This teacher, as the seasons changed, was not really into holiday celebrations but was obsessed with examining axle tilt. She was psyched about every living thing experiencing light from our sun but in many different ways, depending on where we lived on Earth, and on the time of year. The stars we slept beneath in Seattle were not the stars over children in China or Australia. Our winter was not Brazil’s winter.

I loved this. I loved it intensely.

Winter holidays are different in every foster house, but axle tilt. That is magic we all live beneath, whether we feel like it or not. I could walk outside and see the light and stars of each season, every celebration, the same way each year. Tradition, no matter where I lived or with whom.

In the very beginning, the calls to Joellen about moving me to a new house came from the parents, not me. Outside, searching the spring or autumn sky to find the constellations on the worksheet my teacher gave me, I accidentally walked far and for long stretches of time, never scared because outside was familiar; I couldn’t be very far from wherever I was supposed to be. By the time Joellen came to get me, I’d have been walking nearly two hours, past shops, through neighborhoods and into parks, up and down the hills of streets and homeless encampments, along the waterfront and the fish markets. I was never lost. I just wasn’t sure the way back to each house.

“You have to ask first,” Joellen pleaded. “Tell them where you’re going.”

Except I wasn’t going to a place. I was walking to be walking under the sky and the sun and the stars.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m always somewhere.”

She found me, for the third time in as many weeks, at the ferry dock watching seagulls float in the circus colors of the black water reflecting the light of the giant Ferris wheel beside the city aquarium. Too much light to see many stars, but autumn was on its way.

“Muir,” she said, sitting beside me. “We need to figure this out.”

“Okay,” I said, beside her on the splintery dock wood.

She put a thing, small and cold, into my hands. “You need to learn to use this. Keep track of the time, use a map, and you’ll never be late or lost. Can you promise?”

Little brass compass. I held it to the sky, aligned with the dim stars that made Cygnus the Swan, tilting south.