Chapter Text
“Hey, Raph, race you!” Mikey exclaimed.
“I am not letting you win this time!”
I stepped to the edge of the sidewalk to let my brothers dash past. They ran until reaching a gate to a yard five houses from where they began. Mikey arrived first, opened the gate and was about to win. Then Raph caught up and shoved him, causing the smaller boy to fall backward. He landed on his butt, unhurt, but upset.
“Hey! That was mean!” Mikey said.
Already halfway up the walk, Raph stopped and turned around. “I barely touched you!” He said.
As usual, the daily competition had evolved into an argument. I sprinted the last steps and reached down to help Mikey up. While leaning down to do so, someone bumped into me from behind.
“Oof. Donnie, watch where you’re going.”
My brother, brown hair sticking up behind the book he was holding, said, “Sorry.” without bothering to look up.
“Raph, you pushed me on purpose!” Mikey accused.
“I...it’s not my fault! You were in the way and I couldn’t stop that fast!”
“You jus’ didn’t wanna lose!”
“Hey, boys. Please don’t tell me we’re starting another afternoon this way.”
The door to the townhouse the yard belonged to had opened, and Mrs. Tracey had stepped out onto the porch.
“Raph pushed me!” said Mikey.
Mrs. Tracey shook her head, causing her dark red ponytail to tremble. “Alright, you three, Leo, Donnie, Mikey, head on inside. Raphael and I will be in in a moment.”
The house’s interior was cool and smelled of chocolate. Mikey immediately dropped his backpack and dashed down the hall to the kitchen at the back of the house. Still entirely absorbed in his book, Donnie sat down on the carpeted stairs to the left of the entryway. Stopping only to open the glass door which separated the living room from the hall, I followed my youngest brother to the kitchen.
Warm yellow light leaked through three small windows onto a cluttered counter. Other than the comfortable atmosphere of the room, the reason it was a favourite part of the house was arranged on the square table. Fresh cookies, which could be counted on to be there nearly every day after getting home from school. Mikey was already devouring one and reaching for a second.
I lifted a stack of heavy books off a chair and took their place. Loose papers, covered in notes and crayon drawings, eliminated the need for a tablecloth. I leaned across these to grab a cookie and then settled back to wait for the familiar creak of the front door. When it opened a few seconds later, the sound was followed by Mrs. Tracey’s yell of, “Who’s backpack’s on the floor?” Then, in a quieter tone, “Come on boys. Donnie, you can read just as well in the kitchen.”
“Oops.” Mikey slid off his chair and ran to retrieve his backpack. He was fast enough to get back just behind everyone else. “These cookies are awesome!” He said, skidding past the table to grab his third.
Mrs. Tracey laughed. “They should be. You helped me make the dough last night, remember?”
“Oh, right! Hey, can we go check if any stray cats found the food we put out?”
“Why not? Unless any of you want to come, we’ll be right back.”
Mikey’s curly blond hair bounced as he scampered to the back screen door and ran through, leaving it swinging. More methodically, Mrs. Tracey followed.
The evening passed lazily. When Mr. Kevin got home, we ate supper, then all ventured into the living room where our foster parents helped us with homework. Not unexpectedly, Donnie was done first and Mikey was still struggling by the time the rest of us had moved on to other activities. It was a good thing Mrs. Tracey was a second-grade teacher - she seemed to have eternal patience for helping him. While the setting sun darkened the room, it slowly emptied, as Mr. Kevin and Donnie went out to the backyard garage, where they restored vehicles for fun. Raph wandered downstairs to where Mrs. Tracey still kept the old instruments from when she was a teen. A few minutes later, we could hear the noisy bang of drums through the floor. I stayed in the living room and dragged a heavy cardboard box off the bottom shelf of a bookcase. It was full of comics, which Mr. Kevin had been collecting since he was my age, and any of us were allowed to read them whenever we wanted.
The night followed the same course as most nights of the last four years. Ever since we’d moved in with the Earls. It was the best foster home we’d ever had. And it was about to change.
One day, Mr. Kevin came home and wearily asked Mrs. Tracey if they could talk, upstairs in their room. They didn’t know that we could hear everything they said through the living room vents. It was something I’d discovered by accident a couple years before, and even though I tried not to use it too much, on this day I had a feeling I’d want to hear what they said.
Raph was already standing on the couch, as close to the vent as he could be. It was almost like a hobby for him. Somehow, Donnie and Mikey found out, too, and all four of us were crowding together, yelling in whispers as we each struggled to hear. Through the muted commotion, we heard enough, and it was less of a surprise when the Earl’s told us about it a week later. Mr. Kevin had been offered a job out of state. What was surprising was that they had accepted the offer, especially because Mrs. Tracey cried while her husband explained everything.
It was two months until the end of the school year, and they stayed until then. Summer had begun, but where normally we would have been planning trips to the beach or the zoo, now we were packing for a move to the group home in Manhattan.
There was more crying the day the group home people came to pick us up. We all cried, even Raph, though he tried even harder than I did to hide it.
At the last minute, Mr. Kevin pulled me aside and thrust a bundle of comics into my arms. “I know you love my collection, so hopefully you can start your own with these.” His last words to all of us were, “You boys are going to do great things someday.” and that was it. The only parents we could really remember stood in front of their house and waved until the car we were in turned a corner, and they disappeared from view.