“I don’t know.” I did know. But did we have to go over again why school was impossible?

“The state will pay your tuition. Community college lets you transfer directly to a university, and you can still work a part-time job. You have excellent grades and teachers love you, you can apply for financial aid and scholarships, you have work experience, volunteer hours up the wazoo, personal and professional references; use my address; I’ll put you on my phone plan. Next.”

“Tuition is pointless if I can’t pay rent. Loans ruin your life. I can’t owe anything to anyone. Ever.”

“Loans let you get an education so you can get a job to pay the loans back.”

“In theory.”

“Okay, yes, but—”

“I’m not your problem,” I said. “I’m mine.”

“You are not a problem. You are an infuriating person, and you damn well know that in Washington State Joellen can apply to get your foster status extended until you’re twenty-one years old. You keep your health insurance, tuition is paid for, or I can cosign for loans and you can stay in one place rent-free. With me.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I can. I will.”

“Francine…”

“Or, I could adopt you.”

The air left the room. And my lungs.

“Muiriel. There are people all around you now who wish you would stay. Not to trap you or hold you back, just—you need to breathe. You need time in one place to be still and quiet so when it’s time to go you’re really ready. You’ll be on your own for the rest of your life, three more years is nothing—but it could make everything possible for you. Let us help you. Let me help you.”

I pushed my chair back and put Terry Johnson on the floor.

She promised. She said she wouldn’t try to adopt me. If I stayed all year I would be done, her last kid and my last foster parent, released from care and free to go. She promised me.

“Muiriel.”

“I think I need to go rest for a while. Is that okay?” I did not wait for her to answer. I took the stairs two at a time and without thinking or understanding why, I slammed the door shut. My first door slam.

All my life I’d listened to kids do this. Slamming doors are birdsong in a foster house—always there, a kind of background music. The attic was warm. Stifling. I climbed on the bed and shoved the window open wide. Down on the lawn, directly below the window and the bat house where they dropped their poop, always oddly shiny from digested iridescent insect wings, was a crowded patch of the most beautiful wildflowers I’d ever seen. Lavender, cosmos, impatiens, ranunculus.

Grow where you are planted.