Page 29 of Miss Belief

He muttered a curse under his breath, so I had to speak up to amend his perception. “My sister would try. She’d make something or find something. I tried to do the same for her once I was old enough to be creative. After she adopted me when I was fourteen, we had our first Christmas together in this shitty apartment with a sad tree and a single string of lights. We gave each other gifts from the dollar store, and spent the day at the beach. Neither of us had ever been happier.”

He swallowed hard. “How bad was the time in foster care?”

I didn’t talk about it. Ever. Not even to my sister. Especially not to my sister. She’d get this guilty look in her eyes as if it was her fault she hadn’t been able to adopt me until she’d turned eighteen. But Reid was my friend, and considering how much he’d shared with me, it seemed only fair to give him something.

“My foster parents were nice people and lived in a good neighborhood. But being a foster kid in an affluent neighborhood was its own personal hell. Anyhow, as far as foster situations go, mine wasn’t horrible.”

So what if I got punched in the stomach daily by another seventeen-year-old foster kid because, in her words, “your breathing bothers me”? So what if I had to wake up at three o’clock in the morning to take a shower before the two teenage boys were up because otherwise they’d leer and try to cop a feel? So what if the girls at school would make fun of my ill-fitting clothes, and the boys would taunt me mercilessly for not having parents who wanted me. At least it had only been for a few months.

“You’re leaving a lot out, aren’t you?”

I was saved from having to provide an answer when the waitress returned with our food.

Two minutes into my meal, Reid was watching me. “You realize stuffing your face with chili cheese fries doesn’t make the question go away.”

I turned to my milkshake next. “I disagree. And this is off-limits for a fake relationship.”

“There is nothing fake about our friendship. But if you don’t want to talk about it, like I said before, I understand.” He paused, taking a bite of pot roast and making a sound of pleasure which put my entire body on notice.

Right. Friendship. Down, girl. “It’s not easy for me to talk about. My sister doesn’t even know all the details. If I could block the memories, I would. From the stories I’ve heard about foster care, it could’ve been much worse.”

“It can always be worse. The problems others suffer can put things in perspective, but that doesn’t mean what you went through was easy.”