Zola hugged me around my middle, and I let her and felt my throat swelling tight, so I turned to the newest kid, a boy whose arrival this morning made my being here untenable—no more room at the inn; he’s younger and needs it more; our ages and genders can’t share a bedroom—who did not hug me because he is ten years old and scared and also doesn’t know me, so I waved to him, alone on the porch swing.

I let Zola squeeze me a few seconds more. I put my hand on her head for a moment, then took the porch steps two at a time.

Joellen popped the hatch of her worn-out Subaru, the car I’ve ridden in since I was still in a five-point car seat, and I tossed in my suitcase. Leaning across the passenger seat, she—small white lady, permed brown curls framing her round, middle-aged but unlined face—unlocked my door and smiled up at me. She’s shorter than me, and I’m barely five five. She sits on a pillow to drive. “Ready?” She smiled again.

“What’s a bad penny?” I asked. “Why would it always turn up?”

She took her hand off the wheel. “Who said that?”

“No one. Just wondering.”

“Well. It’s like…bad decisions come back to haunt you. Or a bad person keeps showing up where they’re not wanted. Like that. Why?”

I looked forward to the road, not back at the house. Not at Zola alone on the porch. She’ll be okay. She’ll be fine. She’ll go home soon.

One more year, starting today. All I have to do is stay unnoticed and unadopted until my eighteenth birthday and I’m free.

“Let’s go,” I said, and buckled in.

Chapter Two

AT THE SEATTLE FERRY DOCK, Joellen bought a ticket for one car, two passengers. She saw me eyeball the ticket and passed it to me. “Here you go, Blackbird.” I put it in my pocket and felt the thing I’d taken from the pillowcase, a tangled necklace chain I worked to unknot. My first ferry ride. A year from today I will buy my own ticket to go anywhere I want, anytime I want. Joellen pulled into the line of tourists’ and commuters’ cars leaving Seattle to cross the Puget Sound, thirty minutes over the blue-black water to what Wikipedia calls “a forested island the size of Manhattan, with a population equal to 0.4 percent of Manhattan’s population.” Thirty minutes from Seattle, where I’ve lived nearly my entire life, but I’ve never been to any of the islands because what foster parent has the time or gumption to haul a bunch of kids on a ferry across the Sound for fun?