“Okay! I’m ready.” She swipes the hair out of her face, smiling as she looks between the two of us. “See ya later, Lee!” She waves.
Chase hops up, and just like that they both disappear down the street.
Later that night, I’m lying in bed and just about to fall asleep when I hear my window slide open. I had no idea it wasn’t locked, and I’m so terrified someone is breaking into our house that I can’t move. I don’t usually pray when Mama makes me go to church on Sundays, but now I squeeze my eyes tight and pray to God Almighty that whoever is in my room decides to leave.
“Goldi.”
I feel the bed dip next to me, and the comforter pulls back before a warm body slides down next to mine.
“Goldi, you awake?” It’s a whisper but I hear it loud and clear. My whole body relaxes and I turn around, looking at Chase, in shock. I don’t say anything. My heart is still recovering from thinking we were being robbed, so I just continue to stare at him.
He squeezes his eyes shut. “I couldn’t sleep and I needed someone to talk to. Your offer still good?”
“Yeah, of course,” I whisper. I don’t say anything else. I’m super nervous he’s here in the first place. Daddy would kill me for having a boy in my room, but there’s no way in heck I’m telling him to leave.
We lay in silence for a long time, both of us staring at the glow ‘n stick stars covering my ceiling.
“Do you ever look up at the stars and feel small, Goldi?”
“What, the ones on my ceilin’?”
“No, the real ones, high in the sky.”
I chew my lip as I think about what he’s asking. “I’ve never really thought about it. But sometimes, I like to stare at the mountains, and think about how small I am next to ‘em. Is that what you mean?”
“Yeah, kinda. I just… sometimes I look at the stars and think about how none of this shit really matters, you know?”
I don’t know, so I stay quiet.
“I think maybe that’s why my mom could leave me so easily,” he continues.
“Because you’re smaller than the stars?”
“Because to her, I didn’t really matter.”
I reach my hand across the bed to grab his. I don’t say anything right away. I just try to imagine what it would be like to not have a mama who loves you like it’s the most important thing she’ll ever do. I decide right then that I hate her, wherever she is, for making him feel anything less than what he deserves to be.
“You matter to me,” I whisper.
I hear him swallow, the sound thick. “You matter to me, too. Promise you’ll never leave?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
I squeeze his hand tight and he intertwines our fingers.
When I wake up in the morning, he’s gone, but that night I make sure to leave my window unlocked, just in case.
2
Chase
Thirteen Years Old
I fucking hate small towns. Over the past five years, I’ve been bounced from one pathetic small town to the next, and at the end of the day, they’re all the same. Boring streets and boring people with pity in their eyes and force behind their fists. Life with my mom wasn’t sunshine and roses, but it sure beats having to put up with the scumbags that pretend to care about kids in the system.
If I only had myself to worry about, I would have made the jump to a street kid before the first foster home—but it’s not just me. I have a little sister to protect, and the thought of leaving her to the wolves makes me sick to my stomach. So, I’ve taken the insults and the beatings for both of us with a smile on my face, knowing I’m protecting her the best way I know how.
The last piece of shit “foster parent” begged our caseworker to take us back after I caught him trying to sneak into Lily’s room. I guess he didn’t take too kindly to a thirteen-year-old holding a knife to his dick. He liked it even less when I threatened to cut it off and shove it down his throat if he so much as looked at her again. I asked Lily if he ever did anything, but she swears up and down nothing happened. I take her at face value because the alternative means I have to kill a motherfucker, and I’m too pretty for jail.
So, here we are with Sam and Anna. They’re a couple who just moved us from Nashville to Sugarlake, Tennessee. Population three-thousand. Well three-thousand plus four, I guess. They’re different than other foster parents we’ve had. Nice even, but I still don’t want them. Like any kid, I just want my mom. But she packed up our life in Chicago, trekked us seven hours down to Nashville, and got high, forgetting us at a gas station. I’m angry at her. So, so angry. But, no matter how pissed off I am, it doesn’t stop the dreams at night of her coming back. I hate those dreams because when I wake up I feel that hole she put inside me fester and rip open all over again.
We’re driving through the one main road in this town, and I’m looking out the window to see if there’s anything different about this place than the other ones. The main street is actually called Main Street. I scoff at the predictability.
“Tennessee is so pretty. I bet it’s the prettiest state in the whole universe,” Lily exclaims.
I smirk at her. “That’s just because you don’t remember living anywhere else.”
“Whatever, doesn’t matter. I’m sure it wasn’t like this.” She points toward the mountain range through the window.
She’s not wrong. It is a beautiful state. But how beautiful can something be if it’s filled
