by G. Benson
He forced his eyes open, and the look in them cracked her down the middle.
“Mattie, listen to me carefully. Take a breath in, slowly.”
He did as she said, and that was all she had time to let him do. Knocks pounded at the door, echoing alongside the flurry in her chest, and Mattie’s breathing sped up again.
“I need you to go to your room.”
When he stood, she pushed him on shaky legs in the right direction.
Fists pounded at the door again, and Carmen waited until she heard the snick of her bedroom door. Of course he went to her room and not his own. She pulled open the front door.
The lights were even brighter outside, and Carmen closed her eyes for a moment, squinting when she finally opened them again. A man and a woman stood in front of her, both with grim expressions that did nothing to ease the tightness in Carmen’s chest. The constantly flashing colors coming from their car bounced off their metal badges and reminded her of the party she’d just left.
“Carmen García?”
She nodded, gripping the door. She waited, like last time, to be told her mother had been arrested again. Once for drugs. Another for leaving minors alone, which constituted neglect. What had happened now? Carmen had made sure no one could think neglect this time around, hadn’t she?
“We’re really very sorry to tell you this, but there’s been an accident.”
The rest of their words filtered out, were nothing. Their mouths moved, and Carmen watched them silently, the indistinct sound buzzing in her ears, getting louder and louder.
Her mother was dead, and that meant foster care would be permanent this time.
Chapter 4
On Monday morning, Ollie was finally hangover free. Sunday had been spent with her friends and Sean by the pool, avoiding their questions of where she had been for hours the night before. Instead, she’d lain in the sun and run her tongue over her lips, as though it could evoke the same sensation Carmen had caused the night before.
It couldn’t.
She walked the school corridors with the memory of lips and tongues and teeth, of bruising kisses and fingers that caressed her skin languidly, delighting in every tremor and ripple. Ollie hadn’t known it could feel like that. She hadn’t known girls could feel like that, or even if they were supposed to, despite her feelings that she liked both boys and girls.
Her gaze swept the classrooms, the cafeteria, the gym. She walked with intent, in the hope she would bump into Carmen. Ollie would lean into her, look up at her from under her lashes and hope, just hope, that she wasn’t freaked out by the other night, but rather that she was as utterly delighted as Ollie.
If Carmen regretted it, Ollie would swallow all of this down and smile. And then spend the next year convincing Carmen to do that again and again, if she had to. Never mind the boyfriend Ollie had.
On Wednesday, Ollie still hadn’t found her.
Over lukewarm food and souring milk, she tried to ask casually, “Have you guys seen Carmen?”
“The chick from the party?”
“Yeah.”
Sara laughed. “That girl was fun—would never have known. I don’t remember her speaking much when she was in our year.” She shrugged. “Haven’t seen her, though. Ask her to the next party, yeah?”
No one else had seen her either, and Ollie didn’t ask again.
By Friday, Carmen still hadn’t appeared, and Ollie was beginning to think she’d imagined the entire thing.
Floating through the weekend was easy, something comfortable. The past week of school faded into the recesses of Ollie’s mind, and she tried to forget the touch of Carmen’s fingertips against her cheeks and the bite of her teeth on her lips. She had moments of contented boredom, of stretching out in the backyard, layered in clothes, as they’d finally had to accept the warm weather was leaving. Her friends were laughing around her. In the early afternoon, the sun burst out, and she made the most of it, stripping to her bikini.
When Sean rubbed sunscreen on her back, his fingers smoothing over muscles, Ollie tried not to remember other hands on that spot the weekend before. Instead, she smiled up at him, the sun glinting behind his head and casting him in shadow. She imagined him flattening her pieces back together, running her parts over each other until she fit back together seamlessly. But for reasons she couldn’t name, that thought left her squirming to get away.
She ended up next to Sara, the ease of her friendship sometimes more comfortable than the expectations Sean carried in his eyes.
“I have news.” Sara was sprawled on her back, blinking up at the sky.
“Is it what I think?” The smile was already pulling up Ollie’s lips, for the moment letting her take her mind off the mystery that was Carmen García.
“Maybe.” Sara was grinning so hard her cheeks had to hurt.
“There are two options.”
“Yup.”
“The official adoption papers have gone through…” Ollie paused hopefully, but Sara’s face stayed perfectly neutral. “Or your parents think you’ve finally won and you can get your name legally changed?”
“What if I told you both?”
Now Ollie was grinning. “No way.”
“Way.”
The foster parents Sara had been placed with when she was eleven had been fighting to adopt her the last six and a half years, and fighting to get her name legally changed from her deadname for just as long. When Ollie had first met her, Sara was quiet, yet explosively angry at unexpected times. There were moments at school Ollie didn’t quite understand, in which some teachers called Sara “him” and others “her.” Or used an entirely different name, the deadname Sara would soon be able to leave completely behind her.
And then there had been the day Sara’s parents had come in, their faces colored in anger.
That afternoon by the swings, Sara had whispered to Ollie that she was a foster kid and a year older than all of them.
It had been a new word—foster.
Sara had explained her foster parents were new but wanted to adopt her, that they didn’t try to use the name Sara hated but had had pushed onto her for years in the foster system. They just used Sara like she asked. They arranged for appointments to talk to someone who helped, they let Sara wear whatever she wanted.
Wide-eyed and not completely understanding, Ollie had nodded.
They’d become fast friends, easy friends. Sara was outrageously smart and Ollie outrageously protective.
“Sara!” Their hug was sun-warmed and smelled like the coconut in their sunscreen. Sara held out her hand, up in the air between them, and Ollie linked their fingers. The sun was a bright, lukewarm ball the knot of their hands blocked out.
“Next to me, you look pale,” Sara said.
Ollie burst out a laugh. Her father was black and her mother was white, but Ollie was still dark skinned. Her blue eyes threw people, she knew. Being much darker, though, Sara liked to tease her. “I’m not even close to pale,” Ollie protested.
The teasing was all for play. It’s what they did. Jokes and fun, but careful questions when needed.
Ollie had been there when Sara had first been approved for puberty blockers, which had taken years due to Sara still being in the foster system. Then later, the day she’d finally started hormone replacement therapy, Ollie had filmed the start of her transition video. Sara had a huge following online.
That night, Ollie flopped over the huge sofa in her basement in a pile with her friends. Legs were thrown over her own, a chest under her head as she watched a film flicker over the screen with a heartbeat thrumming in her ear, keeping the time of an easing adolescence.
Halfway through the movie, her dad brought more popcorn down the stairs, and the smell of butter and salt made them all sit up. From the corner of her eye, she saw him shake his head a
t them all before throwing her a wink, the sight stitching itself across her ribs.
When Sean kissed a grain of salt off her lip and tucked her hair behind her ear, she sighed into his movements with a smile and tried to stitch that feeling into herself as well.
Chapter 5
Group homes were full of strange sounds, of bumping footsteps and the clearing of foreign throats. Of kids with darkness looped into their eyes and track marks along their skin. Of forgotten kids, of unwanted kids, of kids who were wanted but lost, of kids who craved running and kids who wanted to stay and kids who wandered around with sad, vacant eyes.
Now Mattie’s eyes were full of ghosts, of flashing blue and red, and of a look of slight betrayal. In her bed that night, with the terror of knowing that after a week she had to go back to school, Carmen stared at the ceiling. She stuffed her hand in her mouth and bit down on it so she could stifle the sob that burned at her lungs and pushed at the insides of her ribs. A stain stretched over her head on the ceiling, and she traced it with her gaze over and over again in a pattern until she started to feel like she could breathe. Her eyes were seared with exhaustion, the feeling creeping along her bones to settle in her marrow and threatening to overcome her.
She was tired of talking to a therapist who could never get it, of sitting with Mattie and trying to get him to talk to her. All he asked, though, was where after this, what after this? The knowledge sat in his eyes of the last two times before, one when they were together that he barely remembered and another alone that he remembered all too well. He clung to her like he hadn’t in years, his fingers clawing at her shirt, at her hands, his body against her side. In his therapy sessions, since he wouldn’t talk—only grit his teeth and stare—Carmen talked at his therapist. She talked and talked and tried to convince her that unlike the last time, they needed to go to a placement together.
That was what Connecticut was supposed to try to do, to place siblings together.
No one told them anything, though.
Except rules. There were so many rules. Rules to use the TV, to eat, to shower, to see each other, to leave. The girls’ and boys’ sides were separated. Three times in the last week, Mattie had snuck out to slip into her room and curl along her length. His fingers burned holes into her arms with their grip as he cried for a mother Carmen had always tried to shield him from the truth of. After the third night of him being physically dragged out of her bed, they left someone permanently in his hallway. After that, the hollowness under his eyes grew deeper, and he pushed his food around his plate, asking her when they could finally leave.
Sixteen was too young for her to take guardianship, and Carmen wanted to rage at them, to tear down their stupid rules and scream that she’d been doing it since she was eight. Why was she suddenly too young now?
Mostly, the anger bubbled under her skin—at her mother, at herself, at adults who played God—as she stared upward, sleepless, teeth grinding, with no idea what to do.
On Monday, Carmen was back in school, cloaked in rumors and with something glinting in her eyes Ollie didn’t think had been there before. The rumors reached Ollie first, words like drunk driving, syringes, dead on arrival, pileup, and cause of death flowing through the school corridors, unstoppable as they always were. Other words rose up, of foster care and group homes, and Ollie wanted to cover her ears and tell them all to go to hell. Carmen’s life was not a juicy story, was not something amusing to exchange between toilet stalls.
Especially since barely anyone had known her name before this.
Their table at lunch didn’t buzz with the news, though, and Ollie fell into the comfort of her friends, unable to find Carmen beyond a glimpse in the corridor. The only thing mentioned was a “hope she’s okay” from Deon.
Sara gave a one-shouldered shrug and then propped her chin in her hand, straddling her seat. “Sometimes the system works out okay.”
And they all hushed and clearly remembered that, of all of them, she would know. Something was in her eye, though, that made Ollie both want to ask more, yet also turn away, to not push for things she didn’t really want to know. Instead, she did neither and threw Sara her pudding cup, earning a wink from her and a sigh from Sean, who had been eyeing it.
That afternoon, Ollie slipped out of Art, under the pretense of finding supplies, and watched the PE class troop into the locker rooms. One figure walked behind, taking her time, and Ollie watched her walk behind the bleachers when the teacher wasn’t looking. Ollie took a breath and, not knowing why she was going, followed, ducking behind. What she saw stopped her dead.
Crouched on the ground, face buried in her hands, Carmen looked small and defeated. Lost. She looked nothing like the girl Ollie had found sitting under the stars with a smile on her lips and a bottle of whiskey in her lap.
Ollie hovered, torn between leaving her be and walking forward.
Again she decided on neither. “Carmen.”
Carmen’s head shot up, and instead of cheeks covered in tears, Ollie just saw red-rimmed eyes and flushed cheeks, a tight jaw, and lips in a taut line.
“Ollie.”
The word was hoarse, was a run of vowels, and Ollie thought she could listen to her name being said like that forever.
Carmen stood, and Ollie leaned against the wall beside her, the brick rough under her palm. The amber of Carmen’s eyes was a storm of things Ollie had no name for, as much as she pushed at her mind to find the words.
“Are you okay?”
The question was a terrible one, clichéd and unhelpful. It was useless and nothing that Carmen could need. Instead of the scoff Ollie expected at it, or the anger or the eye roll, Carmen swallowed so heavily Ollie could see it. Her lip quivered just slightly as she looked up at Ollie, as if willing herself to not fall to the floor in parts, shattered and so scattered as to never be put back together.
Carmen shook her head, her eyes brighter and magnified by the tears that swam in them but never fell. “No. I’m not.”
And then Carmen surged forward, pushing Ollie against the brick where it scraped at her back, a groan ripping out of her throat. Hands threaded in Ollie’s hair, and lips pressed to her own, kissing her like Carmen wanted to coax something from Ollie that she didn’t have to give.
But Ollie tried. She surged against her, their bodies flush, and let Carmen turn her inside out, let her fingers flay her open, expose her insides, and leave her with nothing left to hide. Nails dug into her scalp, and Ollie pulled her closer, Carmen’s shirt fisted in her hand. The kiss tasted of salt, of desperation, of what sadness would taste like. Of loss and grief and hurt, and Ollie wanted to tear that feeling out from Carmen, even if just for a minute, so she could be free of it.
When it ended, it was as if Carmen had to rend herself in two to detach, the kiss pulling apart like something was tearing. She dropped her forehead to Ollie’s for just a second, their lips grazing once more before Carmen sucked in a breath and turned on her heel to go back to the locker rooms. Ollie was left gasping for breath as she watched her walk away.
The group home was no different after a day at school, walking the eclipse of her life, but Carmen moved about with the shadow of Ollie on her lips, and it made her feel like something was under her control. Mattie wouldn’t speak about his day, his jaw set and his eyes hard, even as his fingers dug into her shirt. He sat next to her on one of the sofas, staring at the television screen without emotion.
They didn’t have a TV at home. Normally, he’d be enthralled. Through the fog of her own uncertainty, Carmen tried to coax him out of the vacancy in his eyes that didn’t sit right, to poke his side and draw out something. But her heart wasn’t in it, and she gave up quickly, asking him if he wanted to play his DS.
“Someone stole my games.” His focus stayed on the TV.
Carmen just put her arm around his shoulder and shifted closer.
His rigid body softened slightly.
They stayed there until their counsellor appeared and led them to one of the small meeting rooms, all hard plastic chairs and hard plastic atmosphere. They sat among it, and the woman looked at them with a smile as plastic as what Carmen sat on.
“I have some news.”
Later, Carmen would be grateful she hadn’t used words like great or exciting or even good.
“We have a foster home, available tomorrow.”
Carmen twitched and felt Mattie do the same next to her.
The group home was bad, but a foster home could be worse. Her last had not been a pleasure, and Mattie had refused to speak of his. He’d come home a mess, though. Their first was one Carmen was glad Mattie hadn’t been old enough to really remember.
The memories of that place had lain thick over her skull. The early relief that responsible adults had appeared to look after them had faded quickly, and instead, a new relief had filled her when they sent them back to their mother. How her mother did it, Carmen would never know, but she had proven herself reformed to the courts, even if she had quickly fallen back into old habits. But at least she left them in peace.
Carmen just stared at the woman and waited.
“Unfortunately, it’s only for Mattie.”
Something caught in her stomach—caught and held and didn’t let go.
“Carmen, at your age, as you know, placement is hard. We’re trying to get you a place in a smaller home for girls on the other side of the city.”
It seemed to take a moment for the words to hit Mattie, only when Carmen closed her eyes, her hands clenching in her lap, did she hear his seat scrape loudly against the floor. He must have stood too quickly, because the chair clattered backward, the door slamming loudly behind him.
Chapter 6