* * *
I carry with me an Allen wrench. Because you never know.
All my life I have only ever slept in bunk beds. You know who makes a really sturdy, affordable one? IKEA. They look nice, too, the wooden ones. Give me thirty-eight minutes and an Allen wrench (or hex wrench, as some people call them), and I can have a MYDAL (birch wood, good headboard height for night reading) perfectly assembled, beds made with hospital corners, pillows fluffed. By myself. (I’m really not kidding, parents love me.) The NORDDAL is good, too. It has darker wood and people tend to use it more for boys’ rooms. But for bottom-bunk headroom, the MYDAL is best. Also that’s the name—albeit with a different spelling—of period medicine that stops cramps, so the girls laugh at it, which makes it even more great.
Obviously, I prefer a top bunk. Anyone would. Top bunks establish status in a group, ensure less distractions for a good night’s sleep, and offer more privacy. The thing is, even if I started in one, more often than not I would end up in a lower one when a new kid came, or siblings who wanted to be near each other moved in. Because kids coming in were always leaving their actual family, their own house, apartment, car they’re living in, whatever, and maybe it was bad there, maybe not so much, but it was home, and coming to a strange bunk bed house with strange adults and unknown strange other kids was scary for them. I had no idea what that was like. They needed all the help they could get. So I surrendered the top. Or both, and went to a bottom bunk in another room.
“Muiriel,” Zola whispered in the dark to me from the top bunk of a MYDAL I had assembled that morning, two weeks into a stay that seemed destined to be permanent for her. She might never go home, and she knew it. “Are you ever scared?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Are you going home?”
I reached under the bottom bunk for the tool kit I’d stashed there in case of any loose bolts, stepped on the ladder, and held an Allen wrench up in the moonlight. “Do you know what this is?”
She shook her head.
“What do you think it does?”
“Nothing. It’s broken.”
“No,” I whispered. “This is exactly how it’s supposed to be. Little bent piece of metal. This thing is magic. It can make chairs and tables and bookshelves. It made this bed; it’s the only thing that could. Would you ever have guessed that?”
She shook her head. We were quiet for a while, listening to the breathing of the three other sleeping kids.
“Different isn’t necessarily broken,” I whispered. “Sometimes small and bent is the only thing that can make something big and new and safe.”
“Don’t you want to go home?” she said.
I put the Allen wrench in her hand. “I’m okay,” I said. “I have lots of homes.”
She held on to the Allen wrench and turned to the window, her back to me.
THE LAST FIRST DAY OF HIGH SCHOOL of my life. A Wednesday, which was weird. I woke before dawn on the sofa, my leg numb where Terry Johnson’s head rested all night. I sent him to Francine’s room and climbed the steps to the attic room, warm with sunlight, and tried to remember every first day of every grade, every single one at a different school. I’d be at one school in the fall, then I’d leave that house the second semester, at a new school in January with new teachers, new classmates making the same stupid comments about my clothes, new teachers expressing the same concerns about my catching up, and a new house with a bunch of new kids.
I found The Wilderness World in the sheets, replaced my bookmark, and took a shower without waiting in line. Got dressed in clothes that were in the same place I’d left them, shoes still beside the door, no bunch of kids moving, taking, misplacing things. Quiet.
Downstairs I collected six pale blue eggs from the hens and found they were good listeners. “Ladies,” I said. “I hope you appreciate the luxurious lives you lead here in the yard. No school, no teachers treating you like you’re stupid for not instantly understanding how they teach geometry, plus your feathers always look great—especially yours, Karen.” Karen was a small, round hen, her black feathers shiny and dotted with tufts of white near her red feet. She was so put together, unique and fancy on the regular.
Terry Johnson and Francine waited for me in the sunny kitchen, the table set with a pot of tea, a glass dish of raspberry jam, and a plate of wheat toast.
“Don’t forget your lunch,” she said, and put a brown paper sack in my hands. “Call from the office if you need anything. You have enough pencils? Notebooks? Need an extra eraser?”
I unfolded the top of the paper sack; cheese sandwich, cut diagonally. Apple, sliced. Carrots, washed and chopped. Granola bar. An adorable lunch that indicated her foster experience had a median grade level of kindergarten.
“Oh, there’s a map in there, too, of the school buildings. I’ve marked where all your classes are.”
My head felt a little spinny. I stared down at the carrot sticks. Was there a box of raisins in there, too?
“Muiriel,” Francine said. “Would you rather have lunch money?”
“No!” I said. “Thank you.” I put the sack into my backpack and grabbed more toast to go. “I love granola bars.”
She stood on the porch and held Terry Johnson up to wave with his paw as I walked to the road. “Have a good day!”
I waved back and hurried to the cover of trees to rub my eyes, which were burning and tearing up out of the blue.
This focused attention on me and everything I needed or wanted was exhausting, and also engaging in one-sided dialogue with Karen was not a great sign of my emotional health.
Though I was not lying about granola bars. I do love them.
I walked to Kira’s house, which turned out to be less than a mile from Francine’s, and waited at the top of her driveway. Her house was pretty. Small and white, shingled, two stories, back from the road and facing the Sound. I wondered if they could see the water.
She came jogging up the steep drive, hair piled on her head, long silver earrings, black jeans, another tank top showing off all her ink. “Hey,” she said. “Is that Blackbird toast?”
“Aunt made it, not my fault.” I broke off a piece and handed it to her.
She chewed. “Not bad, though.”
Again with the lying—Sean said it, and it probably was true: if anyone was going to not give a shit about my lack of parents, it would be this person who obviously wasn’t trying to fit in with anyone on this island. If she truly had an aunt who fostered, I wouldn’t be an anomaly to her. Honestly, without other kids in Francine’s house, I was going to need someone to spend time with. A friend. Kira was an excellent candidate for the position, and she seemed to have an opening. Lying was brand-new to me, the best way to kill a friendship before it began, and Kira wasn’t stupid. Did I think I could keep this ruse up for an entire school year?
We walked and talked our way through forests and along the highway, the prettiest walk to school I’d ever had. Inside the building things were familiar, because all high schools are kind of the same. The usual halls crammed with the usual million kids. Doors. Windows. Lockers. I was glad for Kira beside me. Easier not walking in alone.
“You okay?” she shouted above the mayhem.
“Yeah,” I shouted back.
She was swallowed and carried away in the sea of faces, nearly all of them white except for hers. In the city, depending on the neighborhood, I was sometimes the only white kid in the house or in the classroom. For all its good intentions, Seattle is not immune to what Joellen described as “a stupid bunch of racist gentrification and discriminatory housing practices.”
“Meet me at lunch!” Kira yelled from the crowd. “Find the cafeteria!”
I was used to eating lunch by myself, typically in a corner of the library.
“Okay,” I called to her.
Might as well try something new.
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* * *
—
“You’re so lucky you brought lunch,” Kira said, dropping beside me in a chair at a table near a window, harried, hair damp, catching her breath. “This is what the cafeteria calls a salad.” She stabbed a plastic fork into a piece of ranch-drowned iceberg lettuce. “I hate having PE right before lunch. I’ll always be late.”
“Blessing in disguise,” Tiana chirped as she and Katrina dawdled past our table. “Less time eating might help you win the cellulite battle.”
Jesus. Already?
“Good luck with that.” Katrina smiled, and I watched them stroll off into their adoring crowd of girls all dressed alike. Kira was staring into her salad.
“Kira.”
“Yeah.”
“The hell is up with that?”
She shrugged. “First day. They just need to remind me to stay in my place. They’ll get bored sometime in October and move on to someone else.”
I took in her small, wiry stature. “But why the fat route? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“They don’t need a reason to fat shame anyone, even if I’m not. They’re in PE with me; I’m the only one who ever uses the showers. Apparently it freaks them out.”
“No one showers?”
“And it’s basketball this semester! Plus, we start with a mile run around the damn track. People are sweaty AF and they just spray Axe for girls or whatever all over themselves and then put their clean clothes back on. I think they don’t want to have to redo their makeup or something? I freely admit I’m a little OCD with handwashing and sweatiness in general, but this is legit full-body cardio sweat; I’m not kidding.” She accepted a Francine apple slice and chewed thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Not worth trying to figure them out. I’m showering whether they pull a Carrie in there or not. It’s only one more year.” She put her head on the table then and closed her eyes.
“Kira. What’s up?”
“I think I may have overdone it,” she said, lifting the bottom of her tank top to reveal a pair of nicotine patches near her ribs.
I put my head near hers. “Uh…are you supposed to use two of those at once?”
“Probably not,” she said, pulling the tank aside to show two more patches.
I sat up. “Dude.”
“I was nervous!” she whispered. “When I’m nervous I want to smoke. Drastic times!”
“Okay, well, this is more dangerous than drastic. Take three of them off or you’re going to get nicotine-high or sick or something.” She peeled three of the patches away, I wadded them up and tossed them in the trash, then sat back beside her. “Why is Katiana after you?” I asked.
She sat up and sipped the water I pushed toward her. “Usual crap. Nothing. I dared to come in junior year, they were being awful, I told them to screw off, game on. My parents went to the principal, but their parents are rich—they donate to the school fund, so nothing happened, and who cares?” She picked at her sad salad.
I nodded. Adults love to offer sage advice such as Stand up for yourself; Tell a teacher; or my personal favorite: Try to find common ground, kill them with kindness, and become friends with them! Being the new kid twice a year, every year, has gotten me ignored at best, shoved into lockers, my backpack tossed into dumpsters, descriptions of my supposed sexual prowess Sharpied on bathroom stalls at worst. There is one answer: Keep your head down, lie low. It’ll be over eventually.
“I see the school uniform is the same here as in Seattle,” I said.
She looked up from the salad to watch Katiana holding court at the basic-bitches table, all of them dressed in nearly identical variations on a bland theme.
“Uniform?”
“Black leggings. White sneakers. T-shirt, tank top. Lunch in a red-and-white Lululemon shopping bag with black handles. Tasteless signifiers of mediocrity.” Joellen taught me that one.
“Oh my God. I can never unsee it now…so many Lululemon bags. And you know not one of them has ever seen the inside of a yoga studio.”
“Thank God, because they never shower. Their mats would be alive with microbes and infectious diseases.”
Her smile returned. She accepted another apple slice.
Behind us, a knocking at the window and there was Sean, back from his hike and beautiful as ever. “Hey!” he said, and jogged to the door.
“He liiiikes you,” Kira sang.
“He likes eeeveryone according to youuu,” I shushed her.
“Kira!” He smiled, bending to one-arm hug her shoulders. “Muiriel, how’s your first day?”
“It’s all right. How was the Wonderland?”
“Perfect. Some rain, two bears with cubs, a million stars. Every time is more beautiful than the last.”
“This is Rainier we’re in love with?” Kira asked.
“Yes,” Sean and I sighed together.
She smiled.
“Sean!” came Katiana’s siren screech. “Come sit with us!”
I looked at Kira, resigned and putting the plastic top back on her dumb half-eaten salad. Angry heat flushed my cheeks, familiar from witnessing kids I lived with getting messed with. I stood up and pulled another chair to our table. “Want to sit with us?”
He waved to Katiana and sat beside Kira, pulling out a bag of trail mix. “So listen,” he said. “I missed Natan. He play you any sweet guitar riffs while I was gone?”
I smiled brightly at Katiana, sat down, and pulled my chair closer to Sean’s.
“Oh Jesus,” Kira sighed. “Batter up.”
Katiana clutched their Lululemon bags and glared hard at me via perfect cat-eye liquid liner. Sean got busy scrolling through his photos to show us the best shots of the bears.
“Muiriel,” Kira sighed. “Please tell me you did not just invite that chaos to come sniffing around the tent flap of your life.”
She was right. I was breaking self-imposed rules left and right taunting those girls on Kira’s behalf; I was off the rails, but I couldn’t seem to stop doing it. I tossed my granola bar to Kira. “They were already in the tent,” I said. “They’re all talk. They’re nothing. Screw them.”
“Screw who?” Sean asked. “Oh, wait, look, here’s one of her eating blueberries! Can you believe how close we got?”
We?
I leaned near him to see the image on his phone: a beautiful, fat black bear nosing her way into a berry bush. “Who do you—did you hike with?” I asked as casually as I could.
“Myself. But halfway I met my mom.”
“His mom,” Kira said, eyeballing me.
“She’s a park ranger in the Cascades; she’s stationed on Rainier till winter.”
I nearly choked. “Your mother is a park ranger?”
“She is.”
“On Rainier?”
“Yes.”
“But wasn’t your dad also…”
“Yes, he was.”
Kira nodded. “Royal family. That’ll do.”
Yes, it would.
“What the…?” Kira suddenly stood and waved. “My aunt is here. Hey, Francine!”
I followed Kira’s eyes, and of course there was only one Francine on the island; there she stood, chatting it up with the principal.
My foster parent. Talking to my school principal.
My heart seized.
The nearly adult, rational part of me understands that not every school administration official is out to get me.
However.
The neural pathways in my brain were carved by a lifelong master class of observing how adults interacted with the kids I lived with, and I learned as a very small child that principals, like police officers, are terrifying. Not as people, necessarily, but more who they are. What they do.
Suspicious of children in foster care, ready with blame and itching to “teach us
a lesson,” they are uniform and business-casual, sport-coat-wearing embodiments of capital A authority, hell-bent on muddying the waters of a kid’s clean record because they can, and I have avoided interacting with them at all costs.
This is not logical, and obviously not fair. But the lizard brain does not want open and honest dialogue with those we are conditioned to mistrust—it demands only survival.
And so this thirty-minute school lunch was the most eventful and terrifying I’d ever experienced. I felt like crying. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do this; I could never stay an entire year in one place—already I was on the principal’s radar, and not only that, with one lie my potential friendship with Kira was over. Joellen was right; lying punches holes in your boat, and the truth is the ocean, rushing in fast as Francine walked to us. Her face brightened the nearer she came, and Kira went to hug her.
“Hello, my darling.” Francine gathered Kira in her arms, and then she saw me. “Muiriel! I was just talking to the principal, and you’re all set for Salishwood. Kira, are you two eating lunch together? Hey, Sean!”
Kira was wide-eyed at me. “How have you already met everyone on this island? Francine is my aunt! Friend-aunt.”
“I’ve changed this girl’s diapers!” Francine bragged.
“Okay,” Kira said “Trying to eat here…”
Holy hell.
“Hey, Francine,” Sean said.
“Sean’s mom is a dear friend,” Francine said to my likely ashen face. She turned to Kira. “When did you and Muiriel meet?”
“Weeks ago,” Kira said. “When did you two meet?”
Francine looked to me, and her face changed. She caught up. But too late.
“I’m living with her,” I said, back on the brutal-truth-no-reason-for-lying rails. “She’s my foster. Person.”
Sean watched Kira’s face. Then mine.
Francine looked miserable.
I smoothed my paper lunch bag on the table with intense focus, folding it into crisp, perfect squares, smaller and tighter with each crease. Senior year, about to fall over the finish line unattached and self-sufficient, and now what was I doing with all these people? I cared that Kira would hate me for lying, that she would now disappear from my orbit because I’m in foster care and lied about it. I would never see her again, and I would miss her; it would matter.
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