There was the ghost of the kitchen table where plates slopped with generic, no-brand mac and cheese had conveyor-belted across the days and nights, a neon orange blur.

I’m trapped here. There’s never enough food.

Here the counter edge Danny shoved Andre into, earning him seven stitches across the forehead.

I don’t want this life. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask for any of it.

And across in the living room, the spot where Papa Z reclined in his armchair, remote in hand, Coors nestled in his crotch.

No one cares. If you don’t exist, then it doesn’t matter, right?

Evan walked over and stepped on the floorboards two feet inside the threshold. Sure enough, they gave off a creak.

He and the boys had done a lot of sneaking in and out of the Pride House Group Home.

Staring at the ragged carpet of the living room, Evan saw a specter of the scene that had played out between these walls so many years ago: the Mystery Man talking to Papa Z about the boys, weighing pros and cons, a chef at a butcher counter. And Evan and the boys spying from down the hall, elbowing and whispering and wondering what the hell it all meant.

In the hall the det cord wrapping an exposed beam in the mold-eaten drywall was a few inches off the stress point. Probably wouldn’t make much of a difference. Next to the gaping hole, the wallpaper seam bubbled out. Evan grabbed a lifted tab and peeled it away, revealing a dagger of the old wallpaper, an awful plaid pattern that Tyrell had christened White Man Pants. Evan stared a moment, the memory vibrating his cells.

Then on down the hall to the bedroom he’d lived in for two and a half years, a submarine-berthing area crammed with bodies. Closing his eyes, he pictured the bunk beds lined side to side like livestock pens.

You should see how they keep us here. Like cattle, all lined up.

He stepped inside the room. It smelled the same—rot, dust, desperation. He crossed to where his mattress used to lie on the floor. The other foster kids would trample him half inadvertently when they hopped out of their bunks. He looked at the ceiling, found the crack that forked into a lightning bolt. The one he’d gaze up at in the dark like it was some kind of wishing star and wonder who he was.

Where are you from?

I don’t know. I don’t remember.

Do you have a family? Parents?

I don’t … I don’t know. It’s been so long.

Machinery revved up outside. A jackhammer screamed into asphalt. Gears clanked, a bulldozer lurching forward, blade lifted like a metal claw.

Will you help me? Will you?

Evan had sworn a promise to his twelve-year-old self: I’ll get to you. Here he was. But what did he want?