The Unpredictability of You and Me

one - first meeting

"Jade?"

I snap out of my thoughts and look up. "What?"

I'm met by stares from three pairs of eyes all around the table. "I asked what your plans are for this weekend," my friend, Tyler asks with an amused grin.

"Sorry. I've been out of it all day. I barely slept." Rubbing my eyes, I lift my head up from the table and stretch my arms up. "We have another foster kid coming in tonight, so I'll probably be stuck watching him all weekend. He's staying for a while apparently."

"Didn't a baby just leave?" my best friend, Lesly, asks, referring to the 2-year-old Ana who had been staying with us for the last few weeks.

I sigh. "Yeah. Her new adoptive parents picked her up last night, and my mom was upset about it all night. You know how they are."

They all nod. The great Nikki and Alex Sanchez. My wonderful parents. A little too wonderful, considering they thought they could save the world one foster child at a time.

Almost every day since I was 6, there's been another kid in the house. Sometimes, they're only there for a few days. Other times, they're there for a few months. Every time, my mom gets super emotional whenever they left.

"Are you okay?" Liam, my other friend, asks me.

I look down when I see he was staring at at my nails. I was picking them again. I drop my hands. "Yeah, sorry. It's a habit."

"Does this dress make me look fat?" Lesly mumbles to herself, staring at her reflection in the window of the small ice cream shop we're sitting outside of.

"You think everything makes you look fat," Liam laughs, tugging her long, brown hair affectionately.

She scrunches up her nose and takes a sip of her iced tea. "Shut up."

I take a bite of my chocolate chunk ice cream. Almost every Friday since we were old enough to walk around the city on our own, my best friends and I had been coming to this hole in the wall cafe called Levy's, a few blocks away from our school and homes in Manhattan, New York. During Fall and Winter, we'd order coffees and hot chocolate and sit inside by the fire. During Spring and Summer, we'd sit outside eating ice cream and drinking lemonade.

Right now, it's an unseasonably warm, late October day, so we're all sitting outside soaking up the last bit of sun before the brutal New York winter. Homecoming had just passed, and Tyler and Liam are still basking in the success and popularity of being on the winning Ardendale Prep football team. We have a few weeks of bliss before midterms kicked in. Life's good.

Tyler reaches over and sticks a spoon into my ice cream right when my phone rings. Before I can pull it away, Liam grabs it from across the table and takes his own spoonful. I scowl at both of them before answering my phone.

"Hey, Mom. What's up?"

"Where are you?" Mom's voice asks on the other end.

"At Levy's. Why?"

"The new kids are going to get here at six o' clock. We want you to be home before then."

I raise my eyebrows. "Why?" We've had a million foster kids before, and they never cared if I was there when they arrived. My parents were pretty chill about everything, as long as I helped them take care of the kids occasionally. Then, I realized what she said. "Wait. Kids? As in more than one?"