Sea of Stars(93)

 “Tell me who Astrid is,” Trey says behind me, causing me to jump halfway out of my skin.

 “Don’t sneak up on me!” I hiss.

 “You don’t walk away from the camp in the middle of all this mess!” he hisses back. “You were fine, and then I said that name and you completely changed.”

 “It’s nothing.” I try to feign a casual shrug.

 “It’s not nothing. Not the way you said it when you were drugged. It’s like a piece of you had gone missing and you needed to find it. You were begging your tormentors. It was gut-wrenching!”

 “I was on drugs—people on drugs say weird things. I once knew this guy, everyone called him Tweeker Tony—” I murmur.

 “Don’t redirect me. I’m starting to know your tactics very well. Explain who she is because I want to understand why she’s so important to you.”

 “Astrid is not important to me. It’s no one! One caseworker described Astrid as my imaginary friend—and don’t give me that look, Trey,” I say, straightening.

 “What look?” he asks in surprise.

 “I’m not some broken thing you need to fix. Just because I wasn’t raised in the Valley of Thistle with a perfect family doesn’t make me broken.”

 “What does it make you then?”

 “Resilient.”

 “You can act like this is nothing. You can walk around with a mind full of secrets, but if you want to let me in, I’ll be here for you.” He takes my hand and starts to walk in the direction that we came from, saying, “It’s not safe for you out here alone. You need to come back to camp—”

 I squeeze his hand tightly and blurt out. “I don’t know who or what Astrid is.” Trey stops, but he doesn’t turn around. “Maybe it’s someone I used to play with, or a neighbor, or a stuffed animal—maybe a babysitter. All I remember is that I would cry every night for Astrid.” Laughing humorlessly, I add, “I can’t even picture Astrid in my mind. Isn’t that crazy? To need something you can’t even remember?”

 Trey turns back to look at me and waits for me to continue.

 “Remember I told you when there’s little left to lose, the consequences for one’s actions don’t carry the same weight, painful or otherwise?”

 “I remember,” Trey says.

 “I learned that early—just after I was placed—that’s what they used to call it when they’d find you a home: placed. I hardly remember anything about being placed the first time. I remember the apartment was small—cramped—tidy but poor. It had this awful smell, though—mildew, urine, and pine cleaner. I’ll remember that smell for the rest of my life.”

 Trey nods, but says nothing.

 “Some people who take in foster children are borderline saints—selfless and dedicated. These people they placed me with made fun of those people—they were career caregivers. I call their type ‘the hangers-on.’ They keep hanging on to poverty with both hands, receiving money from a broken system by taking in kids they don’t want.”

 “They didn’t want you?” he asks.

 “They hated kids. They wanted a paycheck. They wanted me to shut up and do what I was told. And as you know, that’s not something I’m good at.”

 Trey’s jaw clenches, but otherwise he doesn’t react to what I said.

 “I remember asking them, ‘What about Astrid? We have to find Astrid.’”

 “No one would listen to me, so I ran away to look for Astrid where I used to live—I think I was five, maybe? I don’t think I was gone long—some concerned older woman on the bus followed me and then took me to the police station. The police brought me back.”

 “What happened then?” Trey asks when it looks as if I won’t continue.

 The palm of my hand feels sweaty in Trey’s; I’d pull it away from his, but he’s holding my hand so tightly that I don’t think I’d be successful. Instead, I exhale a deep breath. “It’s the first time I remember ever being hit. It’s not smart to make a hanger-on look bad like that with the police. That’s like threatening his livelihood. It’s dangerous. But it didn’t matter what they did to me; for whatever reason, I couldn’t let it rest. The next time the police brought me back, my foster father hit me so hard that my foster mother had to take me to the clinic. I don’t know what her name was, but she probably saved my life. I don’t remember much for a while after that—a couple of years are just gone. I can’t tell you what Astrid was or why it was so important to me. I just know that sometimes I still wake up calling that name.”