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1
Harper
My roommate,Sasha, cheers as my best friend, James, walks toward the table with a cake covered in candles. I smile and warmth spreads through me. Five years ago, I never thought I’d be this girl. Sitting in my own apartment with two best friends seemed like a dream.
After my mom died, I’d spent two years bouncing around from foster home to foster home. Finally, James’s parents took me in. Turns out, there are good people out there. They treated me as their own for my last year of mandated foster care. Even now, three years later, they insist that I call themMomandDad.
Aside from the family I’d inherited, the best thing that came out of finding them was James. He was my foster brother for a year, but we’d bonded immediately and had been best friends ever since.
“Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you…” my friends sing as James sets the flaming cake down in front of me.
“Happy Birthday, dear Harper….”
I grin as I take in the startling amount of fire coming from the twenty-one candles on the cake.
They cheer as they finish the song and James wraps his arms around me. “Now hurry and blow it out before we set off the smoke detectors.”
“Ha ha,” I say. “Very funny.”
“Make a wish, Harper!” Sasha calls.
“Alright.” I close my eyes and think about the one thing I want more than anything in the world. A place to belong.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends. I love James and his parents. But my whole life I’ve felt like I don’t quite fit in like I should. It’s something that’s tugged on me for as long as I can remember. Even before I was the sad girl whose mom committed suicide. I’ve just never felt fully comfortable in my own skin. More than anything, I wanted to feelnormal.
Sometimes I worried there was something wrong with me. Like whatever it was that got so bad in my mom’s head that she had to end it all, was inside me too.
Not that my mom was a saint by any means, but she had been my mom. And I was honestly terrified I’d go down the same path as her. Addiction, strings of boyfriends… she always seemed like she was searching for something.
I don’t want to turn out like her. I want to find my place before I go down a similar path.
I hold the thought in my mind.Let me be normal. Let me feel content. Let me belong.I open my eyes and blow out the candles.
All but one goes out and James quickly blows it out. “Five second rule.”
“That’s for when you drop food, not for birthday candles,” I say.
He shrugs. “It makes more sense to be for birthday candles. We all know it doesn’t work for food.”
“Sounds like a thing to me,” Sasha says.
“I’ll take it,” I say. “Now, who wants cake?”
Sasha helps me cut the cake and sets the slices on plates. Before I met James, I’d had no friends. I was the weird girl. When I moved in with his family, he took me under his wing and nobody at his high school questioned it.
With his parent’s help, I’d even gained admission and a full scholarship to the local university.
In a million years, I never thought this would be my life. It still felt like it was going to be torn away from me at any minute.
Sasha hands me a pink paper plate with a slice of birthday cake. It’s a chocolate cake covered in thick white frosting and dusted in rainbow sprinkles. It smells like sugar and happiness. I’m pretty sure Caroline, James’s mom made the cake for me.
I take a bite and it’s just as delicious as it looks. “Tell your mom thanks.”
James takes a bite of his own cake. “I will.” He sets his plate down. “Hey, speaking of my mom.”
He pulls an envelope out of his pocket. He’d rolled it to fit and it’s so curved it won’t flatten.
I accept it from him and open it. Inside is a sweet card addressed toOur Daughterthat makes my eyes sting with tears. They also included more cash than I typically make in a month at my work study job. “That’s too much.”
