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Bowl, and all.
* * *
“That was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done in my life.” Penny dry heaved into her hand. “They’re both pigs.”
After she had cleaned the Freemans’ bathroom while the rest of us ate dinner and made the most of our free time in the den, I’d slipped her a note as we passed in the hallway asking if she wanted to sneak out. I instructed her to meet me at our usual spot half an hour after lights out.
“Jessica had to do it once,” I said. “She puked.”
Penny pushed up to her elbows and leaned over to look at me. “Really? She never told me that.”
“Is it something you’d want everyone to know?” I shrugged. “She was grounded for two weeks after that.”
“I hate them.”
We all did, but only a few of us were brave enough to say it out loud. Jessica, Penny, and me. The others agreed but they never said the words. Lucas wasn’t afraid to say it, even to their faces. He’d told them as much the day he left.
It was awesome; the look on Derek and Marie’s faces as Lucas walked out of their house and down the path flipping them the bird and shouting ‘so long, fuckers’ at the top of his lungs. I got caught laughing behind their backs. They grounded me for a week and gave me extra chores.
But it was so worth it.
“So do I,” I said.
“Derek gives me the willies.”
“The willies? It’s the twenty-first century, Penny. No one says willies anymore.”
She punched my arm playfully, grinning. “Okay, Blake, the word master, what do people say these days?”
I shifted up to my ass and gripped my ankles with my hands. “Creeps, heebie-jeebies, shivers. I don’t know, but they don’t say willies, that’s for sure.”
“Whatever, Weston. If I want to say willies, then I’ll say willies. Willies, willies, willies,” Penny called out into the darkness, breaking into fits of laughter.
Before I knew it, I was laughing along with her, the events of earlier long forgotten. Once our laughter started to die down, Penny’s expression dropped.
“I miss them,” she whispered.
“Your parents?”
She didn’t talk about them much. I knew there had been some kind of accident that killed them, but that was all.
“Yeah. I miss them so damn much.” Her voice cracked, and a tear slipped down her cheek. I reached out to brush it away, and Penny turned her cheek slightly to rest it in the palm of my hand.
Her smile was so sad it made my stomach twist up all funny inside.
“How have you survived for so long, Blake?”
“What? In foster care?” I snatched my hand back, not feeling comfortable with the way touching her made me feel and shrugged. “Just have, I guess. My first family wasn’t so bad. They had a son my age, Daniel. He was cool. But then Maddie got pregnant again, and they decided they couldn’t look after a new baby and me, so I had to go.”
“What happened then?” Penny looked at me as if I had all the answers.
I picked up a blade of grass and twirled it between my fingers. “The second home wasn’t as nice. The kids were mean, and no one wanted to get to know the new kid on the block. I grew up a lot.”
I had to. I didn’t say the words; I didn’t want to scare Penny.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “Why do people foster if they don’t like kids? It’s obvious that Marie and Derek hate all of us.”
“The money, I guess. People do strange things for a few bucks.”
