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W
hen some sort of shocking gossip floods a school it’s impossible to ignore. It’s like a swarm of bees—you feel the air buzzing long before you see the huddled bodies, hear the excited drone. By lunchtime, Sunnyside High is undulating with news, and it isn’t until I reach the cafeteria that I realize it’s me people are talking about.

A group of girls stop whispering as I enter, and even the lunch ladies avert their eyes as I grab a tray and get in line. The entire place falls silent. I ask, and am given, the lunch special—hamburger and fries with a dollop of milky cole slaw on the side. As if nothing is bothering me, I slide my tray along the rails behind the other kids—most of whom are stealing glances at me along the way—and pull a lunch ticket out of my pocket.

Bess, the heavyset woman at the cash who used to tell me about her grandkids back when I was Andrea, gives me a warm smile as she takes my ticket. Then, as I lift my tray, she reaches out to pat my hand and says, “It’s okay, pet. We’re all of us just human.”

I set my tray down again. “What’s going on?”

She reaches for a folded newspaper and places it on the counter. The headline reads “Hit-and-Run Rock Star.” There’s Nigel’s mug shot from the other night, and
right beside it, that photo of the Disneyland couple in side-by-side hospital beds.

Nigel’s been arrested.

It had to happen. I know that. But imagining him sitting in that kitchen with the PR girls, in his holey pajamas with his dirty hair; the thought of his stricken face when I called him a drunk, because all he really wants in life is Joules’s—my—approval; now, the thought of him in jail, all of it makes me want to throw up.

Why does he have to be so self-destructive?

Bess says, “It’s his life, honey. Not yours. We are not our families, you just remember that.” She sounds like Mom. I have to stop myself from curling up in her lap like an old cat. Or a new foster child.

There is a lineup behind me, I’m taking too long. Even though I’d love to read the article, there’s no way I’ll do it in front of all these people. I lean closer to Bess. “How did it happen? How did they find out?”

Bess blinks at me. “Your dad did the right thing, sweetheart. He turned himself in.”

I start to nod. Slowly at first, then quicker and quicker until I am backing away from my food and toward the door.

Outside, with a tight smile on my face, I break into a run and head home. To Skyline Drive, to Sue, who can hopefully tell me where to find him. Nigel. I need to tell him something.

I need to tell him I’m proud of him.

I
was wrong about the inside of my house. My real house. It does have a smell.

I stand in the foyer after not having lived here for two weeks and inhale deeply. Here’s the thing—it takes a bit of distance for you to be able to detect it in your own home. And it’s not what I would have thought. If asked what 8407 Highcliffe Court smells like I might have said fabric softener or Mom’s veggie chili. But it’s nothing like that. This house, the Birch house, smells like kids. Dirty sneakers and boys who have just come in after rolling in the grass and the double stroller littered with dry Cheerios that’s parked by the front door.

It smells like a house that isn’t pretending to be anything other than what it is. A safe place that lets kids step away from whatever garbage they’ve lived through and finally, finally be kids.

Not that it’s my house any more.

Over the weekend, Nigel was charged with reckless driving and leaving the scene of an accident. And since he confessed to killing Tyler Glass, he was also charged with vehicular manslaughter. That he was sipping champagne in the car didn’t help. The judge went soft on him
because he turned himself in and made the prosecutor’s job that much easier. Still, he’s in jail and will be for the next seven years, pending good behavior.

Which left the problem of me.

Sue stayed in the house with me until this morning, Wednesday, but once it was clear Nigel wouldn’t be around for a long time, she pretty much vanished. Hours later, I had a knock at the door. The lady in the flowered pants. Child Services.

Right away I was put into foster care. Where they’ve sent me is almost too ironic to be real (though I did spend a good half hour begging): 8407 Highcliffe Court.

So here I am. Standing in the foyer like one of my now thirty-eight foster siblings.

Mom takes me by the elbow and guides me toward the living room. “Come on in, Joules. I want you to know you are very welcome here. Whatever issues we had in the past are just that—in the past. We’re going to have a fresh start, and everyone’s waiting to meet you.”

Sure enough, there’s Dad with Michaela on his lap, showing her how his watch works, Brayden unraveling the fringe on the sofa cushion, Joules sitting beside him, not swatting the pillow out of his hands when she totally should. Cici and Sam are on the floor, leaning against the sofa, arms hugging their knees. And the Ks—the glorious, chubby, drooling Ks—standing all by themselves in their playpen, holding onto the rail and bopping up and down with delight as they see me.

“Up,” Kaia says to me, clearly hoping the new person will be naive enough to free her from her nylon enclosure and let her roam around in search of Play-Doh.

From the rocking chair by the fireplace, Gran winks at me.

Seeing the people in this room, in this house, it’s the greatest sight on earth.

“You can call me Lise, and my husband’s Gary. Andrea—”

Joules clears her throat loudly and makes a pretend-angry face, and Mom smiles.

“Andie,
as she likes to be called now, has generously offered to move you into her room, Joules,” says Mom, shooting the real Joules an approving look. “You’ll be with us a long time, so we’ve purchased another twin bed, which Gary and Brayden will assemble later tonight. You know Brayden from school, don’t you?”

I nod. “Hi, Bray.”

“And you’re okay sharing a room?”

My room. I’ll be back in my room. “Yes. It’s perfect. I mean, that’ll be fine. Lise.” I look around the living room and smile.

I’m back. Not the way I expected, but wishers can’t be choosers. I’m not going to be Mom’s Number One: I’m not going to be allowed, aside from the odd slip-up, to call her Mom, but still. Here I am, just where I want to be.

Mom instructs Bray to carry my bags into the bedroom and sits me down on the sofa, where I right away try to re-ravel the pillow fringe Bray undid. She explains the deal—Andie is her natural-born daughter. How many fosters they’ve had over the years. How Bray’s been there longer than anyone else. Her belief that this is only the beginning for Joules Adams. I’ve heard this speech before, but still. It sounds different being directed at me.

To my surprise, Joules leans over and gives me a hug, and right away I regret not having thought to hug her first. After all, this is easy for me. I’m coming home. Joules is the one who is leaving her life for a while. We hold onto each other as everyone starts to disperse, and Joules whispers to me, “I get it now.”

“You get what?” I say.

“Your mom. The kids she brings in. All of it. It’s incredible, what she sacrifices. She made a big pot of chili last night and there wasn’t enough to go around, so she went without. Made herself a bowl of cereal so none of the fosters had to eat less than a full serving. I could never do what she does.”

All these years, I’ve missed who my parents really are. I’ve been too focused on what I haven’t gotten from them to truly see all they’ve given up for these kids. And none of it is for
Vanity Fair
magazine or to bolster a failing reputation or to sell more records. It’s 100 percent genuine, 100 percent for the kids.

“I know. I knew it before but now I actually see it,” I whisper. “She’s pretty cool.” I watch my dad reach down to wipe drool from Kaia’s face and give her nose a little kiss. “They both are.”

“Hey, Birch Tree?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re friends now, right?”

I nod. “We’re friends now.”

I can see Mom twisting a Kleenex in her hands. She wants to hug me, Joules, but isn’t sure if I’ll get all prickly about it. It’s tough welcoming the older kids—I know
that. Mom wants to be all maternal but holds back at first to assess their needs. But I need nothing if I don’t need a hug so I make it easier for her. I stand up and hug her first. With the happiest sad smile you’ve ever seen, she wraps her arms around me and rocks me back and forth.

I finally understand what it’s like to be the foster child. To have Mom fawn all over me and want so badly to erase my ugly past. If this is what every foster kid feels upon coming into this house, they are the lucky ones. Truly.

As for me, I’m lucky to have my mother back.

Like Nigel says, for every itch there’s a scratch. And this hug is a scratch I’ve been wanting for a good long time.

I spend the day hanging with Joules and Bray, who has admitted that ever since Tomas and the others were implicated in the break-and-enter, he doesn’t see them any more. Then I hang with Cici and Sam and the Ks. We have Mom’s spaghetti for supper. As she’s serving, I notice that the tan line where her engagement ring used to be has vanished. As if the ring never existed.

After dinner, as Joules and I are washing the dishes with the yellow Playtex gloves Mom bought to replace Gran’s, the doorbell rings. There’s a great fuss in the hall—Mom and Gran chatter excitedly to someone we cannot hear. I slip a dry plate into the cupboard and go out into the foyer to find a couple standing with the flowered pants lady.

The man has a bandage wrapped around his head and
the woman is in a wheelchair. Adrenaline surges through me as I realize I recognize these two. Here, in my house, are Michaela’s parents.

Mom is beaming. She turns to me and says quietly, “Run and get Michaela, Joules, will you? Tell her her parents have come to take her home.”

Bray walks past with a textbook in his hand and gives the couple no more than a fleeting glance. He has no idea they’re the Disneyland couple. To him, they’re just another set of broken parents coming to pick up their child. He’s seen it before.

“Joules?” Mom says.

The image of Nigel’s SUV, the shattered windshield, won’t allow my feet to move just yet. I glance back toward the kitchen, where Joules is still busy at the sink. She has no idea she’s fifteen feet away from the family her father nearly destroyed.

I don’t have the heart to tell her. Mom’s been keeping it hush-hush from all the kids. She’s been cryptic with Joules about it. There’s a good chance it will never be discussed. There’s also a good chance it will. But Joules has been through enough, and it’s been a nice evening. She can find out the truth another time.

“Go on, Joules,” Mom says with a smile. “Mr. and Mrs. Vikolos are waiting.”

I head into the room I now share with Joules and find Michaela sitting like a frog on the floor, humming as she plays with my old stuffed animals. She’s wearing the same yellow dress she arrived in. As I squat down beside her I realize she’s humming “Rock-a-bye, Baby.” The lullaby.

“Michaela, guess who’s here?”

She looks up but says nothing.

“Your mom and dad. Want me to take you to see them?”

She nods.

I pick her up—she’s light as a piece of paper, for all her dangling limbs. Holding her close, I reach for the stuffed dog she slept with that first night. “You keep him, okay?”

Once again, she nods. But now she has the beginnings of a smile on her lips.

As I head out of the room, I realize I will likely never see her again. I stop, look at her. “I want you to remember something, Michaela. What happened that night happened. It was terrible but it’s over. You are not your past. That accident is gone now, okay?”

She stares at me and cocks her head. I wonder if she’s detected that I sound like Lise. It’s at this moment that I make a decision about my life. I never want to live too far away from this family. I never want to go to Stanford, not when Cal State Fullerton is just down the road.

“You have a great life ahead of you now with your parents,” I say to Michaela. “It’s all good now. You will never be that alone again.”

She studies me a moment and her little chest fills with breath. She reaches up to play with my hair as I take her to where her parents wait.

I stand on the darkened front porch for a long time after the Vikoloses’ taillights vanish, thinking I’ll tell Nigel during visiting hours tomorrow that they’re okay now. This couple. He’ll be glad of it. Joules is going to come
with me. It’s the only way she can stay close to him now, through me.

Joules steps out of the house’s glow and stands beside me. I notice she’s wearing my black sneakers. She pokes me in the side. “Do you want to go back to the bridge again tonight? I’m feeling lucky.”

We’ve been back to look for the gloves half a dozen times. There’s never been any sign of them. There will never be any sign of them. The last thing on earth I want to do is go poke around there with flashlights right now.

Gran steps out from behind Joules. “I think it’s a good idea. To go to the bridge.”

“It’s useless,” I say. “We’ve scoured the area. The gloves are gone.”

“Maybe you don’t need them,” says Gran. “Maybe you can make your wish without any gloves at all.”

I look at her as if she’s insane. Which she clearly is. “We’ve tried it that way. And under the train. And in a rainstorm. It doesn’t work.”

Gran steps closer, slightly unsteady from the glass of wine she had at dinner. There’s a mischievous little twinkle in her eye as she pulls something out of her pocket and hands it to Joules. A cloudy hunk of filthy crystal with divots and cracks and not a bit of shine to it. “That same day, I bought the fortune teller’s crystal ball.”

“Ball?” Joules squints down at it. “More of a crystal rock, isn’t it?”

“Looks like you dug it up in the garden,” I say as Joules turns it over in her hands. She passes it to me and I hold it up to the light to try and peer into the center, which looks all murky and full of sand.

“What can I say?” Gran shrugs. “I needed a paperweight for my study. But who knows? It might do the trick”

“So do we make the wish here?” asks Joules. “Or go back to the bridge and wait for a train?”

“If you do it here,” says Gran, suppressing a smile, “one of you is liable to trade places with Brayden.”

Joules grimaces. “We’ll go to the bridge.”

I wrap my arms around Gran’s neck and plant a kiss on her powdered cheek. “You’re the best.”

She shoves me away, feigning annoyance. “Off with the two of you.” She sets her hand over the crystal. “And be careful. That’s your last chance you’re juggling like that!”