Resilience | ✔

Chapter One

Trees blurred past in varying shades of green. Guardrails danced between them and the car, racing along and then dropping off with a splash of yellow, picking back up a few hundred feet later. A light rain tapped on the roof and streaked the windows. The windshield wipers swished back and forth in front of them.

"I'm sorry they didn't work out," Jackson said, fingers tapping on the wheel. "I really thought they would be the right fit for you."

That was what he'd said last time. Marley made a noncommittal noise, adjusting her chin on her hand.

Jackson glanced over. "We'll find you the right family. I promise."

"Before or after I become a legal adult?" she muttered.

"We will," Jackson insisted.

Marley nodded. "I know. Optimism." She shifted, slumping back in her seat and propping her feet up on the dashboard. Jackson glanced at her boots disapprovingly but didn't say anything.

So. Another tried and failed foster family. She'd thought they would work out too, which made the rejection all the worse. To think she'd been excited—to think she'd thought things were going well. Only shows how naïve you are, she growled to herself.

When Joslyn and Phil sat her down, she'd thought they'd be telling her about something happy—another foster child, a family trip to DisneyWorld. They'd been a family for four months. The first month was rocky, but they always were, and it'd smoothed out. They'd been patient, she'd tried her hardest. She liked them. She'd even let herself dream of a future with them. Go to college in Boston, Harvard or MIT maybe, stay close to home but not too close, come back for holidays. She'd imagined getting a dog, celebrating SAT scores and then college acceptance letters. She'd imagined maybe having a couple mini Marleys running around the house, away from their grandfather pretending to be an evil bear while she and Joslyn chatted in the kitchen about the nosy neighbors and Marley's spouse grilled steaks with his brother. She'd even started to think of their house as home.

But they felt differently.

"We're so sorry, Marley."

"It's just not working out."

"We tried to be patient—"

"—see if things leveled out—"

"—but we're just not clicking."

"We're so sorry."

Curse her for dreaming. When would she learn that dreams never came true?

She put her hand on her backpack. The envelope in the top crinkled. Three years—three years until she opened it. She took it out every night and gazed at the words, the blue ink written carefully, letters short and round. Do not open until Marley is eighteen. The only physical piece of her mother she had left. She wished she'd known back then how much she was going to want something to remember her mother by. She would have taken a stuffed animal or something. But she'd been seven and nobody had told her how much she'd miss her mother, nobody had made sure she'd gotten a keepsake. So all she had were a few sparse memories and this envelope with her writing.

Three years, and her problems would be solved.

Why else would her mother give her this envelope? Why else would she write that on it? It had to be something important. Something special. A bank account number for an account that had hundreds of thousands of dollars in it. A deed to half the United States—something. Something important. Special.

Because why else would she have done it?

Marley tipped her head back, staring through the sunroof. Bounce back, she'd bounce back. She always did—always pretended to. She'd be fine in a week, back to snarking with Beck and Steve, surfing the foster database with Jackson to find a family.

She'd be fine.

(She'd been happy—)

They just didn't want a child with baggage. That had been the gist of their conversation. We don't want to deal with your issues.

They shouldn't have bothered, then. No human being was a blank slate at 15. If they'd wanted someone without issues they should have gotten a goddamn dog.

She'd been so hopeful.

Was there something wrong with her—

Stop, she thought instinctively—but why should she? She'd just been removed from her 25th foster home in 8 years. Nobody normal was that unlucky. There had to be something wrong with her. Why did no one care? Was she cold? Was she fucked up in a way she couldn't see? She tried not to radiate hostility, tried to be friendly, tried to keep her brain toned down after learning the hard way that smarts were intimidating—but nothing ever worked.

"How's the Russian coming?" Jackson asked.

He was one of only three people who weren't intimidated by her thirst for knowledge. Knack for learning. He thought it was amazing; Beck didn't give a shit; Steve encouraged it whenever possible. Her three favorite people. "It's going good. I think it'd be easier to learn from a native speaker, but it's going well." They probably only barely put up with her.

Jackson nodded. "How do you say, 'I hate pineapple on pizza'?"

"Excuse you, pineapple on pizza is a gift," Marley said. "Uh, YA nenavizhu ananas . . . na pitstise, I think."

Jackson smiled. "That was really good! What about 'I hate Connecticut traffic'?"

And for the next few hours, he quizzed her on Russian, coming up with more and more ridiculous things for her to say. A welcome escape from her self-destructive thoughts.