It is my first day of foster care. I have a blue duffel bag in my hands, the clothes off my back, and a headache gnawing at my skull.
My social worker's car smells like mildew and doctor's office. Jeremy adjusts the rear view mirror so my eyes fill the little oval. "You didn't pluck your eyebrows."
He downshifts to drag us under a bridge. We jerk over a pothole. A vulgar response is received from the driver behind us. Middle fingers are exchanged. Jeremy is wearing too much cologne. I press the little button and open my window. The stench of car exhaust and sewage splashes into the Honda. Ah, New York. We pass a colossal Macy's store, which signifies we have entered royal territory never contaminated by any ward of the state: Mid-Manhattan. Synonymous with businessmen, tourism, and Broadway. To boldly go where no foster kid has gone before, I guess. My expertise will stay in The Bronx. It's too much work to become acquainted with a whole new network of streets.
Jeremy loves to give me flak about my appearance, maybe to make him feel better about his own. He is a scrawny, giraffe-necked middle aged man trapped physically in prepubescence. He reminds me of my hideous posture. I have a crop of pimples on my forehead and a long bruise on my arm from shoving one of the younger girls in the supply closet and forcing the door shut. Jeremy looks no better. I have known him for five years and he's always had a high-strung air about him. Back at Hope House, I saw how curious and frightened he was the eleven-and-ups, who sometimes raised their shirts to expose their bellies, scratched and nubbed in scar tissue. The girls said Jeremy was left outside in the cold too long as a baby, that he never fully bloomed. Whenever he's around me he palms the bald spot on his head and sweats through the cloth around his armpits. I know Jeremy is a shrimp, but it pleases me to know I frighten him.
A packed tour bus twenty-something vehicles ahead creates a traffic jam. Why did whoever built this city design roads so narrow, so inaccessible? I figure if you're smart or rich enough to have made it to Manhattan in the first place, you're already enveloped in the upper class and deserve to suffer. But this? The Bronx was a breeze compared to this crap. Somehow we get past the terminal. Things become smoother when we hit Uptown, home of botanical gardens and gentrification and tragically, me. For now.
Smack in the middle of the nicer part of Washington Heights, we skid to a stop in front of a building with windows so shiny, you'd think the janitors actually clean instead of nodding off the days sipping beers in the boiler room. Whoever is fostering me must be loaded. There's a glowing neon sign above the Washington Point apartment building, flashing: Pickpocket Goldmine. Washington Point. Even the name is swanky.
Once we're welcomed by the doorman, Jeremy herds me into the elevator. He knows I stick out like a sore thumb. He presses the button for the ninth floor and hands me a copy of the rules and regulations he outlined in the car.
I stuff the paper in my duffel bag. "I heard you the first twenty times."
He squints at the ceiling. "You really should have plucked those eyebrows."
My grim expression eggs him on. He continues: "Remember. They are not your parents, they are not your friends. They are here to provide a safe and welcoming environment."
He speaks like a news reporter delivering a story about a plane crash. It's not his problem, but sympathy = paycheck.
The elevator dings and opens on the ninth floor. I'm about to head down the hallway of death when Jeremy pulls me back against the wall. Jeremy Kalinowski, my gawky, rat-faced social worker. This is the guy who drove me from the police station to Hope House, who interviewed me every couple of weeks, who had files and files of my complaints n' fears n' dreams in his office. This is the guy who believed my parents instead of me. I hate him with every molecule of my being, but if there's anyone in the entire galaxy I'm dying to tell what really happened, it's Jeremy.
"One more thing," He says. "Don't feed them all that crap you told Judge Peterson. These people aren't therapists."
The air in the pine-sol smelling hallway plummets twenty degrees. I curl my hands into fists. I am not going to think about it. It was horrible, but it is over and I am not going to think about it. An insult crawls up my throat but burrows back into my chest when Jeremy slides his palm over his forehead like a lid. Fingers red.
I take my last free will as Jeremy drags me to my jail cell and fish the paper he gave me out of the duffel bag. Code of Conduct, it reads at the top. It is a letter from the committee of the South Bronx Hope House Girl's Shelter. Ten stubby redundant bullet points about how I'm supposed to behave, how my foster parents are supposed to react to my behavior, blah-blah-blah. Jeremy seems to think I have a problem retaining instructions, because he's told me not to crease the paper at least five times. I think he has an issue reading expressions, which is worse. Interpreting body-language is like deciphering hieroglyphs, especially with teenagers. My social worker knows nothing about being social. He doesn't have to tell me to crease the stupid doctrine. He doesn't even have to tell me to read it. The words may say one thing, but the real message is clear as day:
I shouldn't be here. But I am. That's why morons like him are employed.
Jeremy dings the doorbell with his hand locked around my elbow. He doesn't want me to run away. Edit that. He does not his job, his fifty bucks to run away. What is waiting behind that door? A vampire's cave with stalagmites jutting from the ceiling and blood oozing down the walls? Will we be greeted by a horned devil backed by a fearscape of fire and tortured souls? I can only hope my fate will be so harmless. My headache has begun to pulse around my whole body, through my jeans and my leggings beneath those. The pain has chewed through my T-shirt and hoodie and vest. The weight of my clothes drags me to the floor, but I figured the coverage would leave less for Jeremy to search and more for him to pat down if I went minimalist on the duffel bag. Jeremy. He has a talent for making me furious without saying a word. I get the biting impulse to snatch his wallet from his back pocket. Fifty bucks from the state for the car ride and fostering closure would be a good start. With that, I could hitch a ride on the subway to Montauk. I could swim down to Antarctica and make a home for myself with the penguins.
The doorknob twitches and I prepare to run or fight. Mostly fight. I don't know a thing about these people but I am already calculating the down payment for funeral plans. I refer to my countdown to liberation. Only four years, nine months and fifteen days until I'm free from the system for good.
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SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda
Fanfiction"Sometimes I think the universe sets certain people out into the world like gifts meant for others, people whose purpose is to save someone else. That's how I think of families. And if the universe couldn't do me that favor, couldn't put someone on...
