Every Four Years

Age Eight

This will be my tenth foster family in four years.

Lucky number ten, right?

I doubt it. No one’s ever kept me longer than five months.

My last family didn’t even make it to two weeks. The mother said I “freaked out” her daughter. The girl told her parents I smiled too much, that I stared too long, that I was creepy. She said I’d grow up to be a serial killer.

I don’t really understand that part.

I do prefer toast to cereal, but I wouldn’t want to kill it.

Jane, my social worker, keeps her eyes on the road while we drive. She doesn’t talk to me much anymore, except when she has to. I think she’s tired of me.

“Now, Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey are good Christian people,” she says, like she’s reading from a script. “They already have three other foster kids. They’re a big, happy family—doesn’t that sound nice?”

She knows I won’t answer. She used to wait for me to try, but that was a long time ago. Now she just fills in my side of the conversation herself.

“Yes, it sounds lovely,” she says in my pretend voice. “And you’re not going to do anything to mess up this placement, are you? You can be happy here, Alley. You just have to try to fit in.”

I always try.

I follow every rule Mama taught me:

Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.

Don’t cry.

Don’t make a mess.

Don’t get in the way.

Always smile.

Always smile so they can’t see what’s inside.

But no matter how hard I try, it never works. Someone always decides I’m wrong somehow. And then I end up back in Jane’s car, watching the world blur past the window while she tells me how this time will be different.

The car jerks to a stop.

“Ah, we’re here,” she says, cheerful like we’re going on vacation.

We’re not.

The building looks tired. Paint peeling from the bricks, rust climbing up the metal railings like brown ivy. Jane takes my bag from the back seat—it’s small, doesn’t take long to pack my life—and we walk inside.

The hallway smells strange. Like old food and sour milk, mixed with something sharp, maybe bleach. I remember another house that smelled like this. The man there used to smoke long white sticks he called cigarettes. He offered me one once. Mama said never to take things from grown-ups because children don’t need nice things. He must have thought those sticks were nice, though. He always had one between his lips, and when he breathed, the air went gray.

Jane presses the button for the elevator. It shudders when it moves, groaning like it doesn’t want to. When we reach the third floor, she knocks on a door with peeling paint.

It opens to a woman with tired eyes and a man with a face that looks like he’s been angry for a long time.

“Alley, this is Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey,” Jane says brightly. “David and Nancy, this is Alley—your new foster child.”

Jane started calling me Alley four years ago, back when she didn’t know my real name. I was “the alleyway kid” for a while, then “the Alley child,” and then just Alley. She said no one would adopt a child without a name. Turns out, no one adopts one with a name, either.

Nancy smiles, but her eyes don’t. “She’s a cute little thing.”

David snorts. “Yeah. So what’s wrong with her? Why’s she still in the system?”

Jane’s smile doesn’t even flicker. “Nothing’s wrong with her. A few placements didn’t work out, but that happens. Most families realize they weren’t ready for a child. You’ve already got foster experience, so I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

That’s not true. There’s always a reason.

Sometimes I “don’t bond.”

Sometimes I “make people uncomfortable.”

Once they said I smiled like I was lying.

I wasn’t.

David looks me up and down like I’m a piece of furniture he didn’t order. “Don’t you speak, girl?”

“Be kind, darling,” Nancy says quickly. “She’s probably just nervous. Isn’t that right, Alley?”

Jane jumps in before I can not-answer. “Yes, she’s very shy. But she’ll warm up. I’m sure she’ll fit right in with your loving family.”

Loving family. Jane always says that part. I think she says it so she doesn’t have to look at what she’s really leaving behind.

She hugs me goodbye. It’s quick and smells like her perfume—faint flowers and office air. “I’ll come back in a couple of weeks to check on you, okay?”

I nod because that’s what she wants.

Then she leaves.

The door shuts, and it’s like the whole world gets smaller.

Jane’s words echo in my head “you can be happy here.” Well here goes nothing.

“I like cereal,” I say softly.

David’s smile drops and his eyebrows pull together. “What?”

“A foster family once gave me back because they said I didn’t like cereal,” I tell him. “But I do like it.”

He stares at me for a second, then laughs, but it’s not a nice sound. “I don’t give a damn what you like. You’re nothing but a paycheck to me, you little brat.”

Nancy folds her arms. “You help around the apartment, no backtalk, no trouble. We don’t do lazy kids here.”

David moves closer, his stale breath is even more pungent now. “Listen, kid,” he says, voice flat and hard. “If you want to eat in this house, you work for it. You want a bed? You clean. You want cereal? You earn it.”

Nancy gives a half-smile that never reaches her eyes. “Welcome home, sweetheart.”

Mama was right. I shouldn’t have said anything.