“Would he?”
“Yes. It’s yellow, by the way. Like sunshine.”
“Of course it is.”
She narrows her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. It just fits.”
She tilts her head, studying me. “Was that almost a compliment?”
“No.”
“It sounded like one.”
“It wasn’t.”
She smiles, and I realize I’m losing this battle—whatever battle this is. “Your turn,” she says. “Favorite color.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Everyone has a favorite color.”
“I don’t.”
“That’s sad, Banks.”
I shrug.
She shakes her head, still smiling. “Okay, different question. Where did you grow up?”
The question lands heavier than she intended. I can tell by the way her expression shifts—she wasn’t expecting me to go quiet.
“Here and there,” I finally say.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
She watches me for a moment, and I can see her deciding whether to push. She doesn’t. Instead, she says, “I grew up in Connecticut. Small town. My parents still live there. They’ve been married for thirty-two years, and they still hold hands at the grocery store. It’s disgusting.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It is. It’s annoyingly nice.” She takes another bite of chicken. “Any siblings?”
“No.”
“Justyou?”
“Just me.”
Again, she doesn’t push. But I can see the questions behind her eyes, the curiosity she’s holding back. She’s good at reading people, good at knowing when to stop.
I don’t want to tell her about the foster homes—the different families, the group homes when those didn’t work, each with a new set of rules to learn, a new house to memorize, a new school where I was always the new kid.
I don’t want to tell her about sleeping in a basement that flooded every time it rained, or the group home where I learned to sleep with one eye open, or the caseworker who told me I was “difficult to place,” as if I were a piece of furniture with a scratch no one wanted to look at.
I don’t want to watch her pretty face fall. I don’t want to see pity reflected back at me in those blue eyes. Pity is the worst. It means people look at you differently, treat you like you’re broken, handle you with kid gloves as if you might shatter.
