Will pulled the phone away from his ear and set it on the coffee table.
“There. By the way, Kaleb was thrilled to have you back as a mentor for the following year. I took care of the challenge.”
“Did you?”
“I did.”
“Now I need to find a student for next year whom you will hopefully find acceptable. That might be the bigger challenge,” I said.
“I have nothing but faith in you, Atlas.”
1
Ryder
May
Ileaned back in the uncomfortable metal folding chair my foster parents used each Sunday for the family dinner. I arched my back to stretch, causing my single working earbud to fall out of my ear. The calming instrumental music I was listening to was temporarily gone. I leaned over to pick it up and then stuck it back in my ear. I was tired and rubbed my eyes before letting my arm drop and heavily land on the desk. Without picking up my cell phone, I touched the screen to bring it to life and check the time.
“Fuck,” I mumbled under my breath. It was getting late, and I told myself I would stop studying at midnight so I could work on college applications. So I wouldn’t wake Kenton, the fourteen-year-old I shared a room with, I quietly closed my physics book and put it inside my tattered backpack that was on the floor by my desk. I knew the information inside and out. My time would be better spent filling out the applications.
Behind the closed door of my bedroom and over the subdued music in my ear, I could hear one of the babies crying. There were two baby boys here, Terry and Dillon. Terry was nine months and Dillon was seven months, and neither were biologically related. Terry had been born prematurely and was about the same size as Dillon. I could tell them apart when looking at them, but by the sounds of their cries, I had no idea which one was crying. Moments later I heard Pam talking to him as she tried to calm him and rock him back to sleep. Kenton rolled over and groaned loudly at the noise.So much for me needing to keep quiet.
Our room was small, and we had bunk beds. I had the bottom bunk, and next to my bed under Kenton’s bunk was the tiny desk I did my homework on. Since Kenton was trying to sleep, the only source of light in the room was the tiny, bright-green task lamp on my desk.
I reached for the energy drink I thought I might be addicted to and took a long sip of it. As I set the can on the desk, I organized the cramped space with the applications, envelopes, and money orders for the application fees.
I pulled over another packet to begin the process of filling out applications by hand. Again. I tried submitting applications online, but most of the colleges wanted the application fees to be paid for by a credit card, which wasn’t an option for me. Pam and Roger told me last month they didn’t have enough room on their credit cards for all the application fees, but they were able and willing to pay for one for me. At thirty-five bucks, the application fee to a tiny community college in Lancaster ended up being the cheapest one they were able to cover.
I’d been working two part-time jobs after school to cover the costs of the application fees and upcoming expenses for college. On the weekends, I worked at the nearby grocery store collecting carts, bagging groceries, and stocking shelves. During the week,I worked downtown at the library. The downtime there allowed me to study some. Yesterday was payday at the library, and I took my check, along with cash tips from the grocery store, to the bank and purchased money orders for the application fees.
I already had an acceptance letter from Lancaster Community College, which basically accepted anyone. It was a two-year community college, and the credits would transfer to most of what I considered were the big universities. The big ones were the ones I could put on job applications and proudly say that was where I’d earned my degree from. I had tucked the acceptance letter to Lancaster between pages of the USC course catalog and shoved it in the top drawer of my desk. I didn’t want to settle for that. Or, at least, I didn’t want tohaveto settle for that. I would, though, if none of the other schools found me to be good enough.
Ryder… Baker… Smith.I said my full name in my head as I filled out the section for my full name. All the applications had the typical generic questions that every university seemed to ask. That was the easy part to fill out. But then each had a few questions that required a short essay type of response. Rather than answering something different for each one, I had opted to use the same answer for all of them, making it much easier.
“Give an example of a time when you overcame adversity for success,” I murmured.
I re-read it two more times to make sure I was reading it and understanding what they were asking me for. I tended to hurry and race through things by reading sporadic words rather than taking my time to fully comprehend. But if I read something fully and really concentrated on what I was reading, I had it memorized. I pressed my pen to the paper and whispered my thoughts as I wrote them.
“Adversity may as well be my middle name instead of Baker. I didn’t exactly have a normal start in life. I was left at a firestation in Bakersfield, California with my umbilical cord still partially intact. The firefighters took me to the hospital. After they gave me the name Ryder Baker, the hospital added what is quite possibly the most common last name in the United States—Smith.
“Right out of the gate I met challenges. Even though I was a baby and desirable to young couples, I was always behind the eight ball. I didn’t speak until I was in kindergarten and was labeled by my first foster parents as a dummy. They returned me to the system, not wanting to deal with my issues.
“I bounced around from group homes until middle school when a lovely woman took me in. She was kind and patient with me, and I believed that with her I would have a home. Unfortunately, she had a stroke while driving and didn’t survive the accident.
“At the start of my freshman year of high school, I found myself in foster home number thirteen. Lucky thirteen. I can’t put into words how hard it is to be an unwanted teenager and bounced around from bed to bed in Los Angeles. Not having the right clothes, or a place to take the rare friends I made, or know what the next meal will be, or worrying that at any moment the roof over my head could change, makes life a tough pill to swallow. Those worries don’t go away, and they haven’t lessened over time.
“Have I rambled too much? Have I bored you to death? Have you made it this far or already discarded my application in a pile of others? If you’ve made it this far, you’re aware of the adversities I’ve faced.
“Where have I succeeded? Probably not where you think. Yes, I’ve succeeded at life and refused to become a product of the system or a statistic. My attached transcripts speak for themselves. I’m the valedictorian of my high school graduating class, and I played football during my senior year. I work twopart-time jobs and volunteer once a week with at-risk kids in the foster care system. Helping a kid believe they can be successful and that someone wants to be with them is my greatest success. Thank you for your time and consideration.”
I took a quick sip from the energy drink and read over my response. Everything looked good, and I put the money order on top of the application and attached it with a silver paperclip. Taking my time so I didn’t make an error, I copied the address from the application onto the outside of a manilla envelope. Before slipping everything into the envelope that I addressed to USC Admissions, I made sure the money order attached was also for USC.
I took a deep breath as I stared at the envelope. I knew USC was a long shot, but I wasn’t going to settle for anything without trying for the moon.One down, five more long shots to apply for.Even if just one accepted me, it would all be worth it.
At two thirty in the morning, I had finally finished six application packets for schools that required more than good grades to be considered. I put my backpack on top of the envelopes and would drop them off at the post office on my way to school in the morning. Morning? It was already morning, and I only had time for about three and a half hours of sleep.
I swear, those three and a half hours went by in the blink of an eye. Before I could believe it was time to get going, I was up and hurrying around. I had an important stop to make this morning. After a quick shower, I brushed my teeth and got dressed. As one of the babies cried in the distance, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and picked up the stack of college applications.
