With each new placement, her social worker had told her she had to straighten up. Work harder. Be better. No more funny business. “This is better than the alternative,” Debbie had often said, but Maya had always wondered about that. What if the alternative was actually better?

And now here she was, right in the middle of that alternative. On her own with no one behind her to make sure she didn’t fall. That’s how Debbie had explained it: “You’re eighteen, Maya. You’re an adult. I can’t force you to stay in the system, but understand this: If you leave and end up on the street, no one will be there to help you. You’ll be on your own.”

Maya sniffed. I’m not on the street, Debbie. It might be a rented room that smelled like old shoes and dead shrimp, but it was hers. At least for now. She’d always taken her future in small bites, but at this point she was down to a day or two at a time.

Maya shifted and studied the photo in her hands. It had grown soft at the edges, its colors dulled by age and her own fingerprints. She’d slept with it under her pillow every night since her grandmother Maria had died, a childish attempt to keep the woman’s memory close, etched in Maya’s mind so it wouldn’t leave her too. So far, it had worked. Though after eleven years the memories were more like flashes of color and sound, quick flutters of sensation: soft hands and softer words. A long blue-green skirt that whispered when she moved. The quick darts of her hands as she flipped her cards over one by one.

The photo—Maria with her head thrown back and eyes closed in laughter—was the only thing Maya had from her birth family, the people who had given her life and breath, her wide-set eyes and the freckles that scattered across her nose as soon as the weather grew warm. She had nothing tangible from her mother, who’d left long before Maya had made memories, but it was just as well. At least Maria hadn’t chosen to leave Maya behind. She just died. No choice in the matter.

When Maya had finally convinced Debbie she wanted out, Debbie had taken pity on her. She’d bought Maya a car—nearly as old as Maya, with 197,000 miles on the gauge and a suspicious stain on the back seat—and given her an envelope with $500 inside. “It’s the best I can do,” she’d said. “What can I say, Maya? I really want you to make it.”

Debbie didn’t do that for everyone. Maya had known other girls assigned to Debbie, and when they’d had enough of the system that routinely chewed kids up and spit them out limp and ragged and angry, Debbie had sent them on their way with a farewell and a sigh of relief. But Debbie had grown to like Maya, despite her nimble hands that made quick work of taking things that didn’t belong to her, the main reason she’d been booted from ten homes in eleven years.