I turn fifteen at Harmony House, and nobody notices except me. I don't tell anyone it's my birthday because birthdays don't mean much when you're a foster kid—no cake, no presents, no family singing around a table, no one who cares that you've survived another year. Just another day of being invisible, another day of surviving, another day further away from the last time I saw Jay's face.
I keep my grades up because Jay always told me school was important, that education was the one thing they couldn't take away from you no matter what else they took. I do my homework in the corner of the fellowship hall where it's quietest, where the noise from the TV and the other kids shouting doesn't reach quite as much. I study for tests even when the other kids make fun of me for caring, call me a nerd and a teacher's pet.
I'm not doing it for myself. I'm doing it because somewhere out there, Jay is counting on me to be okay, and being okay means having a future, and having a future means staying in school and not giving up.
I get moved again three months after my fifteenth birthday. The funding for Harmony House gets cut by the state and they have to reduce capacity, which means the kids with the fewest behavioral problems get transferred to make room for the ones who need more intensive supervision.
I'm one of the quiet ones, one of the easy ones who doesn't fight or steal or set fires, so I get sent to another foster family across town, packed into another car with my old garbage bag.
This placement is different.
Mr. and Mrs. Grant are younger than most foster parents I've had, maybe in their early thirties, and they have a biological daughter namedEmma who's eight years old and looks at me like I'm a fascinating alien species she wants to study.
Their house is small but clean, actually clean, with furniture that matches and pictures on the walls and a kitchen that smells like real food instead of cigarette smoke. They give me my own room, which is a luxury I haven't had since the Hendersons, a small space with a real bed and a dresser and a window with actual curtains.
They ask me questions about myself over dinner. Real questions about what I like and what I'm interested in and what I want to be when I grow up. I don't know how to answer because no one has ever asked me those things before, because no one has ever cared enough to want to know.
I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I keep waiting for Mr. Grant to come home drunk and mean, for Mrs. Grant to stop smiling and start looking at me with dead eyes, for the whole thing to reveal itself as another trap, another lie designed to hurt me. But weeks pass and it doesn't happen. They're just... nice. Consistently, boringly, impossibly nice.
It makes me uncomfortable in ways I can't explain. I don't know how to be a kid in a nice family. I don't know how to relax, how to let my guard down, how to stop listening for the sound of a belt sliding through loops or footsteps in the hallway that mean someone's coming to hurt me.
I still eat too fast at dinner, shoveling food into my mouth like someone might take it away. I still flinch when someone raises their voice, even when it's just Mr. Grant cheering at a football game on TV. I still sleep with Jay's note hidden under my pillow, still recite his information every night, still spend every moment of computer time searching for him, hunting for any trace of his existence.
The Grants notice that I'm different, that I'm not like their daughter or like the other kids they probably know. They don't push, don't demand explanations, but I can see them exchanging looks sometimes when they think I'm not watching, these concerned glances that pass between them like silent conversations.
They're trying to figure me out, trying to understand why I'm so guarded, why I don't laugh at jokes or play with their daughter or act like a normal fifteen-year-old boy.
I overhear them talking one night, when they think I'm asleep in my room with the door closed. Mrs. Grant's voice drifts through the wall, soft but worried, anxious in a way that makes me anxious too. "He barely talks, David. He barely eats. He's always on the computer looking for something, but he won't tell me what. I try to connect with him and he just... shuts down."
"Give him time," Mr. Grant says. "Kids like him, they've been through things we can't imagine. You can't force trust. You just have to be there, be consistent, and hope that eventually he'll let you in."
"I know. I just wish I knew how to help him. I wish I could make him feel safe."
I close my eyes and pretend I didn't hear, pull my blanket up over my head and press my face into the pillow. I want to tell her that she can't help me, that the only thing that would help me is finding Jay, and that's not something she or anyone else can do. But I don't say anything, because saying things means opening up, and opening up means getting attached, and getting attached means it hurts more when they inevitably send you away.
And they always send you away eventually.
That's the one thing the system has taught me beyond any shadow of doubt, the one lesson that's been hammered into my bones over and over.
The Grants keep me for four months, which is longer than I expected, longer than I thought they'd last. Then Mrs. Grant gets pregnant, and suddenly their small house feels even smaller, and the social worker shows up to explain that they need to "reassess their capacity," that they won't have room for me when the baby comes.
I wasn't surprised. I always knew I'd be leaving here too.
I pack my garbage bag without crying, because I've forgotten how. I thank them for being kind to me even though the words feel like sand in my mouth.
Little Emma cries when I leave, wraps her arms around my waist and begs me not to go, and I have to pry her off and hand her to her mother because if I don't leave right now, I might break down completely.
The next placement is another group home, this one smaller and grimmer than Harmony House, with a staff that rotates so often nobody bothers to learn anyone's names anymore. I survive it the same way I survive everything: by being invisible, by following Jay's rules, by searching for him every single chance I get, by holding onto his memory like a lifeline.
I turn sixteen in that group home. Nobody notices, same as last year, same as it will be next year. I spend my birthday hour on the computer, typing Jay's name into search engines with fingers that shake with desperation, hoping for a birthday miracle that doesn't come and probably never will.
That night, alone in my bunk bed in a room full of sleeping strangers, I read his note by flashlight under my blanket and whisper his information into the darkness, and I wonder if he's given up, or if something terrible has happened to him and that's why I can't find him no matter how hard I try.
I don't let myself think about that last possibility for too long. It's too heavy, too crushing. It would destroy me if I let it take root in my mind.
Two weeks after my birthday, Mrs. Dodson—the same social worker who picked me up from school the day everything fell apart, the day I lost Jay—shows up with news. She's found a potential long-term placement for me, a family called the Reyes who specialize in older foster kids, the ones who are harder to place because we're too old to be cute and too young to be independent.
"They've fostered over a dozen kids in the past ten years," Mrs. Dodson tells me, and I can hear the hope in her voice, the way she wants this to work out for me, wants to believe she's finally found me a home. "Several of them have stayed until they aged out. A few have even been adopted, become part of the family permanently. They're good people, Ivan. Really good people. I really think this could be a perfect fit for you."
