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“Lucas is right, Amy. It’s obvious Penny is upset, so let’s give her some space,” Jessica, the oldest girl, said.
Penny, so that was her name.
“Fine, I have homework anyway. Catch you losers later.” Amy stormed out of the room.
Lucas and Jessica shared a look, and he groaned, “She’s getting harder to manage. Can’t you do something?”
“Me? She’s not my responsibility, Lucas.” Jessica glared at him.
“No, but she’s making too many waves. Derek and Marie will take this room away. They did it before, and they’ll do it again. And you know what that means. It means lockdown.”
Lockdown. A word none of us wanted to hear.
I glanced around at my foster siblings. Gabe sat next to Lucas looking as comfortable as I was. He was the quietest of us. Lucas said he had the smarts and would go places if only he applied himself more in school. Mia was sitting on the stained beanbag in the corner of the room, gnawing her fingernails as she watched the exchange between Lucas and Jessica. She reminded me of a mouse, small and fragile with a pointed nose. She mostly kept to herself, her head usually buried in a book. Peter hadn’t been allowed to come down since he was late doing his chores yesterday. He didn’t care about the rules so much, but Jessica and Lucas usually managed to keep him in check.
And Penny was silent, looking down at her hands clasped in her lap.
If I were older, like Lucas, I would have stuck up for her or asked her if she was okay. She was new to the system; it was written all over her sad, desperate expression.
Arriving at the Freeman group home was scary enough when you had been in the system for a while but coming here as your first foster home—I couldn’t imagine how she felt or what was going through her head.
“Fine, I’ll go talk to her.” Jessica glanced over at Penny and gave her a sad smile. “It’ll get easier, I promise. If you need to talk, I’m here. So is Mia, right?”
Mia nodded like Jessica was her mom, but I guess, in some ways, she was. As the eldest, she and Lucas watched out for all of us and kept the peace as much as they could.
Penny lifted her head and managed to nod back before they left.
“Okay.” Lucas smoothed his hands down his jeans and stood. “I’m turning in. Don’t stay in here past eight. They don’t like it.”
Gabe followed him but paused at the door. “Coming, Blake?”
I rose and murmured that I was coming. Penny had dropped her head again, but it didn’t feel right just to leave her all alone. Not on her first night.
“Actually, I’ll be up in a bit.”
He shrugged and went after Lucas. There wasn’t a door hanging from the frame in the room, but once I heard them on the stairs, I knew we were alone.
My heart thumped in my chest, and I gulped back my nerves. I didn’t understand why I was being such a pussy. She wasn’t going to bite; she couldn’t even look me in the eye, for Pete’s sake.
“Hi, I’m Blake. Penny, right?” I asked, approaching her chair.
She slowly lifted her head and sniffled. “Yeah. Hi.”
“Sorry about earlier with Amy. She has a giant stick up her ass.”
A small smile spread over Penny’s face, and I stood a little taller, puffing my chest out.
I’d made her smile.
Me.
No one else had managed to make her smile.
“That’s okay.”
“No, no, it isn’t. She’s always like that. It’s because no one likes her.” I sat on the arm of the couch closest to Penny.
“Okay, it’s not okay. Got it.” Her smile was gone, but she didn’t look so sad anymore.
