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At the McDonald’s across the street from the cemetery, I wait in a corner booth. Courtney slips me a container of vanilla ice cream before sitting across from me with her own. She opens her purse and produces a bottle of multicolored sprinkles. She shakes some on hers and pours a whole shitload on mine.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Buying you ice cream. ” Courtney drops the bottle into her purse and digs into her soft serve. “Don’t tell me that at eight you didn’t wish someone would have bought you ice cream with sprinkles. ”
Courtney can do this now. Extract a memory buried within me with scary ease. There are times I think she’s a mind reader, then I remember she’s not. She was a foster kid, raised by the system, just like me. A pang in my chest makes me think of being eight and watching families buy ice cream. Courtney smiles when I take a bite.
“Do you feel like you ratted by becoming a social worker?” I ask.
She’s silent as her forehead furrows. “I choose to think about how I can help other kids in ways no one helped me. ”
Fair enough.
“You and your mom talked a lot today. ” Courtney observed us from her dry car.
“Met my dad. ” So to speak.
“Sort of figured. How are things going with her?”
I shovel the ice cream in my mouth so I don’t have to answer. My eyes narrow at the way the sweet sprinkles roll on my tongue. Courtney giggles. “By the way, gummy worms on ice cream are way overrated. ”
“Noted. ” I mix the ice cream. “I can’t give her what she wants. ”
“You don’t have to,” she says. “I never said a relationship with her is healthy, just that you should talk to her. From experience, you eventually would have had an ache to see your mom. I thought it would be better to deal with her while you’ve got me to buy you ice cream afterward. ”
“You should have told me when we first met you were system-produced. ”
She squishes her lips together. “I was once pissed-off-seventeen. You weren’t ready to listen. ”
True.
“Congrats, by the way. Heard you aced the exam. ”
“Thanks. ” I passed my ASE. . . again. My internship and job secured. I nudge the ice cream away and relax back in my seat. Lately, I feel like I’ve been drifting. I’m back in foster care at Shirley and Dale’s. Noah lives in the dorms. We still talk, but not nearly as often. There are times I feel. . . alone.
“I know people who have families,” I say. “They graduate from high school and they get a job or go to college and if they fuck it all up they go back home. ” I pause, tapping my finger on the table. “What do I do if. . . ” I fuck it all up. I clear my throat and my eyebrows move closer together. “Where do I go?”
Courtney shoves her ice cream away, too. “Foster care sucks, but so does aging out. It’s weird. You spend the entire first part of your life fighting to get out and then one day. . . you are out. Then you want to scream at the closed door that you’re still a kid, but everyone is pretty damned insistent you’re an adult. I cried a lot when I first aged out. ”
My lips quirk. “I don’t think I’ll be crying. ”
Courtney snorts. “Or whatever boys do. ”
I swallow and find the courage to say the words. “I don’t want to be homeless. ”
“You won’t be. ” She waggles her eyebrows and pulls a folder out of her bag. “I have a plan. You don’t turn eighteen until this summer, so we have a couple more months before you age out. I can teach you how to budget and help you find a place to live and all sorts of fun adult things. And here’s the cool part. I’ll still be around when you turn eighteen. I may not be mandatory, but I don’t disappear. ”
The alarm on my phone rings, and Courtney smiles, knowing why I’m ready to bolt. “We’ll start this next week. ”
I stand. “Thanks. For everything. ”
“No problem. And next week we’re getting hot fudge. ”
Chapter 77
Rachel
I DREAM A LOT. FOR the past three months, I’ve been sleeping more than I’m awake. Between surgeries, hospital stays, pain meds and rehab, I always seem tired.
