Maybe I'm Home

Great, They Gave Me Up Again

My fifth foster home didn't want me, either.

I'm not quite sure why. I mean, I'm polite, I have a good work ethic, and I listen to what they tell me to do. Perhaps my art is too messy. It might be that I don't warm up to them, as well. Or maybe it's that I'm just another twelve year old kid for them to deal with. 

You might be wondering why I'm in foster care anyways. My parents aren't dead, and I didn't do anything that should have made them not want me. But alas, my birth parents aren't great people, and I did do something to offend them. See, they're those super-Christians you see on the news. The people who rewrite books to Christianize them and stuff. I don't like to think of all Christians that way, but after what I went through, it's hard not to. My parents got rid of me because I did the un-holiest thing they could think of.

That's right, I became an atheist. 

I know.

What a disaster that I don't believe in God. 

It made sense, and it still does. I just don't believe in a deity. I don't see what's so wrong with that, but my parents disagreed. It all started in my art class, when I was eleven. I love art, and so getting to go to a master class was really cool for me. I paint more than I do anything else, and I can remember every hue the teachers let us use. The strawberry red and the vermilion, the cyans and violets. That art class was like home. And then I made some atheist friends. And that was that. I sifted through their beliefs the way I am currently looking through my pages upon pages of sketches of canvas ideas. The atheist way of life just made so much more sense to me.

My parents, however, disagreed. They claimed I was a "disgrace to God," and that they would not raise a Satan-spawn. So here I am. In the back of a car. Looking at all my rings and my artwork, waiting for my agent to return me to the group home so I can one day go to another household that won't want me.

Great.

Oh. I guess I could explain the rings. Well, I liked collecting rings. I have a lot of them, a solid twelve at this point. Whenever I leave a foster home, I leave a ring there. If I liked my stay, I leave a nicer, more liked ring. If I didn't like it, I leave one I didn't care about as much. It started at my first home- with my birth parents. I left them a glittering red one with a silver band. Because, you know, I enjoyed my life there while it lasted, while they weren't slowly neglecting me into believing.  I know, I should have shut my mouth and went along with it before my school's administration realized I wasn't bringing lunches to school anymore and called CPS.  But I didn't.  Anyways, I vowed after that to always leave a ring. And so, I have left one per home.

At my first foster home, one that's rose gold with two bands overlapping in the middle. I never hated them, but they weren't amazing either, so I left them something pretty neutral.

At my second, there was a sparkly emerald ring with a silver band. I loved that family, truly. I cling to a hope that it would have worked out- that I would have been Arlen Mercia- if I hadn't stolen that paintbrush and caused them all trouble. It was a really nice paintbrush, though. 

My third foster home could have gotten a blue ribbon for the most depressing family. There was only one lady, and she was... out of it. She was old. They didn't know she was unqualified. She was a widow, and half-dead herself. I left her a toy ring with a bunny face on the front, just to be nice.

My fourth foster family was downright abusive. Not physically, but they emotionally abused me. Told me what a failure I was daily and clearly hated me. They just wanted the money. I was willing to leave them a fake gold ring with half the fake diamonds broken out of it.

My fifth family... I toy with my favorite ring. I didn't mind them. It was a young woman and her new husband. It was a chaotic house, and I was just too much of a burden, I guess. They tried to be nice, though. I gave them my sterling silver ring with a small opal in it. I hope they liked it. 

And now I'm playing with my best ring. If I ever get adopted, then when I finally move out, this is what I'll leave with that household. When I'm eighteen, that's what I'll do. If I ever get adopted. The ring is real silver, with an actual, glimmering violet amethyst. Nobody will ever take me in for real, and so I guess I'm keeping it. I guess there's no harm. The warm car pulls into the group home's parking lot. I unbuckle my seatbelt. Click. Looks like we're home.