The other kids were playing in front of the school.
I paused on the sidewalk, my insides turning inside out.
“What’s up, Little Blake?”
My head snapped up, then a big smile stretched over my face. A group of boys were coming down the sidewalk behind me, Creighton with them.
“Eight!” I waved, shuffling aside as his friends kept going. Creighton stayed behind, ignoring how his friends all looked back and moved farther away to wait for him. He stood beside me, facing the school with me, and cocked his head to the side.
“New school for you, huh?”
I sighed, looking down. My hands went back to the backpack Miss Marcie gave me. I was pretty sure it had belonged to one of the other foster kids in the house. My fingers tightened on its worn straps. I swallowed nervously. “Yeah.”
He glanced down, side-eyeing me. “Always the new kid too.”
Something about his tone, as if he understood. I tipped my head back so I could see him better. He was so tall. Then again, he went tohigh school. I didn’t know why he was here with me. His school was on a whole different block. “You too?”
He didn’t answer. His eyes flicked beyond me to where his friends probably were before coming back to my face. He studied me a second, all serious. “You’ve known me for a bit now, haven’t you?”
My forehead wrinkled. “I guess.” I’d been at the house for a few days, but Creighton was cool. He was older. There was something different about him. The guys adhered to whatever he said. The girls his age were always around him. Even Miss Marcie, who was the best foster mom I’d ever had—and it was still early, but even now I knew she always would be—listened to him. When he walked into a room, she talked to him like he was her equal.
“So you know that I might know a little something about being new, right?”
I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but I nodded, just happy that he was talking to me. I always felt safe when Creighton was talking to me. Eight. He told me I could call him that, but I was only going to do that in private, even though I slipped up and said it in front of his friends just now. I needed to remember. A couple other times when I called him that name in front of some of the other foster kids, they all gave me nasty looks. One of the girls cut up my favorite shirt.
They were jealous.
“Okay then.” He knelt down so he was facing me, real serious.
I turned to face him too. We were almost equal height this way.
“This is what you do. When you walk in there, you walk in already knowing that you belong there because you belong anywhere and everywhere you go. You hear me?” He gently tapped under my chin. “Head up. Shoulders back. You own your space. No one takes that from you. And if you think you don’t belong somewhere or the other kids don’t want you there, fuck ’em because you do.”
I reeled a little inside, but didn’t show it. Creighton had said enough bad words at the house, so I knew it was just how he spoke, but I couldn’t believe he got away with all that cursing.
I wasn’t going to correct him.
He stood, still watching me, still all serious. “You got it?”
I nodded.
He chuckled softly before knocking his fist to my shoulder, softly, before going past me. “You got this, Little Blake. Have a badass day.”
I watched as his friends greeted him and the whole group kept moving, jostling each other and joking. A few glanced back at me until they turned the corner.
“Bye, Eight,” I whispered to myself before I did what he said.
Head up. Shoulders back. I was going to own my space, whatever that meant.
Chapter Five
Blake
Cognitive psychology. Was.Awesome.
I’d known within the first week it was going to be my favorite class and that realization never changed. It only strengthened. Learning about the mind and how it affects thinking, problem-solving, and how people learn new information was fascinating to me. Granted, I had a personal stake in understanding the mind, but it was still such a complex study.
I loved it.
