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Shifting again, I jab at my pillow in irritation.
“What did that pillow do to you?”
I stretch up to see Lily in the door of her bedroom. “I’m sorry. Am I keeping you awake?” Immediately, I feel guilty. We’re having surgery tomorrow. We need to sleep.
She shakes her head, turning on the light next to the couch. “No. Can’t turn my brain off. You?”
I scoot to sit. “Same.” I pat the couch next to me, and she joins me.
“You worrying about the procedure?” she asks. “Because there’s still time to call it off.”
“Absolutely not.” I squeeze her hand. “That’s not what’s on my mind.”
“Ah.” She nods knowingly. “Duke, then.” I’d filled Lily in on my breakup with Duke. She had listened, but if she had any suggestions, she kept them to herself.
“Yeah.”
We sit in silence for long moments, lost in thought. Finally, Lily encircles my arm with hers. “You know, June, you’ve always been a good girl.”
This is a strange change of subject, but I don’t really want to talk about Duke. So I pat her hand, smiling. “Thanks, Mama.”
“No, I mean it. I’ve fostered a lot of children over the years, but you were always the easiest.” She shakes her head. “Straight As in school. Sunshiny personality. Always helpful, with the other kids and with the neighborhood.”
I lay my head on her shoulder. “I didn’t want to cause you any problems.”
“I know, hon.” She squeezes my head in a sideways hug. “And it helped me, so I didn’t question you. But even the best kids have some sort of rebellion. Something. Not you, though.”
She falls silent. In the quiet, I shift, uncomfortable. “That’s not a bad thing, right?”
“Of course not. But I hated to see you so afraid.”
I sit up straight. “Afraid?”
“Since the moment you arrived, you were afraid I’d kick you out.”
I shake my head. “No, no. It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that.” She pats my arm again.
Her words settle in my stomach.Afraid. I never really thought it was fear. I just knew if I was easy to live with, easy to be around, that maybe I wouldn’t be left behind again. People like easy people. So I did my best to be likable.
“I love you, Junie. And I would have loved you even if you rebelled sometimes. I love you because you are supremely lovable. I just thought you should know.” Lily gives me a hug, and then she stands. “We need to get some sleep.”
I nod, unable to speak, and I squeeze her fingers as she heads back to her room. Leaning up, I turn off the light on the end table, and I curl back into the blankets.
Afraid. The word echoes in my ears.
When my mother turned me over, there had been no conversation. The guidance counselor at school had found out I was basically living alone. The police and social services got involved, and everything got messy. When they came to remove me from the “unfit situation,” my mother didn’t argue with them. All she said to me was, “Go pack your things.” I haven’t spoken to her since then.
It didn’t feel like fear that made me decide to be the perfect foster kid—it felt like survival.
But I had been living like that ever since, always worrying that at any moment everything could be taken from me again. I kept my possessions small, so I could always be ready to move them somewhere else, even as I tried to make myself indispensable to those around me.
Living with Duke and Tabby had been different. Their house felt like a home, like a place I was part of. The article and how Duke reacted, it had seemed to prove how fragile that facade was.
I must have closed my eyes at some point, because the next thing I know, my phone alarm sounds. My limbs feel like spaghetti, but I haul myself up, pulling the sheets off Lily’s couch. Lily’s already awake and getting dressed, so I head into the bathroom to brush my teeth and do the same.
We get to the hospital early, and I give Lily a long squeeze before we both head back to get prepped. The morning is a flurry of needles, fluids, questions, and breezy hospital gowns. Finally, the nurses wheel me into an operating theater and ask me to count backward from ten.
