It didn’t matter at first. Actually it was a relief; who wants to live in a tiny apartment in the shittiest part of a shitty town with two overgrown teenage junkies? It was actually peaceful, in a way, even with the chaos of the group home, the kids who were just using it as a fucked-up sorority house before they were old enough to be sent to big-girl prison for their thefts and arson and assaults. I knew how to be quiet, and for the most part they left me alone. One of the social workers didn’t, but I figured him out quickly enough. He had these stubby hands like lumps of putty with crusty red scabs where he chewed his fingers. I started pretending that I liked it and he lost interest. I went to school on most days and visited my parents for a bit in the afternoon, even though I wasn’t technically allowed to go over there. I cleaned up a little, gave them money when I had any. We tried not to make a big deal about it.

In the group home, there was always someone watching you, monitoring, compiling reports, keeping track of your “progress” in a file. There was a camera above every door and one in the common room. If you were in the bathroom too long, pretty soon someone would knock. There was always someone looking at you, but this weirdly constant gaze would always look away long enough to let bad things happen from time to time. I started to notice cameras in town, outside shopping centers and in parking lots, and I felt, not really paranoid, just annoyed, I guess. I had a sense of being looked at all the time, someone watching and waiting for you to do something wrong. Looking at you instead of looking out for you.