Work Text:
The glass of the car window was cold against his forehead as Keith stared out the window, watching with disinterest as buildings and signs and trees flew past. Occasionally the car would hit a bump, and once a pothole had bounced Keith against the window hard enough that there would probably be a bruise there by morning, but he was resolute in keeping his head turned away and resting against the glass, making it as clear as he could that he was ignoring his caseworker in the driver's seat next to him, who had been muttering under her breath to herself for several minutes now and was glaring out the windshield like she was ready to physically fight every traffic light they passed.
Pam was probably the oldest of all the case workers Keith had had assigned to him by the state since he'd been thrust into the foster care system, and also the one least shy about letting Keith know exactly what she thought of him. Maybe it was burnout, maybe she was caring less about work quality as she neared the age when she could retire, maybe she was just a naturally caustic person. Whatever the case, she at least was blunt. In their very first meeting she had told him flat-out that her goal was simply to make sure he had a roof over his head until the day he turned eighteen; any other detail was barely a concern to her.
And although she had been perfectly pleasant to the Snyders while she was taking Keith off to shuffle him back to the group home in the next town over, she'd laid into him the moment the car doors were shut, lecturing him loud and long enough to leave Keith's ears ringing when she finally ran out of steam, opting to drive in stony silence rather than turn the radio on.
"You'd think with all the fuss you had put up about the group home, you would be a little more grateful to be with a family," Pam had snapped at him.
"I was," Keith had mumbled back.
"No, you weren't, you absolutely weren't. If you were, you would have managed to go more than a goddamn week before deciding to raise hell."
"That's not what - "
"That must be a new record for you, isn't it? One week, and you can't even last that long. What did we tell you about getting into fights, huh? What the fuck did we tell you about fighting?!"
Keith mumbled his response, and Pam snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Speak up. What - did - we - tell - ?"
"Not to do it," Keith said quietly.
"Or?"
"Or the next place you send me will be juvie."
"Not me, Keith, the state. Don't you dare try to put anything on me, you think I want to be dealing with these messes all the time? You think I didn't have anything better to do this weekend but move you across the county again and do a new mountain of paperwork?"
"It's not my fault!" Keith retorted, and he felt the fire of frustration flicker in him as he clenched his fists in his lap. "I didn’t even start it, it was - "
"Oh, no, of course not, you never start anything, do you? Nothing's ever your fault. I'm sure you're always just sitting around minding your own business and everyone around you just loves to make you look bad, is that it?"
"No, but - "
"But nothing, Keith."
Keith let out a bitter huff. He had never claimed to have done nothing, but the whole incident had been an accident on his part. A mistake.
The Snyders had a son of their own, Brandon, one year Keith's senior, and had initially seemed pretty welcoming and eager to have a foster kid in his home. But the novelty had been extremely quick to wear off. Brandon had deemed Keith boring when he couldn’t keep up with his loud conversations. Stupid when Keith wasn't any good at the video games he'd made him play. A prude when he'd shown aversion rather than interest when Brandon had wanted to gossip about their love lives and show off the "photo collection" he had hidden on his bedroom computer. A creep when he stimmed where others could see or didn't realize he had been staring at someone. An asshole when he "pretended" not to get any of Brandon's jokes.
Within a few days Brandon was sick of Keith, and Keith returned the sentiment. And yet, despite the animosity, they did seem to have one thing in common: an interest in jets. At least, the collection of model planes that were proudly displayed along the shelves lining Brandon's bedroom walls seem to suggest that the interest was one they shared.
And if Brandon was less of a dick, Keith would have been able to ask him if he could look at the models instead of sneaking into the bedroom on his own. And if he hadn't snuck in there, he wouldn't have been startled when Brandon had caught him. And if he hadn't been startled, he wouldn't have dropped and broken the model B-17 he'd been holding.
And Brandon wouldn't have gotten furious enough to tackle him to the ground and tried to punch him in the face, and Keith wouldn't have fought back, and he wouldn't have broken Brandon's nose, and the Synders wouldn't have decided that Keith "wasn't a good fit".
"Do you know how lucky you are that they didn't press any charges against you?" Pam was saying. "If it had been my kid you'd gone and beat up, you can bet your ass you'd be locked up in juvenile by tomorrow."
"I know," Keith muttered.
"I swear, you don't even try. You're just so determined to make things difficult on everyone else, aren't you? You can't get away with pulling stuff like this when you're an adult, you know. You've only got a couple of years left before people stop letting you use your age as an excuse, and then what are you going to do? Do you intend to just start picking fights and getting tossed in jail every time someone upsets you?"
"I don't pick fights."
"You do, Keith, you absolutely do! Even when you don't throw the first punch, I've seen the way you provoke people. The boys at your group home, that classmate last spring, now the Snyders - "
"That's not what happened!"
"I talked to them, Keith, I know what happened. I don't know where you got it into your head that you can go around breaking other people's things - "
"That’s - it's not - that was a mistake!"
“You're the mistake! You’re just a bad kid!”
“I’m not!”
“You are! That’s why they gave you back! One week with you was one week too many! That's why everyone gives you back! And someday soon, you're going to run out of chances, and no one will give you back because no one will take you in the first place. Do you realize that? Do you understand where you're headed? You keep up with this shit, no one is going to want to deal with you. Got it? No. One.”
Silence rang in the car's interior, and Keith only now realized that the car wasn't moving. He didn't know how long they'd been parked, but the seatbelt over his chest was feeling oddly suffocating, and the car almost seemed to be shrinking around them, the buildings outside the window unnervingly still, trapping him.
He had to actively remind himself to breathe.
Several seconds passed before Pam sighed and rested her head back against her seat. "God. Keith. This job." She sighed again and brought her fingers up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "It's stressful. You can't even imagine how stressful it is. We're understaffed, underfunded… I'm getting too old for it, I really am. And you - well. You really just know how to make things difficult for me, don't you. Know how to push all the buttons."
Keith said nothing.
"And now having to move you back, find you a new placement - this is the last thing I needed on my plate, it really is. But, well. That's the job, isn't it? Infuriating as hell, I've got every right to be upset right now. But I didn't mean to raise my voice to you. Okay? That wasn't nice of me. Sorry, Keith."
Still Keith said nothing.
Pam turned to him. "Keith. I said sorry. What do you say now?"
"… I forgive you," Keith mumbled.
"There it is. See? You can behave, you can be polite. You just have to put the effort in, right? That's all you need to do. And next time, you'll do that, right? You'll behave?"
"Yeah."
"Good. I don't know how many chances you've got left, Keith, I really don't, but I think you can manage not to waste them if you try." She straightened up in her seat and reached into the back to grab her purse. "You're not a bad kid, by the way," she added. "I shouldn't have said that. You're just - " She paused in thought as she opened her door. "You're just not a good kid, that's all. You know what I mean?"
"Yeah. I know."
Keith unbuckled and followed her out into the parking lot, headed toward the building he had thought he'd finally escaped with his last placement. Oh well. Like Pam had said, he still had chances left. Not many, no, but it was better than nothing.
He just had to stop making mistakes, that's all.
Just had to stop being a mistake.
He could do that, couldn't he?
He tried to ignore the dread that pooled in his stomach in response to that question. It was one thing to fix a mistake that you made. But when you are the mistake?
How do you fix that?
Can you fix it?
He wasn't sure he could. Not by himself, in any case.
And how long did he have before there was no one left who was willing to try?