Fuck. There’s a tug in my chest beneath my rib cage, someplace where the heart that I don’t have would be. A foreign feeling spirals inside of me, taking me back to my childhood, my stomach tightening.
I clear my throat with a cough into my fist. “That why you’re here? You like to read?”
Kori nods, her too-long bangs falling into her eyes. She reaches up and hastily pushes them away. “Iloveto read. It’s my very favorite thing over anything! Dolls, or toys, or Barbies and stuff. I don’t play with those, really. Not anymore.”
“I thought it might be hockey,” I tease. “The reason you’re here.”
“No. I don’t think I’d be very good at hockey.”
“Yeah? Why not?”
“I dunno. Seems real hard to hit that little ole puck into a net. I don’t even think some of these guys can do it.” She shrugs and lifts her thumb, gesturing to some of the guys on the team.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right about that.” I laugh, the sound expelling out of me so quickly even I’m surprised. Jesus, when was the last time Ilaughedlike this? Fuck, I can’t even remember the last time I laughed in general.
Kori goes quiet beside me, and we stand just like this for a while, both of us just observing the people around us. She seems comfortable that way.
“Have you… been in a lot of foster homes?” I ask, breaking the silence.
“Nine. That’s not the most, but it’s still a lot.”
It’s way too many for a kid to have to go through at only nine years old. I’d know better than anyone.
Something I find myself telling her. “When I was your age, I was in foster care too.”
Her eyes widen, and her mouth falls open. “Really?”
When I nod, she adds, “Did your parents die too?”
The question catches me off guard, and I freeze, every muscle in my body coiling tight.
It brings everything from earlier this morning stampeding back to the forefront of my mind when I’ve been desperately trying to purge it from my thoughts.
The notification that popped up on my phone this morning that made me physically ill.
My mother’s been released from her latest prison stint.
If you could even call her that. She was never a mother to me. I can’t remember a single “motherly” thing she ever did in the span of the time she had me. In between bouts of rehab and overdoses, I was a kid stuck in the most fucked-up situation imaginable with no way out.
This morning, the notification slipped across the screen, and I almost didn’t check it at first, but I was worried it might be an email from Taylor or something, so I checked it.
No, it was a notification from the service that notifies victims or family members about someone’s release from prison, telling me the last thing I ever wanted to fucking see… My mother was out. They included her mug shot, and my stomach heaved. She looks like she’s been to actual hell and back in the years since I’ve seen her.
I almost didn’t recognize her, but her eyes, they’re… the same as mine. The one thing familiar that remained in her.
No matter how much distance I put between me and this fucking city, it’s impossible to truly forget her existence entirely when every time I look in the mirror, I see her looking back.
I dropped my phone and ran to the bathroom so fast I almost tripped, emptying what little contents of my breakfast there were in my stomach into the toilet.
Because it makes me physically fucking ill to know she’s out and living free again.
So that’s why I was late this morning. But there was no goddamn way I could explain that to Maisie. Not that I even wanted to.
She can think whatever she wants.
“Yeah, my parents are dead too,” I finally say to Kori, who just stares at me and nods.
My mother might not be in a casket six feet deep, but she’s fucking dead to me.
