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The aging man shrugs. “We’re just worried about her. She’s having a hard time adjusting.”
“She kind of reminds us of you at that age,” Lian adds, deliberately pulling on my already threadbare heartstrings. “We think she might respond better to someone who’s been through something similar.”
I squeeze her hand. “I’ll see how I can help.”
It takes two solid knocks on my old bedroom door before the girl opens up.
“Thalia?” I ask quietly when she peeks at me through the crack. She swings the door wider and stalks back to her bed, virtually dismissing me. “Can I come in?”
She shrugs a single shoulder and picks her sketchbook up. I decide that’s a ‘yes’.
Walking into her room, I gaze around the sparse space, noting that she hasn’t done a whole lot of unpacking. She’s living out of a suitcase, just like me. I get that. It’s a big step.
Back when I moved in here, it took me almost six months to finish unpacking my two measly suitcases and stick a few boy band posters on the wall. I was always waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me. Why unpack if I’m just going to be shipped off to a new place at a moment’s notice?
I sit down on the end of the bed, near Thalia but careful to give her enough space. “The Wangs are good people,” I start.
The girl rolls her eyes, not bothering to spare me a glance.
Ah. The sweet joys of adolescence.
“It’s okay if you don’t believe me. Give them a chance, and you’ll see for yourself soon.”
She responds with nothing but silence.
I carry on. “Believe it or not, but I was right here in your shoes not that many years ago. Right in this exact room…” My voice trails off as I look around. “This place looks kind of sad and empty without my boy band posters now.”
Thalia snorts, finally looking up from the sketchbook in her lap. “You? You were a foster kid?”
“Yes. Since I was eight years old.”
She shakes her head. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Why?” I ask softly.
She lets out a rough sigh. “You can’t possibly know what it’s like to feel invisible. You’re a reality TV star. Everyone is talking about you. You’re practically famous.”
My eyebrow cocks up in surprise that she recognizes me from the show. But the surprise quickly wears off. My face is now plastered on trashy tabloid magazines, after all. Good grief.
“Looks can be deceiving.” I feel that familiar old ache beneath my breastbone. “I never knew my dad. And my mom, she’s…she’s a…an addict. She’d leave home and not bother to come back for days at a time. Eventually, I got taken away from her. In all honesty, she didn’t really put up a fight.” This is still really hard to talk about so I summarize it all as emotionlessly as I can.
I sit silently for a moment, waiting to see if Thalia will tell me her story or ask questions about mine. She doesn’t. She just sits there, chewing on the corner of her thumbnail. I decide not to push it.
Scooping my hair over one shoulder, I turn to face her fully. “Trust me, Thalia. I know it’s hard feeling like no one sees you. It’s hard feeling like you don’t matter to anyone. But that feeling won’t last forever. Once you’re an adult, you can be anybody and anything you want. You just have to hang tight in the meantime.”
She nods, her eyes beginning to flood with tears. “It is hard,” she whispers.
I’m fighting back tears, too.“I know. But you’re strong, and the Wangs are special. They really do care. You think I’d come back to hang out with them seven years later if they were jerks?” I ask with a watery smile.
She shakes her head, swallowing visibly. I think she’s starting to believe me, and her vulnerability hits me in the chest.
I wrap my arm around Thalia in a firm side hug, surprised when she leans into me. We sit there in a comfortable silence for several moments, before I pull out my phone.
“Can I give you my number? We should go for ice cream sometime.”
She grimaces at me. “Ice cream? I’m not a baby.”
And there goes my ‘cool factor’, spinning the drain again.
