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  To the hundreds of thousands of children in foster care in the United States, and to the foster parents and adoptive parents who raise and care for them

  CHAPTER 1

  SOMETIMES THERE’S A TUG-OF-WAR INSIDE of me. My head says one thing. My stomach says another. Like yesterday, when I stole a roll of paper towels from the 7-Eleven around the corner. My head said, Don’t. My stomach said, Do.

  So I did.

  I stole.

  And yeah, paper towels might seem like a strange thing to steal. I mean, I could have stolen some candy, or crackers or something. But paper towels last longer than food. A roll of paper towels can feed me and my sister, Anna, for a whole week—sometimes more.

  I know my name is Sara Rose Olson. I know what empty feels like. And I know I should feel bad for stealing. But I don’t. Last night, waiting for Daddy to come home, I ripped off pieces of paper towel, wadded them up, chewed the paper balls soft and slow, and swallowed. I felt better. I gave some to Anna. She sat cross-legged on the floor next to me. We didn’t have to talk about it. We just ate. I pictured myself biting into a juicy hamburger. I know Anna was picturing her favorite—hot dogs.

  Eating paper towels is the secret way I trick my stomach into thinking it’s been fed. It works, too. By the time Anna and I’d eaten only half a square of paper towel, our stomachs quit making those whiny noises. And after eating one towel each, we both felt better.

  * * *

  Tonight I’m not awake because I’m hungry. I have a stomach full of paper towel. Tonight what’s keeping me awake is the wind. It’s whipping around like it needs to get somewhere fast.

  I look around. Spidery shadows dance on the walls. A skit, skit across the floorboards draws my eyes to the dark hallway. At first I think the sound is rain pattering down instead of little rat claws skittering, but when their tiny feet hit the paper on the floor, the sound changes to a muffled scuffle. Rain doesn’t sound like that.

  Then a different noise makes me listen even harder. It sounds like someone scratching against the window. My whole body turns cold. I lie frozen on the bed, too scared to look, but then I slowly sit up, squeeze my eyes shut, open them, and squint against the darkness. The window slowly starts looking like a window, instead of a big, dark hole in the wall.

  I look through the dark pane, heart pounding. No prowler. Just the low branches of a tree scraping against the glass. I lie back on the mattress slowly. It’s got some small rips, and hard springs press against my back. I try to get my breath to slow down.

  I’ve been jumpy like this ever since last year, when I turned nine. A couple of days after my birthday, Mama took off, leaving a hole in me so big she might just as well have died. Daddy, Anna, and I weren’t the only things she left behind. Mama left a letter, too, and a picture. I hid them, afraid Daddy would tear them up or throw them away like everything else of Mama’s that he tossed out after she left us. The letter and picture are almost the only things of Mama that Anna and I have left. Just thinking about Daddy finding them sends heat through me that warms me up. He’ll be so mad I hid them if he ever finds out.

  “That woman is plumb crazy,” he’d tell us. But then I think of what Mama said to me once, and I feel cold again. It wasn’t crazy that made Mama run off. It was me.

  “Every time I look at you, I see him.”

  I know the “him” Mama was talking about was Daddy. I can’t help thinking that if only I looked different, Mama wouldn’t have run away. Now Daddy’s gone too.

  Not gone-gone, like Mama.

  Just gone.

  Daddy disappears every once in a while, but he always comes back. It’s been longer this time, though, and Anna and I are more scared than a pair of cats in a room full of rocking chairs.

  Daddy’s a singer and drummer in a band called Stix and Stonz. Stones is the last name of two other guys in the band. They call Daddy “Stix” because he’s skinny, and because he plays the drums. Sometimes at night I lie awake and hear him drumming in his room. Tat-tat-tat, like rain on a tin roof, like the top of a shed Anna and I once hid in. I listen hard to hear the sound in my thoughts. Normally, it brings Daddy closer, but tonight my thoughts won’t work right.

  The scratching noises don’t scare me anymore, but I’m still cold. I roll onto my side and peek at Anna, whose face, for once, doesn’t look all twisted. It’s good to see her sleeping so hard and not waking up because of horrible nightmares, the noisy wind, scratchy trees, or skittering rats.

  A couple of nights ago, Anna and I buried one we found in the alley. Even though it was dead, its bright little beady eyes glowed in the moonlight. The rat couldn’t have been dead long. Its fur was still soft, yet it lay there like a clump of loosened dirt.

  We lined a box with soft leaves. The coffin was a shoe box we’d saved full of treasures, including the picture of Mama, which I took out and put in my jacket. Then we gave the rat a name. No one should die without a name. I wanted to name it Sid because I thought that was a great name for a rat, but Anna gave it another name.

  “Hope it’s not dead.”

  “It is,” I said.

  “Hope we can fix it.”

  “We can’t.”

  “Bury Hope,” she murmured.

  And we did. We buried Hope with all the love we could muster.

  The ceremony was a short one. Anna scooped dirt over the box while I sang a good-bye song I made up right on the spot. When the last scoop of dirt was patted down, we made a ring of small rocks around the lumpy mound. Then we marched back to the house, sad for Hope but happy that we could send the rat on its new journey in a nice box with two somebodies missing it.

  I climb out of bed, telling myself with each step that everything’s going to be okay. The wooden floor is cold and sends tiny shivers up my legs. I walk faster. I try to pull the window all the way shut, but it won’t budge. A chilly breeze swirls around my nightshirt.

  A movement on the glass makes me jump. My heart beats faster. Is someone outside peeking in after all?

  When I look again, I see that it’s only me in the glass and feel silly at being scared of my own face. Seeing myself in the glass makes me feel better—like I’m not alone.

  Sometimes reflections look like they’re supposed to—color and all. Other times, or at other angles, I can only make out shadows. I lean close to the cold glass for a better look. In the shadows, my hair looks inky black. I look different with such dark hair. My hair is really brown like toast. In the reflection, my eyes are round, black circles, like holes in a skull, instead of sky blue. I remember Daddy saying that when God made me, He put a piece of that blue sky in my eyes so I would see great things.

  I lean against the dusty sill, hugging my arms around me. Sometimes the dark feels warm and safe, other times cold and scary. Still, one thing never changes about the dark: I can always count on it to be there. I just wish Anna and I didn’t have to be alone in it so much. I cross the room and crawl back into bed, roll up into a tight ball, and tuck my feet under me—forcing myself not to snuggle up against my sister for warmth. I’m sure that if even one cold toe touches Anna, she’ll wake up with a jolt, swinging her arms, and she needs to sleep.

  Even though she’s two years older than me, I sometimes feel like her older sister. I have to watch over her, especially when Dad
dy’s gone. Which makes me wonder, Where can he be? What if something bad has happened to him? I’m thinking a car crash, but he doesn’t have a car—though he could have gotten mugged. I count the marks on the wall. It’s been seven nights since we saw him last.

  My eyes sting from tears, but I hold them in. Crying doesn’t bring him back. At least, it never has before.

  I wrap my arm around my stuffed black-and-white cat and listen to Anna breathe. Daddy said the toy looked more like a cow than a cat, so I named it Cowwy. Daddy found Cowwy lying in the street, dirty, missing a button for an eye. He brought him home and gave him to me for my birthday. Cowwy still has only one eye, but we cleaned him up.

  I roll over and look at the hole where the door is, hoping Daddy will suddenly fill it, but the doorway is empty and the hall is dark. He’ll come back. He promised.

  I close my eyes and picture Daddy up on the stage, half hidden in smoke. Fat people, skinny people, happy people, sad people—all kinds fill the room. The lights dim and the crowd settles. Daddy sits behind his drums in a big black felt cowboy hat, jeans, a faded denim shirt, and scuffed black boots. He closes his eyes and sings a tune about a love gone wrong. His sad songs always make me want to cry.

  I start to sing one of his songs in my head when a soft thump, like a door closing, jars my thoughts back to the room, the shadows, and the noises that are right and wrong. Something about this noise doesn’t sound right. I sit up in bed and listen hard. Maybe Daddy’s home after all! He does that sometimes. Slipping in when he isn’t drinking, thumping and bumping to his room when he is. But this wasn’t thumping and bumping. This was just one soft thump.

  “Daddy?” I try to keep my voice low so I don’t wake Anna, but loud enough to carry into the next room.

  “Daddy, is that you?”

  No answer.

  I roll from the mattress, cross the room, and peek out the door. Shadows dance, but nothing else in the next room moves. Something about the air smells different—sweeter, maybe—but I can’t place it. I pause at Daddy’s bedroom door. No light. No sound. I peek around the doorway at the mattress on the floor, hoping to see a familiar lump under the sheets. No lump. No Daddy.

  “Is that you?” I whisper again, knowing no answer will come but still hoping one might. I go back and flop down on the bed, wanting to feel the heat from Daddy’s body on the mattress, telling me he’d just been there—like maybe he’d gotten up to go to the bathroom. But the mattress is cold.

  I grab one corner of the sheet and start twisting it into a rope. It’s a game I play with myself. I call it the hugging game. When the sheet is fully twisted, I wrap a rope-hug around me as tight as I can. The hug feels good, almost like Daddy is here, holding me in his big arms. The mattress is still—not gently rising and falling like Daddy’s chest. No sound of his heartbeat inside the pillow against my ear—just the faint smell of smoke from Daddy’s hair and skin.

  My throat tightens, and my mouth twitches like it does right before I’m going to cry. I bite my lip hard to chase the tears away.

  “Daddy home?” Anna’s voice startles me. For one thing, she hardly ever talks, and for another, I thought she was asleep. But here she is, leaning sleepily against the doorway.

  “Not yet.” I undo the rope-hug and pat the mattress beside me.

  Anna shuffles across the room and sits on the edge of the bed. I hear tiny snaps as she bites her fingernails. She’s lost somewhere in her head. We sit together in the dark, thinking about things, when suddenly three loud raps on the front door make us jump.

  I reach out and cling to Anna.

  CHAPTER 2

  THREE MORE SHARP KNOCKS RATTLE the walls. I grip Anna’s hand tightly, afraid to let go. At first I figure that’s why she starts to cry, but, really, she’s more scared than I am.

  “Shhh, it’s okay.” I try to sound like I mean it, even though I’m not feeling one bit like anything’s okay. “It might be the wind knocking.”

  A man’s voice drifts into the room. “Sara?”

  Even Anna knows the wind doesn’t talk, let alone say my name. It isn’t Daddy’s voice, either.

  “I’ll go see who it is.” I pry my fingers free from Anna’s grip and start for the door. Anna follows, close as a shadow behind me.

  When I get to the front door, I press my ear against it. The wood is cold and hard. Still, I know anger can come through that wood and splinter it in one easy blow. No bad words. No pounding fists on the door. Just another loud knock, knock, knock.

  “Who is it?” I put on my bravest voice.

  “It’s the police, Sara. Open the door.”

  I look at Anna, remembering how Daddy always said not to open the door for anyone. Anna looks scared enough to crumple. I stretch up on my tiptoes, cup my hand to her ear, and whisper, “He could be trying to trick us into opening the door—saying he’s the police when really he isn’t.” But another voice, a woman’s, sounds familiar.

  “Sara, dear, it’s Ruth Craig from Child Protective Services. We need you to open the door, sweetie.”

  I remember her. She’s the caseworker who took us to the Cottages right after Mama left. The Cottages are a place where kids who’ve been separated from their parents stay until the judge at the court decides what to do with them. Daddy had gone out drinking and time kind of got away from him. But he came back and got us within a week.

  “Where’s my dad?” I ask, finding Anna’s hand in the dark.

  The woman’s voice comes through the wood again. “Your dad had to go to a special place for a while, Sara, but he wanted us to come and get you.”

  I know the special place she’s talking about is jail.

  “What did he do?” I glance at Anna’s face, lost in the shadows.

  “He got into a bad fight at the club where his band was playing,” Mrs. Craig explains. “Sara, please. I know you and Anna must be hungry. Wouldn’t you like something to eat?”

  They’ll try to trick you with food, Daddy said. Don’t open the door. So even though the thought of food makes my stomach rumble, I gently tug on Anna’s hand and lead her into the kitchen, pointing to the back door. I press a finger to my lips.

  “Run away?” Anna’s eyes widen. I nod solemnly. Even though it hadn’t worked every time we’d tried it before, it seemed like the only thing to do.

  “Open the door, Sara!” The man’s voice grows louder.

  Anna gives me a panicked look and then races to our room and returns moments later with Abby, her doll, and Cowwy. “Can’t leave them,” she murmurs. She’s right. I hug Cowwy and grab my jacket. Something falls out of the torn lining.

  Mama’s letter!

  I pick it up and stuff it back into my jacket, then grab Anna’s hand.

  Usually when we open the back screen door, it makes an awful screech, wild and shrill. But tonight, with the wind wailing, the screech isn’t much louder than a squeak. The door closes behind us with a soft thoop. I tighten my grip on Anna’s hand and give it a tug. Crouched down, we cross the weed-choked backyard, past dented trash cans and a stack of old tires covered with giant spiderwebs.

  The alley is no more than one car wide and has deep tire tracks on either side. We sneak past nine houses—four on one side, five on the other, most with peeling paint.

  When we finally reach the end of the alley, we turn the corner onto Elm Street, slip past the shoe store, and stop in front of Big Eddie’s Bakery. The sweet, toasty smell of doughnuts makes my stomach bark with hunger. I breathe in deep and swallow, mad at myself for not remembering to grab a piece of paper towel before we sneaked out of the house. I could have stuffed it in my pocket. Big Ed, as everyone calls him, is a fat, sweaty man who looks more black than brown against his big white apron. I wait until he pulls a tray of fresh-baked doughnuts from the oven—his back is turned—and then tug on Anna’s arm.

  “Where we going?” Her voice shivers. I know she’s scared. We duck behind a Dumpster that smells both sweet and rotten-trash sour and wait for cars to go
by. One slows down. It’s a police car with a bright light searching the sides of the street. I feel Anna stiffen when the light hits the Dumpster. We curl up so tight that my head almost touches my toes.

  He must not see us because he drives right by, and I let out a deep breath. I tap on Anna’s back and motion for her to go. She doesn’t move. I tug her hand harder, and she tips over.

  “Come on, Anna. They’ll catch us if we don’t get out of here.”

  Finally, she uncurls and stands up.

  “Which way?”

  “This way.” I make my voice as strong as a whisper can sound. Anna relaxes and follows, this time without holding us back.

  CHAPTER 3

  RIDING DOWN A STREET WITH a caseworker driving us to a new foster home is a lot different from walking it in the dark. At first, everything looks like I remember it. I guide Anna this way and that to avoid dogs that might give us away, but then we hit streets I don’t know. I turn down one that looks quieter than the others. Someone yells from an open window. Behind us, a group of men stand around a car, smoking and blasting music. Another car drives up, and everyone starts yelling.

  One of the streetlights is burned out, and we duck into the shadows. When the men start throwing fists in the air and shouting bad words, I force Anna to cross the street to get us as far away from them as I can. I drag her up close to the houses so we can’t be seen so easily from the street. Bushes reach out and scratch us. Even the ones with flowers on them aren’t friendly at night.

  “Daddy there?”

  I look back. Anna looks too.

  “No. Daddy’s not with them.”

  That I know. Just like I know Daddy’s at the same place these guys are going to be if the fighting gets any worse. But I don’t tell her that.

  “Come on, Anna. Don’t look back.”

  After at least a thousand steps through dirt, rocks, weeds, and grass, we reach a clearing.

  Anna points excitedly. “The fountain!” She races for it.