Chapter 9 Ivan #2
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. "
I nod because nodding is what she wants, what she needs from me, but I don't let myself believe it.
I've heard this speech before, this exact same speech about good people and good fits and fresh starts and new beginnings.
It never means what they think it means.
It just means another house, another set of rules to learn, another family that will eventually decide they don't want me after all.
But I pack my garbage bag like I always do and I get in Mrs. Dodson's car and I let her drive me to a house in a neighborhood nicer than any I've lived in before, a two-story place with a big yard and a porch swing and flower boxes in the windows filled with actual living plants.
It looks like the kind of house where happy families live, the kind you see in commercials and TV shows, the kind that doesn't seem real.
The woman who answers is short and round with gray-streaked hair pulled back in a loose bun and a smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes and makes her whole face light up.
She introduces herself as Rosalyn Reyes and she hugs me before I can step back, this warm, soft hug that catches me so off guard I don't know how to react.
I just stand there frozen, my arms at my sides, unable to remember the last time someone hugged me like they meant it.
"Welcome home, Ivan," she says. "We've been waiting for you."
Home.
The word feels strange. I don't know what home means anymore. I'm not sure I ever did.
But I follow her inside anyway, clutching my garbage bag with one hand and feeling the outline of Jay's note in my pocket with the other, and I tell myself that this is just another placement, just another stop on the journey that will eventually lead me back to him.
I tell myself not to get attached, not to expect anything, not to let my guard down.