“Muiriel, thank you,” Francine said. “I’ll take them to the girls I volunteer with; we’ve got a meeting tomorrow. When you’re up for it, let’s go grocery shopping. Make sure we’ve got food you like in the house. Okay?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“You sure you’re all right?” She frowned up at me.

“Just tired.” This was exactly the kind of attention I was trying to avoid; in a house full of kids, I could go take a nap and skip eating for days if I felt like it, and no one would even notice. Not that I would; I love food more than life. But I mean, I could. If no one was paying attention.

“All right. Well, plenty in the fridge if you wake up and want something. Will you be able to sleep?”

I nodded.

“Phone’s in the kitchen if you want to call Joellen. See you in the morning.”

“Yep.” I climbed the steps to the lonely room two at a time.

“Oh, and, Muiriel?”

I stopped and turned back, Francine still looking up at me.

“Unpack.”

I nodded. “Good night,” I said, and closed the door.

Everything I own could fit in the top drawer of the big dresser.

I shooed the bats and shut the window.

It wasn’t even five o’clock, but I unzipped my suitcase and put it on the floor, took my toiletry kit to the bathroom, where I brushed my teeth, washed my face, put on my pajamas, put everything in the kit, took it to the bedroom, and placed it into the suitcase. Shoes in their bag in the suitcase, dirty clothes in a plastic grocery bag beside the socks in the suitcase, the tangled chain in the pillowcase of useless treasures tucked in safe, all closed and zippered and snapped up tight in the suitcase. I lay on the beautiful quilt on the big bed. Left side.

I pulled The Wilderness World from my suitcase and read in bed until the sun turned the room gold, and faded to dark. Then I read by key chain flashlight and tried not to think about Zola. When it’s time to leave, it’s time to leave. And when I go, no one comes with me. Otherwise I won’t make it.

It’s not like I’m dead inside. It’s that I am allergic to manufactured, insincere emotion. A lifetime of people saying one thing but doing the opposite has inoculated me, and now I understand how to survive with my freedom and sanity intact until I’m eighteen: I can have friends but can’t let myself “life or death” depend on them or let them “life or death” depend on me. I can go out with boys but not date them. I can have foster parents but cannot let them adopt me.