I'm Not Safe

Chapter one

"Autumn Palmer," She whispered to herself, thinking of how wonderful it would be if this family turned out to be forever. Her birth name is Autumn Turner, and she's been in the foster system for as long as her almost fifteen-year-old brain could remember. The family she was on her way to see were the Palmers. She might finally be adopted.

This was not the first time she had nearly been adopted. She had even lost count of how many times her prospective parents backed out. Usually people backed out because they ended up getting pregnant, or they rethought their decision of adopting an older child, or there was suddenly a newborn available. The first and last reasons always broke Autumn's heart because it made her feel like a second choice, even though this happens to everyone at some point in the foster system. Some adoptive parents will also back out of domestic adoption and go the international route if no newborns are available, effectively spending thousands more in adoptive fees for someone with a cleaner slate. 

Even people who fostered Autumn really had no interest in her. It's not that she was a bad kid, not at all. Autumn just didn't have a sad backstory. She was dropped off at the fire station at two and a half years old, and that's all anyone knew. More often than not, adoptive parents chose kids with sad backstories more often because they thought "they really need love", as if all kids didn't deserve love. All of the other caseworkers she had thought she would just age out of the system at one point, though they never told her this. It's well known that once you make it to sixteen in the system, you will most likely age out.

The success rate of kids who age out of the system is astonishingly low. Twenty percent become instantly homeless, half don't have a meaningful job by twenty-four years old, and there's less than a three percent chance you'll ever earn a degree of any kind. She had read the statistics over and over, praying she could fight the odds. With every passing year and each of the adoption back outs, she couldn't help feeling that she would never be able to fight the inevitable. 

Every time something went against her, Autumn pictured herself at twenty-years-old, sitting on the streets of Dover with a cup in front of her for change. In this image, Autumn's greasy hair blew in the cold wind of winter. Her dirty hands around her mouth and nose for warmth. She can't see her body in this image, but she knows she's only skin and bones, at the mercy of passing strangers for her next meal. She shudders at the image every time and then quietly cries herself to sleep. 

The car ride was painfully slow, especially near rush hour on a Thursday. It's always painfully slow. The anticipation made the ride feel like a million years long. Apparently her (hopefully) new family lived in Chesterfield, while Missy and Autumn were coming from Dover. Chesterfield was a far cry from Dover, with it's manicured lawns, white picket fences, and flower gardens. It made Dover look like the inner city. Foster parents come from all walks of life, but usually they are families that need an extra income, and are hard pressed to find the kind of home you would see in Chesterfield. 

As if Autumn needed another thing to worry about. She lived her whole life in Dover, which is a pretty big city. She had never even been outside of Dover, and now she was moving a whole two hours away. Apprehensive didn't begin to describe how Autumn felt. At least she was still in New Hampshire. Seeing pictures of such a beautiful place left her hopeful, though she rarely allowed hope to creep in. 

"These people have a cat," Missy the caseworker said, breaking her derailing train of thought.

Autumn's face lit up with excitement, "oh I love kitties. What if it's a black one with socks? Or a white fluffy one? How old do you think it is? Do you think it has a bell on it's collar?"

"We'll just have to wait and see," Missy said. Standard procedure called for caseworkers to visit the homes of prospective parents, so of course Missy knew what kind of cat the Palmers had. She wished she could be there when Autumn finally met it. It was all she ever wanted. Autumn would even beg all foster homes who didn't have a cat to get one.