It's the only thing that matters.
Chapter 8: Jay
The hospital room is too bright, and my arm is wrapped in plaster from my wrist to my elbow. The cast is heavy and awkward, and my arm is throbbing with a pain that the medication only barely dulls. There's a social worker sitting in the chair by the window asking me questions I don't want to answer, questions that don't matter, questions about things I don't care about.
Her name is Mrs. Elliott, and she has kind eyes, and I hate her. I hate her because she's not the one I want to see, because she's not Ivan. Because she can't tell me where he is, because every time I ask she gives me the same answer in the same careful tone, "Your foster brother has been placed in a safe environment. I'm not able to share more information than that."
A safe environment.
Like that means anything. Like safe is something the system knows how to provide. Like they have any idea what safe means for a kid like Ivan.
"Jay, I need you to focus," Mrs. Elliott says, and I realize I've been staring at the wall instead of listening to her—staring at the ugly beige paint and the clock that ticks too loud. "We need to talk about your placement. The Hendersons are no longer an option, obviously, and given the circumstances—"
"Where is he?" I ask, interrupting her, because I can't help it, because it's the only thing I care about, the only question that matters. "Just tell me what city. What county. Anything. Please. I just need to know where he is."
She sighs, and I can see the sympathy in her face, genuine sympathy that somehow makes it worse instead of better. "I understand you and Ivan were close," she says softly. "But the system has protocols for a reason. Sharing placement information between minors isn't something we do, especially in cases involving abuse investigations. It's for everyone's protection."
"Protection from what? From me?" I see her flinch slightly. I make myself take a breath, make myself calm down, because getting angry won't help. Getting angry never helps. It just makes people stop listening. "I'm not going to hurt him. I would never hurt him. I just need to know he's okay. I need to know someone's watching out for him."
"He's okay," she says, and I want to believe her but I don't, because she doesn't know Ivan, doesn't know what okay means for a kid like him. Okay for Ivan means someone watching out for him, someone teaching him the rules, someone making sure he doesn't get eaten alive by a world that doesn't care if he lives or dies. Okay for Ivan means me, and I'm stuck in this hospital bed with a broken arm and no way to find him, no way to help him, no way to keep my promise.
"I'm going to be checking on him regularly," she continues, like that's supposed to make me feel better. "And I'll be checking on you too. Right now, my priority is finding you a stable placement where you can finish healing and get back to school. There's a group home in Macon that has an opening—"
"Macon?" The word catches in my throat, makes my heart skip. That's where I was born. That's the city I told Ivan to remember. Maybe it's a sign. Maybe if I'm there, he'll be able to find me somehow, someday. Maybe. "Okay. Yeah. Macon is fine. I'll go to Macon."
She looks surprised that I'm agreeing so easily, that I'm not fighting this, but she doesn't question it. She makes some notes on her clipboard and tells me someone will be by tomorrow to transport me once the doctors clear me for discharge. Then she leaves and I'm alone again with the silence and the weight of everything I've lost pressing down on my chest until I can barely breathe.
I close my eyes and try to picture Ivan's face, but it's already starting to blur around the edges, the details slipping away from me like water through my fingers. I can remember his eyes, wide and scared and trusting. I can remember the way he looked at me like I was the only solid thing in his world. I can remember his voice, small and quiet, asking me questions in the dark of our room. I can remember the feel of his hand in mine, bird-bone fragile, trusting me to keep him safe.
Goddammit, I failed him.
I was supposed to protect him and instead I got us both taken away, and now he's somewhere out there alone and I can't do anything about it. I can't help him. I can't even find him.
I make myself a promise in that hospital room, staring at the ceiling with my broken arm throbbing under the plaster and my heart breaking in my chest. I will find him. I don't care how long it takes. I don't care what I have to do. I don't care what it costs me. I will find Ivan and I will make sure he's okay, and nothing—not the system, not the rules, not the whole goddamn world—is going to stop me.
***
The group home in Macon is called Riverside House, which is a lie because there's no river anywhere nearby, just a strip mall and a gas station. It's a big old Victorian that's been converted into housing for boys aged fourteen to eighteen, run by a married couple named the Pattersons who are tired and overworked and doing their best with too many kids and not enough resources.
I share a room with three other boys. Marty is seventeen and angry at everything and everyone. DeShawn is fifteen and barely talks, just sits and stares. Thomas is sixteen and steals anything that isn't nailed down. None of them are friends and none of them are enemies—we're just bodies sharing space, four kids who've learned that getting attached to people is a waste of time because everyone leaves eventually.
My arm heals slowly. Six weeks in the cast, then physical therapy that makes me want to scream, then months of stiffness and aching that the doctors say will fade with time but never seems to.
I do the exercises they give me religiously, force myself through the pain, because I need my arm to work. I need to be able to write, to use a computer, to do whatever it takes to find Ivan.
I search for him constantly. Every time I can get access to a computer in the school library, I'm looking, fingers flying over the keyboard, trying every combination I can think of. Ivan Allen Collins. Ivan Collins. I. Collins. I.A. Collins. Nothing comes up. Nothing. He's a minor in thefoster system, and as far as the internet is concerned, he doesn't exist. He's invisible. And he'll stay that way.
I try other ways too, every avenue I can think of. I call the county social services office and ask for information about a minor named Ivan Collins, and they tell me they can't disclose placement information to anyone who isn't a legal guardian.
I write letters to Mrs. Elliott asking her to pass along a message to Ivan, begging her to just tell him I'm looking, and she writes back saying she'll "take it under consideration" but nothing ever happens. Nothing ever changes. I ask every caseworker who crosses my path, every administrator, every adult who might have access to the information I need. The answer is always the same.
We can't help you. It's against policy. I'm sorry.
The system is designed to keep kids like us apart. I understand that now in a way I didn't before, with a clarity that makes me want to scream. Its policies written by people who've never lived the way we live, who don't understand that sometimes another foster kid is the only family you've got. They see separation as protection. They don't see it as punishment.
But it is. Every day without Ivan is a punishment for something I didn't do wrong. I saved him. I stopped Henderson from beating him bloody, and this is my reward. A broken arm, a group home full of strangers, and a silence where my foster brother used to be.
Months pass. My arm gets stronger. The plaster comes off. The pain fades to an ache. I turn fifteen, then sixteen, then seventeen. I keep searching.
