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You.
You must live in spite of all this.
Smash the fun house mirror
Stop the crush smoke squeeze choke
Be you in all your terrible things
All your lonely things
All your silences and screams
Be a human on this earth,
Unafraid
Of your heart-shaped glory.
Day Eighteen
They still haven’t letus outside. Tracy and Phil and Fran take turns talking to all of us, one by one. We eat breakfast, we clean up, they say we can go into the activity room, the gym, or our rooms, but nowhere else. We can’t even go to the animal pens, which seems to upset Charlotte.
Tracy is waiting for me in her office.
“Have you heard anything?” is the first thing I say as I flop into one of the easy chairs. “It’s been a long time now.”
She shakes her head. “Just what I know. They have a search team out, still looking. Holly didn’t say anything to you?”
“No,” I said. “She seemed to be doing all right. She said her fosters agreed to come.”
A dark look passes across Tracy’s face, but just as quickly as it appeared, she wipes it away.
“What?” I press her. “What was that look? You know something. Tell me.”
“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” she says in a low voice, pushing a pen across her desk. “They weren’t going to come. They might have told her that, but we spoke a few days ago and they were in the process of relinquishing her.”
“Relinquishing her?” My voice is a squeak. “What does that mean?”
Tracy licks her lips. “Giving her back, essentially. She’d have to go back to the group home and wait for another family.”
I stare at her, a pit opening up in my stomach. “Like she’s some dog they can just send back to the pound? That’s hideous. She’s achild.Do you even know what she’s been—”
Tracy holds up a hand. “I know what her background is, yes.”
I stand up and pace around her office. “Well, we should call the police on them. We should do something. They can’t justdothat.”
“I can’t do anything, Bella. When you’re here, I do my best. When you’re beyond the compound, it’s out of my hands.”
“So when we get out, we’re just nothing to you? We just,floof,disappear?”
I’m raising my voice.
“Bella, take a breath. Sit back down.”
“No,” I say.
“Bella.” A warning tone to her voice. “You have Fire in two days. You don’t want to lose that. You’ve earned that step in the program. Think very carefully about what you’re doing right now.”
