“Well, I guess you could say I don’t have one. I mean, I don’t even know if my mom’s alive, and I never met my dad. No one ever chooses to end up like this … like me … Poverty fuels the whole system. Anyone who says otherwise is fucking stupid. People who can’t make ends meet just end up coping in whatever way they can. No one can take care of kids when they can’t even figure out how to survive themselves. But no one helps them. They just come down and take their kids away, and that doesn’t help them. It just makes their lives even harder ’cause now they’re dying both inside and out.

“Then they throw you in a group home, which is just a modern orphanage. You’re under constant surveillance by the social workers and psychologists and courts, but none of them really care about you. You’re just one big charity case that most people take advantage of so they can feel good about themselves. It’s nothing but rules and regulations instead of love. Some foster parents are OK – the good ones just want you to behave yourself and act like everything is fine now – but a lot of them are even worse and more abusive than the parents they take kids away from to begin with. No one hears you or cares what you say you want or need. They decide your life for you and they tell you you’re gonna see your parents again, but we all know it’s a goddamn lie. And when you’re like eighteen, you just age out of the system with no support and no skills, so a lot of ’em just end up repeating the same cycle. They follow in their parents’ footsteps because there aren’t any other footsteps to follow. The entire system is fucked.”

Aria told him the truth about her mother and Travis, the truth about the state taking her away, the truth of what it had been like in foster care and group homes, and the truth of what had made her run away.

Omkar did not break his focus from her. Instead, he leaned toward her, letting the surges of painful truth after painful truth hit him so as to not leave her alone in them. When her confession came to an end, he held her head against his chest and said, “I’m so sorry.”

There was nothing more to say. Nothing he could say would have been good enough. So he let the comfort of his body do the talking and Aria let him hold her. Though she didn’t cry, she felt some small child within her crying. It was crying with the release of finally being contained between the protective walls of a person who would claim her.