I remember Daisy had been excited that the new foster kid was a girl, but that didn’t last long. Not when Dalton became jealous of his sister’s attention being focused elsewhere. She soon joined in with her brother’s mean treatment.
I knew Harper hadn’t been her name before she came to the Jacksons, as she didn’t answer to it at first. But I didn’t pry. We had bonded quickly and stuck together through several difficult times over the year we were together.
After a couple of months, Harper had told me what happened to her parents and how her name had been Hailey Radcliffe. The tragedy was high profile in the news, which is why they had changed her identity.
Without telling her, I had Googled the incident on my tablet one night. After reading about what had happened, that was the first time I had cried in years. I wondered if Harper had ever searched for the story on the internet, but I never asked.
She also showed me her scars. Even though I was only twelve, I could see that they did nothing to diminish her beauty. And although we were both incredibly young, I knew that one day I would kiss her, and I did.
Looking back, it was just a peck, but I felt it everywhere. It was her first kissandmine, although I’d pretended that wasn’t the case. I was a boy; I had to look cool in front of the girl I liked.
Being there together made that home bearable. And then things got fucked up again.
I had intended to keep my head down and manage my time there so Harper and I could stay together, but then Dalton made that impossible. I had hated having to witness both the twins bullying Harper, but when Dalton started getting physical, that shit had to stop.
Things got real one night when I found out Dalton had fractured Harper’s wrist by stamping on it. She’d tried to hide it from everyone and wenttwo dayswithout seeing the Doctor. We fought; it was violent. I had been thirteen then, to Dalton’s fourteen, but we were both tall for our ages. I’d broken his thumb and nose and was escorted off the premises.
I will never forget the look on Harper’s tear-stained face as I looked through the back window of the car I had been placed in. Her arm had been in a cast and was drawn tightly against her chest. She knew it was over for me. Had she blamed herself?
I was a minor, but was still charged with aggravated assault. After serving another two weeks in the Juvenile Detention Center, I was then taken in by Bethany (Ma) Sawyer as a thirteen-year-old boy,tryingto be a man.
And that was that.
I caught the bus and attempted to visit Harper many times, but Mr. Jackson called child services. A social worker visited our house with the police, and I was given a formal warning. If I were seen in Mr. and Mrs. Jackson’s neighborhood, I would face Juvenile Court. Once I accepted that I was onto a good thing with Ma and the two other boys who were so like me, I knew I had to sit back and wait. Those two other boys were, of course, Reed and Miach. The headcase that was Hudson joined the family around a year after I did, at fourteen.
And that’s what I did for the next few years. By then, I had known that Daisy and Dalton were no longer with the Jacksons, and therefore, at least Harper was physically safe. Would she have been happy there? Probably not. But there had beennothingI could do about that at the time. After I had settled into my new life, I had told Ma about Harper and her situation. She had listened and been supportive. Ma said she would check out Harper’s case with the agency. Even with her contacts, she hadn’t been able to find out much due to GDPR rules, but she established that Harper’s foster placement appeared stable.
Eventually, more time passed, and Ma found out that Harper was being transferred back into the system. I had begged her to apply to become her long-term foster, but Ma had her reservations due to Harper’s sex. Bringing a teenage girl to live in an environment containing four hormonal boys wasn’t something that the foster board would approve of, but somehow, Ma pulled it off. And we got Harper.
Ma had never told me why Harper’s foster placement with the Jacksons ended, and I never asked.
I briefly glanced at the envelope, which contained my juvenile record. It had been expunged when I turned eighteen. At the same time, I was given the file that sat before me. It had taken me all this time to grow the balls to read through it all.
And now my record was clean, I could make a fresh start.
And that is exactly what it was for Harper and me. We weren’t who we used to be, and if we wanted a relationship of any kind, we needed to build it from the bottom up. I also needed to move out and onto campus to give us some space; it certainly couldn’t hurt.
But first, I needed to close that chapter of my past. I would face my mother and askwhyshe left me. Maybe she could tell me who my father was? Kill two birds with one stone. Then I could draw a line underboththeir asses.
Where my half-brother was concerned, my initial excitement had faded, and I wasn’t sure how I felt. Should I follow that natural urge to have a relationshipwith him? We were strangers. He was probably a spoiled little prick. And Ihatedprivileged people who thought they were better than everyone else. It was a major hang-up of mine.
I wondered how my turning up would affect their family. Perhaps her husband was unaware that she had another son? I can’t imagine that’s an easy thing to confess, how you abandoned your five-year-old child. I wasn’t stupid; there was a huge chance my mother would deny I was hers anyway.
Thinking through various possible scenarios, I realized that I didn’t care how it affected them. They say that shit can come back to bite you in the end.
Maybe that was whatshouldhappen to the Leibrocks and their picture-perfect life?
FIVE
HARPER
It was Thursday, and I usually hitched a lift with Hudson and Molly. Both Mols and I had commitments after school that day; she had cheer practice, and I had my weekly yoga class. I then hit the pool and swam a few lengths. Coach Rutherford ran sessions for the team every day, and I had joined in a couple of times, but I wasn’t swim team material. I didn’t have the upper body strength due to my bum shoulder.
It had been a tiring day, and thankfully, my last Physics test had gone better than expected. That was mainly due to the help I’d gotten from Micah. Ma must have told him I was worried about my first exams, and he’d Facetimed me. Micah had majored in Physics and gave me some great pointers.
My other foster brother had fallen on his feet and had gone the academic route through college. He no longer dreamed of playing pro football. I wondered if it had anything to do with the stab injury he had sustained (something about possible lasting damage), but he said that wasn’t the case. Most boys dreamed of a career in the NFL, but Micah seemed to change his mind overnight.
It was great to see his face and catch up on his Shenanigans in New York. He’d invited us all over for Thanksgiving, but Ma still hadn’t made up her mind. This year, Thanksgiving fell a day before my seventeenth birthday, not that I was expecting a song and dance about that.
