “It doesn’t matter.”

  It was hours later when the young man spoke voluntarily for the first time. “Do you need any help unloading this rig when you get to Los Angeles?”

  Charlie looked sideways at him, quickly revising his initial conclusions about Zack Benedict. He dressed like a rich kid and he had the diction of a rich kid, but this particular rich kid was evidently out of money, out of his element, and down on his luck. He was also perfectly willing to swallow his pride and do ordinary manual labor, which Charlie thought showed a certain amount of grit, all things considered. “You look like you could handle the heavy lifting easy enough,” he said, casting a quick, appraising eye over Benedict’s tall, well-muscled body. “You been working out with weights or something?”

  “I used to box at—I used to box,” he amended shortly.

  At college, Charlie finished mentally, and maybe it was because Benedict somehow reminded him of his own boys when they were his age and trying to tough things out or maybe it was because he sensed that Zack Benedict’s problems were pretty desperate, but he decided to give him some work. Having readied that decision, Charlie held out his hand. “My name’s Murdock, Charlie Murdock. I can pay you much, but at least you’ll get a chance to see an honest-to-God movie lot when we get to L.A. This truck’s loaded with props that belong to Empire Studios. I got a contract to do some of their hauling, and that’s where we’re going.”

  Benedict’s grim indifference to that information somehow added to Charlie’s conviction that his passenger was not only broke but probably had no idea of how to rectify the problem in the near future. “If you do a good job for me, maybe I could put in a word for you at Empire’s hiring office—that is, if you don’t mind pushing a broom or using your back?”

  His passenger turned his face to the side window, staring out into the darkness again. Just when Charlie had reversed his earlier opinion and decided that Benedict actually thought he was too good to do menial labor, the young man spoke in a voice that was hoarse with relief and embarrassed gratitude. “Thanks. I’d appreciate that.”

  1

  1978

  “I’M MRS. BOROWSKI FROM THE LaSalle Foster Care facility,” the middle-aged woman announced as she marched across the Oriental carpet toward the receptionist, a shopping bag from Woolworth’s over her arm. Gesturing toward the petite eleven-year-old who trailed along behind her, she added coldly, “And this is Julie Smith. She’s here to see Dr. Theresa Wilmer. I’ll come back for her after I finish my shopping.”

  The receptionist smiled at the youngster. “Dr. Wilmer will be with you in a little while, Julie. In the meantime, you can sit over there and fill out as much of this card as you can. I forgot to give it to you when you were here before.”

  Self-consciously aware of her shabby jeans and grubby jacket, Julie glanced uneasily at the elegant waiting room where fragile porcelain figurines reposed on an antique coffee table and valuable bronze sculptures were displayed on marble stands. Giving the table with its fragile knickknacks a wide berth, she headed for a chair beside a huge aquarium where exotic goldfish with flowing fins swam leisurely among lacy greenery. Behind her, Mrs. Borowski poked her head back into the room and warned the receptionist, “Julie will steal anything that isn’t nailed down. She’s sneaky and quick, so you better watch her like a hawk.”

  Drowning in humiliated anger, Julie slumped down in the chair, then she stretched her legs straight out in front of her in a deliberate attempt to appear utterly bored and unaffected by Mrs. Borowski’s horrible remarks, but her effect was spoiled by the bright red flags of embarrassed color that stained her cheeks and the fact that her legs couldn’t reach the floor.

  After a moment she wriggled up from the uncomfortable position and looked with dread at the card the receptionist had given her to complete. Knowing she’d not be able to figure out the words, she gave it a try anyway. Her tongue clenched between her teeth, she concentrated fiercely on the printing on the card. The first word began with an N like the word NO on the NO PARKING signs that lined the streets—she knew what those signs said because one of her friends had told her. The next letter on the card was an a, like the one in cat, but the word wasn’t cat. Her hand tightened on the yellow pencil as she fought back the familiar feelings of frustration and angry despair that swamped her whenever she was expected to read something. She’d learned the word cat in first grade, but nobody ever wrote that word anywhere! Glowering at the incomprehensible words on the card, she wondered furiously why teachers taught kids to read dumb words like cat when nobody ever wrote cat anywhere except in stupid books for first graders.

  But the books weren’t stupid, Julie reminded herself, and neither were the teachers. Other kids her age could probably have read this dumb card in a blink! She was the one who couldn’t read a word on it, she was the one who was stupid.

  On the other hand, Julie told herself, she knew a whole lot about things that other kids knew nothing about, because she made a point of noticing things. And one of the things she’d noticed was that when people handed you something to fill out, they almost always expected you to write your name on it . . .

  With painstaking neatness, she printed J-u-l-i-e-S-m-i-t-h across the top half of the card, then she stopped, unable to fill out any more of the spaces. She felt herself getting angry again and rather than feeling bad about this silly piece of paper, she decided to think of something nice, like the feeling of wind on her face in springtime. She was conjuring a vision of herself stretched out beneath a big leafy tree, watching squirrels scampering in the branches overhead, when the receptionist’s pleasant voice made her head snap up in guilty alarm.

  “Is something wrong with your pencil, Julie?”

  Julie dug the lead point against her jeans and snapped it off. “The lead’s broken.”

  “Here’s another—”

  “My hand is sore today,” she lied, lurching to her feet. “I don’t feel like writing. And I have to go to the bathroom. Where is it?”

  “Right beside the elevators. Dr. Wilmer will be ready to see you pretty soon. Don’t be gone too long.”

  “I won’t,” Julie dutifully replied. After closing the office door behind her, she turned to look up at the name on it and carefully studied the first few letters so she’d be able to recognize this particular door when she came back. “P,” she whispered aloud so she wouldn’t forget, “S. Y.” Satisfied, she headed down the long, carpeted hall, turned left at the end of it, and made a right by the water fountain, but when she finally came to the elevators, she discovered there were two doors there with words on them. She was almost positive these were the bathrooms because, among the bits of knowledge she’d carefully stored away was the fact that bathroom doors in big buildings usually had a different kind of handle than ordinary office doors. The problem was that neither of these doors said BOYS or GIRLS—two words she could recognize, nor did they have those nice stick figures of a man and woman that told people like her which bathroom to use. Very cautiously, Julie put her hand on one of the doors, eased it open a crack, and peeked inside. She backed up in a hurry when she spotted those funny-looking toilets on the wall because there were two other things she knew that she doubted other girls knew: Men u