The man and woman whose house it was seemed really wealthy; they had two grown children away attending colleges with one-word names, and we could never tell if they were fostering kids now because they were lonely for their own kids or bored or wanted attention or what. The dad was barely around, and when he was, he only ever said some variation of Hey, I know! How about you kids show some gratitude once in a while, see how that works out for you. He and the mom loved rhetorical sarcasm, and they both seemed to confuse foster care with juvenile detention. “Well,” the mom often said to the kids with a smile, “that kind of attitude isn’t going to get you back home with your parents anytime soon, now, is it?” But the house was very clean and fancy, warm on cold nights, with nice blankets on the beds. They had really good food delivered from delis and restaurants all over the city, and, best of all, they paid for school lunch accounts, as much as we wanted. I got two cartons of chocolate milk every day, just because I could.

The two other girls in the house were only a little younger than me, not related, both on weekly visitation schedules with parents, and neither situation was going well. One was visiting her mom in county jail; the other had both parents at home. Every time either one returned from a visit, she would be angry or crying or exhausted, or all three. I felt horrible for them and wanted badly to know them, comfort and protect them, which I knew would be dangerous for my own psyche—so I learned to stay after school and take my long, long walks on days Bio Visit was written on the wall calendar in the kitchen.

I had no idea what these visits entailed, but watching how it wrecked them made me—again and still—glad I did not have parents; from what I could see, having parents meant nothing but soul-crushing court-ordered visits and getting dragged in and out of foster care year after year. No, thanks. And all the while these girls got yanked around, no one who was in any position to help them seemed to be able to, and the girls’ response to this bullshit was bullshit of their own: fighting, and screaming tantrums, and things thrown—shoes and lamps, sometimes food. When I got back from my walks, I just picked up the wreckage of our shared room and helped the foster parents clean up any damage done to the living room or kitchen, and by then the girls were usually asleep, so I could go lie down, too.