And I promised him I would find him.
Chapter 9: Ivan
My next placement is with a woman named Mrs. Garner. She's heavyset and tired, with deep lines etched around her mouth and eyes that suggest she stopped caring about much of anything a long time ago. She has two other foster boys already living in her house, both older than me, both with that flat, dead look in their eyes that tells me they've been in the system long enough to stop expecting anything good from life.
My room is actually just a corner of the basement with a stained mattress on the concrete floor and a bedsheet hung up on a wire for privacy, nothing more. It's not the worst place I've ever been, not by a long shot. It's not the best either. It's just another stop on a journey I didn't ask to take.
I keep doing what Jay taught me and follow all the rules he drilled into my head during those months at the Hendersons. I stay quiet. I'm polite. I say yes ma'am and no ma'am and thank you ma'am even when I don't mean it. I eat fast at dinner because there's never quite enough food on the table and the older boys don't hesitate to reach over and take what's on my plate if I'm too slow, if I let my guard down for even a second.
I keep my head down at school and don't make friends because friends ask questions. And questions lead to answers I don't want to give, lead to conversations about family and home and things I don't have anymore.
At night, when the house is dark and silent and the older boys are asleep upstairs, I take out Jay's note and read it by the weak yellow glow of the streetlight coming through the small basement window.
The paper is already getting soft at the creases from how many times I've folded and unfolded it, the edges starting to fray, and I'm careful, so careful, because this is the only thing I have left of him. This paper is the only proof that he existed, that we existed together, that those months weren't just a dream I made up to survive the loneliness.
I meant every word. I will find you. Don't give up on me. Remember my name.
I won't let myself give up. I can't.
I recite his information in my head every night before I fall asleep, the same way I used to recite prayers when I was little and still believed someone might be listening to me in the dark. Jason Michael Morrow. March fifteenth. Macon, Georgia. Rebecca Morrow, maiden name Thorne. Scar on the left hand between the thumb and forefinger. Safe place is a beach with white sand and blue water stretching out forever. What did he say to me the first night we met? You can breathe.
I whisper the words into my pillow so no one can hear me, so no one can mock me for talking to myself like a crazy person, and I picture Jay's face in my mind, and I tell myself that somewhere out there he's doing the same thing, thinking about me, looking for me, searching.
He promised.
That's what I tell myself every night. Jay doesn't break promises.
Eventually, Mrs. Garner decides that three boys are too many for her to handle, that the money she gets from the state isn't worth the trouble of feeding us and making sure we don't kill each other.
I'm the easiest to give up because I'm the newest and the quietest, because I don't cause problems or ask for anything, because removing me from the equation requires the least amount of paperwork. So, I get moved to a group home on the other side of town, packed into another social worker's car with my garbage bag and my secrets.
It's called Harmony House, which is a sick joke because there's nothing harmonious about twelve teenage boys crammed into a building that used to be a church, sleeping in bunk beds in what used to be the fellowship hall, sharing three bathrooms that are never clean and a kitchen that always smells like burnt food.
The walls are covered in peeling paint and inspirational posters about believing in yourself and reaching for your dreams, posters that might as well be written in a foreign language for all the good they do us.
I survive my time at Harmony House the same way I survived the Hendersons, by being invisible, by taking up as little space as possible. I learn which kids to avoid—the ones with quick tempers and quicker fists—and which ones are relatively safe to sit near at meals.
I learn that the night staff doesn't check the rooms after midnight, doesn't really care what we do as long as we're quiet, which means that's when things get stolen, which means I sleep with Jay's note tucked into my underwear where no one will think to look, where it stays pressed against my skin.
I learn that if you volunteer for chores, if you're always the first one to raise your hand when they need someone to wash dishes or take out trash or clean the bathrooms that nobody else wants to touch, the house parents leave you alone and sometimes even forget you exist, which is exactly what I want.
I try to search for Jay when I can, but computer access at Harmony House is severely limited and there's always a line of kids waiting. Kids who want to play games or watch videos or talk to people who might actually care about them. When I finally get my turn, when I slide into the chair in front of the old desktop computer in the corner, I type his name into every search engine I can think of, my fingers clumsy on the keys because I've never had much practice with computers.
Jason Michael Morrow. Jason Morrow. Jay Morrow. J. Morrow.
Nothing useful comes up. Nothing that leads me to him. He's a minor in the foster system, and as far as the internet is concerned, he might as well not exist. He's invisible, just like me.
I try the social workers too, every single one who crosses my path. Every time a new caseworker shows up to check on me, to make sure I'm still breathing and attending school and not causing trouble, I ask about Jay. I describe him carefully—dark hair, dark eyes, tall for his age, scar on his left hand.
I give them his full name and birthday, explain that he's my brother even though we're not related by blood because blood doesn't mean anything when you've survived the things we've survived together, when you've held each other in the dark and promised to never let go.
They all give me the same sympathetic look, the same careful explanation about confidentiality and protocols and how the system can't share placement information between minors for liability reasons.
One of them, a young woman who seems caring, tells me she'll "see what she can do," and for a few days I let myself hope. But nothing ever comes of it.
Nothing ever changes.
The system doesn't care that Jay is the only family I have. The system only sees files and paperwork and liability and potential lawsuits. The system has rules, and the rules say we have to stay apart, that connection is dangerous, that caring about someone makes you vulnerable.
