Relentless(4)

This memory is too strong to fight.

I walk through the tall door into my ninth and final foster home. As luck would have it, the woman I called Grandma Patty eight years ago was actually just a neighbor. I had no family to take me in after my mother died. I’m only fifteen, but I’m already more jaded and cynical than my forty-something caseworker. She flat out told me that this would be my last placement. If I screw this one up, I’ll be sent to a halfway house until I turn sixteen in four months. The moment I step into the living room, I know I’ll be seeing the inside of that halfway house soon.

Three guys sit around a coffee table, two of them on the sofa and one cross-legged on the floor with a guitar in his lap. The one with the guitar wears a gray beanie and his dark hair falls around his face in jagged wisps. He’s humming a tune I recognize as a Beatles song my mom used to play whenever she cleaned the house: “I Want You.”

The thud of my backpack hitting the floor gets his attention and he looks straight into my eyes. “Are you Claire?” he asks. His voice is smooth with just a touch of a rasp.

I nod and he immediately sets his guitar down on the floor in front of him. My body tenses as he walks toward me—as my “training” kicks in. The reason I’ve been in and out of foster homes for the past eight years since my mom OD’d is because of everything she taught me.

From as far back as I can remember, my mother taught me never to trust men or boys. She was so honest and candid with me about the things her uncle did to her from the time she was nine until she was fourteen. She told me all the things to look out for, all the promises these predators would make. The most important thing to remember, she told me, was to never let them think you were a victim because that was when they pounced.

I followed my mom’s advice for eight years and I hadn’t been so much as hugged the wrong way. I’d kept myself safe, but only by getting myself kicked out of every foster home at the slightest hint that someone might see me as prey. This guy in the beanie doesn’t look like a predator, but looks can be deceiving.

He grabs the handle of my backpack and nods toward the stairs. “I’m Chris. I’ll take you to your room.”

Senia shakes my arm and the living room comes back into focus. “Are you okay?”

I nod quickly and she gives me a tight smile. She knows what just happened, but she’s willing to shrug it off because she knows that’s exactly what I need tonight. No long talks about getting over the past or seeing a shrink. People have endured far worse than I have. There’s devastating famine and wars being waged across the globe. I have nothing to complain about—except the fact that I really don’t want to be here tonight.

I spend the entire night hiding my face every time someone I recognize enters the room or explaining how I dropped out because I couldn’t pay my student loans. No one here knows the truth. The one smart thing I did last year was drop out before word could spread around campus.

At twenty minutes past midnight, Joanie Tipton finally enters the living room and casts a lazy smile in my direction, and now it’s time to leave. Joanie is the only person here, besides Senia, who knows why I dropped out. I had to beg Joanie, on my knees, not to tell anybody. It was the second most humiliating moment of my life.

I grab Senia’s arm and whisper into her ear, “Don’t look now. Mr. Jones just arrived. I have to get out of here.”

Mr. Jones is the nickname Senia gave Joanie after she got a chin implant the summer before our sophomore year and we decided she now looks like a transvestite version of Bridget Jones. She even has Renee Zellweger’s scrunched eyes. It would be funnier if she didn’t hold my secret in her French-manicured hands.

“I’ll take you home,” she whispers back and I shake my head adamantly.

“No! I’m just going to sleep. You don’t need to come home for that. I’ll walk.”

Her eyebrows furrow and she nods. “Breaking all the rules tonight, huh?” She’s referring to the fact that I never walk the streets alone at night. “I know you’re sleeping in so I guess I’ll see you when I get back on Monday. Love you.”

I kiss the top of her head as I rise from the sofa and scoot past her. I glare at Joanie from across the room as I leave, though she isn’t looking at me. She’s already engaged in a flirtation with a guy who’s at least ten years older than us. God, I wish I had a secret on her.

I duck out of the house and pretend to adjust my bangs as I pass a couple making out next to a car in the driveway. The last thing I need is to be recognized as I’m leaving. As soon as I’m out of the couple’s line of sight, I pick up my pace. Our apartment is only two and a half blocks away. The only reason Senia drove here is because of her monstrous heels.