“I’ll get the check,” I said.
“Obviously. You think I can afford this fucking place?” She folded her arms and scowled.
I fished a few bills out of my wallet – more than enough to cover the bill and a generous tip – and left it on the table next to the purse she was so proud of. If she wanted dessert, she could pay for it herself. I was finished.
“It was lovely to meet you, Song,” I lied, grabbing my phone and getting out of my seat.
“Where are yougoing?!”
I ignored her and everyone else staring at me. As I passed by our waiter, I slipped him a generous tip for having to deal with the mess I was leaving behind, and then I kept walking for the exit.
Two
Lumen
It wasa strange feeling to have children looking at me like I was some sort of beacon. A representation of hope for the future. For their future. Like, if I could make it, they could too.
Like I was the opposite of a cautionary tale.
Not surprising, really. I should have expected it when I’d requested to come here as a volunteer. It’d been six years since I’d aged out, and this had been the place where I’d done it. The dropping off point for kids who weren’t going to be adopted, or at the very least, put into long-term care. Usually teenagers. Often troublemakers.
I smiled at each of the other volunteers as I passed them. A few had been volunteers back when I’d been one of these kids. Houseparents, drivers, cooks, servers…people who’d come in to help when there were too many kids and not enough adults.
“Always wonderful to see you back here, Lumen.” Brie Richards had a permanently exhausted look, her long salt-and-pepper hair tied back to avoid having to do anything with it.
Years of caring for foster kids couldn’t have been easy, but I’d never heard her complain, not when I’d been under her care, and not when I’d come back to help her.
“It’s good to see you too,” I said, following her into the activity room.
At the moment, Brie had ten ‘permanent’ residents, and I counted them off around the room. Like any group of kids, their personalities were as different as their stories.
I noticed a new girl I hadn’t seen before. She looked about fourteen and had long raven-black curls that made her tanned skin look even darker. Her baggy, all-black clothes made her look even skinnier than she already was – a sign that she was probably either new to the system or had been in and out of a neglectful situation. New kids were usually quiet, but her paper plate didn’t even have a dab of grease, which meant she hadn’t eaten anything. That was cause for concern. New kids as thin as she was usually had issues with hoarding food, not ignoring it. I hoped it didn’t mean she had an eating disorder. Those were a bitch to conquer.
“Hi, Lumen!” Diana Whitmore waved her willowy arm so fast it was a blur. She was thirteen, with frizzy brown hair and a perpetual smile.
“Hello, Sylvia.” I winked at her. When I’d found her readingThe Bell Jar, I’d started calling her Sylvia, and it never failed to make her smile. “You guys saved me some pizza, right?”
A few of them looked at the empty pizza boxes sheepishly, but realized I wasn’t mad about it. I didn’t broadcast my past, but most of them knew I’d been in the system too. I knew what it was like to be so hungry that the thought of food actually made me nauseous.
“Every time,” I sighed, but continued to smile. The girl with the raven curls didn’t even look up.
“I’ll leave you guys to it,” Brie said, patting me on the shoulder. “Have fun!”
Only Diana responded with a big affirmative, but Brie didn’t press. Silence in response to a general statement was more of a win than most people understood.
“All right, folks,” I said, clapping my hands, “let’s make something worthy of Pinterest and YouTube.” I gave them a mock frown. “Those are still the cool social media platforms, right?”
A couple of them giggled at my lame attempts to talk their language, but it’d accomplished exactly what I’d wanted.
Most of them already had project ideas in mind and got to work right away.
Except the raven-haired girl. She just sat and stared at a blank piece of paper, making no moves to find a nearby pen or paintbrush. In a way, she reminded me of myself when I’d first come to Brie’s house as a lost and unwanted seventeen-year-old. Ten years in the system had left me a lonely and untrusting teenager.
I sat down beside her without asking permission. I wouldn’t crowd her, but she needed to know that people here were going to make an effort. “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met yet.”
“Way to state the obvious,” she muttered, folding her arms over her chest.
I knew that gesture all too well but didn’t acknowledge it. “Got a name?”
