Rattled, стр. 4
“Let me think…” She sighs. “My mom was raised in an extremely uptight and religious household. No sinning allowed and punished to the fullest extent. At least that’s what she told me, and I believe her.”
No crosses, I write on my pad.
“She got pregnant when she was sixteen, and her parents kicked her out. She made her way to New York, thinking she’d get a job and a place to live. She ended up with the wrong people.”
This didn’t surprise me. Most runaways don’t end up in good places.
“During a drug deal, she was stabbed and died.”
I glance up at her. “How old were you?”
“Four.” She shrugs. “Child services contacted my grandparents, but they wouldn’t take me in. I was created in sin, and might as well have been the spawn of Satan.”
I snort and shake my head. “Nice Christians.”
“Religious,” she corrects. “Not exactly Christian.”
“Foster care?” It’s a guess, but I can’t imagine where else she would have ended up.
A soft smile comes to her face. “Yeah. I was with a great family for five years. The Wilsons.”
I straighten and look at her. “Wow.” That’s a long time to be with one family when you’re in the system.
“They were great. They’re the ones who taught me how to play the piano.”
“Why didn’t they adopt you?” I draw a piano. I don’t know if it’s going to end up in the tat. I’m still not sure what’s going to be there, but she has a story to tell. One I should have asked her to tell me when we first met.
“They couldn’t afford to. Adoption is expensive. They were only able to keep me and the others for so long because the state paid them, but they weren’t in it for the money. They really did love us and wanted to keep us. But my foster father got a job out-of-state. They couldn’t take me from New York, and they couldn’t decline a good-paying job, so I was sent to another home.”
A photograph has slipped out of the envelope, and I pick it up. It’s Kelsey when she was young—younger than she was when she came to Baxter—with a guy a few years older. “Who is this?”
“Brandon.” A sad smile comes to her lips. “After being in more foster homes than I could count after the Wilsons moved, Brandon and I ended up in the same place. He got there a week or so before me.”
“Brandon” is the name of the father on the birth certificate, so I know there is a lot more to that story.
“I was thirteen and he was fifteen, and too old for this couple.”
Again, I shake my head. I’d been in the system. A lot of families wanted the cute little ones, not the teens, even though we needed a mom and dad just as badly as the two-year-olds.
“They liked them young.” She clears her throat. “As in a sick way.”
My stomach churns. I wish I could pretend that abuse in the system doesn’t happen, but it does. Still, there are a hell of a lot more great families out there, like the Wilsons, willing to take kids in and love them like they are their own. It’s only the bad ones that everyone hears about and taints the system.
“I couldn’t stand to be there, and I tried to talk to my social worker, but she said her hands were tied. So after being there for a couple of months, with no end in sight, I decided to run away. The night I snuck out, I ran into Brandon at the corner. He was running away too. We decided to stick together because it was safer than being alone.”
Well, he didn’t stick with her because when she showed up at Baxter, she was pregnant and he wasn’t anywhere around. “What happened to him?”
Tears fill her eyes. “He’s dead.”
I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’ve never really told anyone what had happened to me, except Mrs. Robak and a handful of therapists. Six years ago if someone would’ve told me that the first non-psychologist or professional I would choose to open up to would be Alexander Dosek, I would have laughed in their face. Yet here I was, spilling my guts because he asked.
I don’t know what it has to do with getting my baby’s foot tattooed on my body, but he seems genuinely interested.
“For two years we managed well enough. He was tall and looked older than his age, and he told people I was his younger sister so that nobody would mess with me.” What I don’t tell Alex is that by the time I was fifteen and Alex was seventeen, there was nothing brotherly or sisterly about our relationship. “We fell in love, and Brandon vowed we’d be together.”
We were so young then, but we didn’t feel like it. Much of our innocence had been stripped from us when we were children, though I was still a virgin until Brandon. A lot of kids in the system or on the streets aren’t so lucky.
I wait for Alex to make a derogatory comment about my professions of love at fifteen, but he says nothing and just keeps sketching. I wish I could see what it is, but he’s holding the sketch pad at an angle away from me.
“After a few years of sleeping in shelters, or anywhere we could find, Brandon got a job in a convenience store working third shift, and I worked as a waitress in an all-night diner. Neither place asked questions and we scraped by enough to rent a room by the week. At least we weren’t sleeping on the streets and could shower on a regular basis.”
I smile to myself.