She always did. If she felt scared she never let me see it.
“Okay,” I said.
Everything was great until the second week of summer school when I was called into the guidance counselor’s office. I figured it had something to do with filling out my college application paperwork, but I was shocked to see Mr. and Mrs. Francese sitting there with Lilah and our social worker.
My stomach fell and I stood there in shock, fighting the urge to turn and run.
“It’s okay,” the social worker said. “Come in and close the door, please.”
I sat next to Lilah and I didn’t like that her face was red and she looked like she’d been crying. She grabbed my hand and held on tightly as the social worker laid everything out…
And then I started crying, because never in my wildest dreams had I thought Lilah was crying happy tears.
“Is this arrangement okay with you, Esmerelda?” the social worker asked. “Them being your foster parents?”
I nodded hard and didn’t even bother correcting her for using my full first name, which I hated. “Yes, ma’am,” I quietly said. “But how did this happen?”
Lilah sniffled. “Hecame in today with a friend of his to eat lunch and Mr. Francese saw how I reacted. He put two and two together when I refused to go into the dining room, and he told me if I didn’t tell him the story he’d call the police and let them deal with it.”
Mrs. Francese was a stern but kind woman who wanted things just so in her home, and we’d had no problem learning her ways and abiding by them.
She also wasn’t stingy with hugs. And she stood up now and walked over, scooping us both into her arms. “I had a feeling if we waited you out long enough we’d eventually learn the truth.”
“I’ll file an emergency custody motion with the judge today,” the social worker said. “They’ll be your guardians effective immediately. And we’ll claw back money from the other family.”
“Won’t they fight that?” Lilah quietly asked.
The woman looked grim. “Not when I threaten to have them both thrown in jail for failing to report you two as runaways and continuing to take money from the state. We’ll also be moving the boys out and revoking their license to be foster parents.”
“We can’t testify in court,” Lilah said. “We don’t have any proof.”
“I won’t need you to,” she assured us. “That they didn’t report you missing is more than enough for me to take action. I just wish you’d called me sooner.”
“We didn’t want to be separated,” Lilah said. “We’re sisters.”
“Hope you two don’t mind helping me clean out the craft room,” Mrs. Francese said with as much humor as I’d ever heard her express. “We’ll get you proper beds.”
That’s how, that night, we were sleeping on two mattresses in a room that still needed rearranging and cleaning out as we helped her convert the garage to her craft room.
And for the first time in as long as I could remember Ifinallyfelt safe.
Five Years Later
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me,” I tearfully said as I held Lilah.
She hugged me tightly. “Girlie, you’re going away to med school. You’vegotthis. You don’t need me. It’s time for me to figure my shit out and I think the Army will help me do that.”
“Not if you’re dead!”
She pulled back enough to smile at me. “Look, I’m pretty damned tough, right? If you think something like this’ll slow me down, think again. I’ll only stay in for one tour. While I do that, you get through med school and find an internship somewhere. Then I’ll join you. If I decide I want a college degree, I can always do online school or something while I work.”
“How am I supposed to do this without you?”
“You’re brilliant, honey. Just don’t let any damned guy get in your way or derail you. Promise me.”
“I promise.” Wasn’t like I had much luck with men anyway. If they made it past Lilah’s rigorous bestie screening process, they usually turned out to be douchebags who wanted a bang-maid or trad-wife instead of a doctor as a life-partner.
I knew who I wanted—I wanted a dominant man who wasn’t a domineering asshole. I felt certain they were out there, but so far I hadn’t found one. Not that I’d had much time to focus on that when my full focus had been school.
