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It should have been a lot worse, packing a bag at Amanda’s. But Amanda just said she’d ship the rest of Connor’s things wherever he wanted. And it wasn’t like he had much in the way of sentimental items. Before long she saw him to the door. Nothing to it.
Connor was halfway back to Hank’s sun-bleached Honda Odyssey (unclear if the original color was beige or silver) when a familiar voice shouted his name.
He turned just in time for a rolled-up ball of socks to hit him between the eyes.
Richard waved from one of the upstairs windows of the Stern residence as Connor picked the socks up off the pavement. They were his beloved fish socks. Richard must have rescued them from the dumpster after Amanda threw them out.
“I’ll look out for him!” Richard pointed toward Ronan’s bedroom, where his youngest brother was staring out at him like an abandoned puppy. Amanda probably didn’t allow them out to say goodbye.
Connor squeezed the socks, then waved to them both. He promised himself that if he really got out—if this wasn’t all just temporary—he’d come back for them.
“I didn’t know you had brothers,” Markus said as he loaded up Connor’s suitcase for him. “They look just like you.”
“We all go to different schools.” Just one more way Amanda subtly hint that they weren’t family.
Markus, on the other hand, seemed to go out of his way to make Connor belong, from the moment they first met. Maybe it was the high of getting out of the police station, getting a new foster family—but Connor clearly misjudged him.
So, rather than head back to the front seat next to Hank, he slid into the middle row next to Leo, giving Markus the privilege to take shotgun or, maybe, the seat next to him. If he wanted.
Instead, Markus said, “Leo, would you sit on the hump? Connor’s the guest.”
Leo grumbled but climbed over Connor and folded his arms as he was sandwiched between them. Connor didn’t complain—they weren’t, technically, friends.
“You two steal my car again I’m shoving you in my tuba,” Leo said.
“Can’t believe you didn’t book ‘em!” Gavin complained from where he sprawled across the back row, checking his texts.
“Oh, don’t be such a rat, Gavin!” Leo said, then started chatting to him about some video game.
Markus gave Connor a grin around Leo’s shoulder. “Hey. Relax.”
“I know.” Connor took off his beanie and tried to smooth his hair. “I wish I had a chance to change.”
“We’re just going home,” Markus said. “We have to pick up Kara from the pool, Sumo from the vet, and North from roller derby.”
“Shit, forgot about North,” Hank said.
“Language!” the car’s occupants said in choir. Hank laughed like a pirate and performed a questionably legal U-turn. Sometimes Connor wondered why adults were allowed to drive.
“Those—those are all kids that live with you?” Connor asked.
“And Ralph,” Leo said, “He never does after-school stuff, though.”
“You’re all foster kids?” Connor blinked. “How did you all end up together?”
Markus puffed out his cheeks. “Well, my parents died when I was nine, in a car wreck. I went to live with my grandfather for a few years.” He glanced at Leo. “Then Leo’s mom got deported, and he came to live with Carl, too. They separated when he was really young, though, so…”
“Leo and his mother?”
“No,” Leo laughed. “My mom and Carl.”
“But—he just said Carl was his grandfather.”
“Yep!” Leo swept his hair back with both hands. “Technically Markus is my dear beloved nephew.”
Markus whacked him in the chest.
“HANK! Markus hit me!”
“Don’t be a rat, Leo,” Gavin giggled.
“Sorry,” Markus said, just loud enough for Hank to hear even if he glared at Leo. “Anyway, it wasn’t a good situation for anyone involved.”
Gavin snorted. “Yeah, and Hank was the only foster parent willing to take in these two delinquents.”
Connor looked Gavin up and down. “Are you a delinquent?”
“No!” Gavin sat up and added, rather proudly. “I’m the au pair.”
“Au pairs are foreign, dummy!” Leo jeered.
“Whatever! I help out more than you!” Gavin continued to posture. “I was Hank’s first foster kid. My parents are the usual boring dirtbags.”
“Kara was our most recent, until today,” Markus explained. “She ran away, too. Ralph was found living on the street—they think he’d been on his own for a long time. We all look out for him but he and Kara are really close.”
Connor reviewed the list in his head. “What about North?”
Markus and Leo shared a look.
“…North doesn’t like to talk about her past.”
There was an awkward silence, then—
“Hey guys!” North threw the protesting van door open and barreled inside, causing Leo to yelp and Gavin to drop his phone. Markus put an arm out protectively in front of Connor as she muscled her way in, equipment flying. She dropped into the back seat next to Gavin, where she gave him a friendly punch. “You guys talking about me again?”
Everyone gave some version of ‘no’. North shoved her bag at Gavin like he was her golf caddy.
“Get your feet off the seats,” Gavin ordered. “Ugh, you stink! Take a shower!”
“That’s the smell of victory!” North shot back with a grin. “I guess you wouldn’t know.”
“Hank has a biological son, too,” Markus explained while they fought. “Cole. We go to the same community college—”
“Is someone writing our memoirs?” North finally noticed Connor and frowned at him. “Hey, you’re Question Guy from school!”
“Connor,” Markus said. “He’s gonna stay with us for a while.”
“Oh.” North gave him an up-nod. “Hope you’re ready to never shower again!”
“Why—”
“The guys all share one bathroom,” Leo laughed. “That’s six teens, a giant and his dog. Do the math.”
“We’re all doomed,” Gavin lamented, while North started to loudly sing ‘Eighteen’ by Alice Cooper.
Kara joined the van next with a smile and a ‘I like your socks!’ to Connor. Leo wanted to sit next to her and Markus to talk about Geometry homework though, and Gavin didn’t have to sit next to smelly North, so Connor was unceremoniously shuffled to the back middle seat. A massive Saint Bernard that easily weighed more than Connor joined the mix and took pride of place in the front seat like a slobbering Chewbacca. The air in the car filled with sweat and dog breath and laughter.
They drove on. Hank passed stacks of pizzas into the back seats. Sumo barked along to the radio. Connor felt like the nucleus of an atom, a silent center in the midst of utter chaos. Sometimes he glanced over and thought Markus was smiling at him in one of the rear-view mirrors, but he was probably looking at someone else.
Connor longed to ask him if any of this was even real.
The van drove between a pair of well-loved basketball hoops that flanked the driveway, and disgorged its contents onto an undeserving four-bedroom bungalow corner lot that had seen better days. The overgrown lawn had been seeded with wildflowers that stood out bright against the old gray shingles and blue front door. There was a rusty broken refrigerator on the front porch and—oh, no, Markus illustrated it was actually in use, full of bulk groceries. Markus took out a couple of Otter Pops, tore them open with his teeth, and offered the blue one to Connor while he took the red. Connor wondered if any of this was a food safe; his nine housemates clearly did not.
Everyone shared a room, including Hank because Sumo hogged space more than any teen possibly could: they were in the smaller of the two downstairs bedrooms, closest to the back door and the kitchen to let Sumo out and so Hank could make coffee in the morning. Gavin and Cole had the larger room, and the girls shared the master. That left Connor and Ralph upstairs and to the right (a room, Leo told him, both coveted and reviled due to its proximity to the shared bathroom), and Markus and Leo frantically carrying boxes up a tiny staircase to a slant-roofed attic straight out of a Victorian novel. Connor barely got a look at it before Markus was shooing him out, face red and Leo laughing at him.
There was a lot of yelling and thundering up and down the attic stairs. Repeated thumps as Markus presumably hit his head on the low ceiling, loud shouts as Leo looked for tape to designate neutral zones on the floor. Kara and North got into an argument with Gavin that, yes, girls needed the only bedroom with an en-suite bathroom more than boys (an argument Gavin had no chance of winning without Cole as backup). Sumo, and presumably Ralph, hid from the commotion.
Bedroom rearrangements complete, it was time for dinner. Connor stood in a corner and waited for someone to give him a job, perhaps set the table. It took him a bit to realize that Gavin and Cole’s room with its big bay window was the dining room, and dinner took place at a card table in the kitchen with eight folding chairs stacked beside it that no one bothered to unpack.
When the crowd in the kitchen thinned there were only two pieces of pizza left, their tops picked clean of pepperoni. Connor didn’t mention it until Hank noticed and yelled at everyone to mind their manners. Connor felt so embarrassed he took all the pizza boxes out to recycling and disappeared to wash dishes.
“What are you doing?”
He turned to see Markus leaning against the door frame to the kitchen, grinning at him.
Connor looked down. “I’m a guest. I should be earning my keep here.”
“Do you even know what ‘guest’ means?” Markus grabbed a kitchen towel and flicked it at him. “Get out of here—Kara wants to introduce you to Ralph since you’ll be staying with him.”
Connor wrung his hands as Markus took over. “You should leave that to me.”
“It’s fine. And don’t do that, it’s bad for your joints. Here.” Markus reached in his pocket and pulled out a quarter which he flicked to Connor, dishwater flecks flying. Connor caught it.
“That’s a special quarter,” Markus said. “Hold onto it for me?”
“Special?” Connor held it up to the light. “Special how?”
Markus’ expression was brittle as glass for a second but it was gone in a moment. “It was given to me. I bet you could learn some cool coin tricks with it.” He turned back to the dishes. “Go say hi to Ralph.”
Ralph kept Kara between himself and Connor as she tried to introduce them. He looked much younger than he was, slouched over, grinning reflexively, several large scars across his face. It wasn’t until she invented a scenario for Ralph to roleplay that he finally let her leave (today they were squatters in an abandoned house in a post-apocalyptic world?). He was shy but talkative, and once he realized Connor wasn’t here to murder him, he kept up a steady stream of conversation while Connor got ready for bed, elaborating on Kara’s scenario to include radioactive robots and secret messages written on the walls in invisible ink. He told Connor about the muskrat that lived in the ditch outside their window, which he said kept away bad dreams. Ralph never seemed to expect a response to his quiet monologues. Connor decided he liked to listen.
When he went downstairs he found Markus, having finished the dishes, now reading lines with Kara for a play, her hair done up in foils while North carefully applied hair dye to her white hair. North offered to dye Connor’s blue but he declined. Ralph cuddled with Sumo. Outside, Leo and Gavin blasted music from Leo’s previously-stolen car.
Later, they piled onto a massive 8-piece sectional that took up nearly all the square footage of the living room and watched TV with a VCR built into the bottom. Connor sat on the edge by North, who had taken a shower and enjoyed making faces at him. Markus was up at the front, helping Leo with more homework by the light of the TV. Gavin fought with a laptop, furiously punching keys. Kara fell asleep on Sumo’s chest.
Connor felt something both warm and painful swell in his chest. He’d never been any place like this before. Playing with the quarter rather than wringing his hands, he felt his heartrate slow down for the first time in what felt like years. He didn’t know what to do with that.
He waited until everyone had gone to bed, then snuck downstairs. There was plenty of dog hair on the floor and he saw the broom earlier, no one would be the wiser—
The kitchen light flipped on. Hank stood there in boxer shorts and a t-shirt.
“Well, at least you didn’t run away,” Hank said, once he saw Connor clutching the broom.
Connor winced. “Did I wake Ralph?”
“No, but you woke me up. I sleep like the, uh, undead?” Hank went to the fridge and pulled out a Tupperware container. “You want some leftovers? Midnight snack?”
“Amanda says midnight snacks are unhealthy, and I’ve never had…” he stopped as Hank took off the top to reveal a fat slice of chocolate cake. “…Leftovers.”
“Don’t tell,” Hank said. “If there’s dessert in the house it’s gone in seconds. I have to disguise it. Not that leftovers are bad, mind—you’ll get used to them.” Hank offered a fork. “Come on. It’s got blue icing. Puts me right to sleep.”
Connor sat down with Hank and they shared the cake, each with a glass of milk.
“You wanna tell me what really happened with that car?” Hank asked.
Connor froze.
Hank spread his hands. “Come on, kid. I did bail you out. I just wanna know what really happened.”
Connor played with his fork as he explained. It wasn’t as good as the coin. But Hank didn’t glare, or tighten his jaw, or any of the things Amanda did when he explained a mistake to her. He just nodded.
“Good.”
“H-how is that good?”
Hank shrugged. “Markus told me the same thing. Why’d you do it?”
“I know what I should have done—”
“Why’d you do it, Connor?” Hank’s voice was only a shade sharper but it startled Connor into actually answering the question.
“I was—afraid, I guess. I could have just handled being what Amanda expected of me for a few more years but I was worried I’d…stick like that.” He shook his head, and said firmly, “I couldn’t do it anymore.” It was probably the first time he didn’t hate himself for something he couldn’t do. It made him feel alive, like the red shoelaces, secret cool pairs of socks. It made him feel brave like Markus.
Hank frowned hard for a second, and Connor was sure he’d be told to pack his things so they could head back to the police station. Instead Hank nodded. “Well, we all make mistakes when we’re afraid, huh?” He actually smiled. “And if it got you out, maybe you did the right thing.”
…Connor made a close examination of the empty Tupperware. Why did his chest suddenly feel so light?
“We didn’t overwhelm you today, did we?” Hank asked, suddenly. “I know, all these kids in this tiny house—I had to bring out the smelling salts for the social workers, first time they saw this place. But we make it work.”
Connor shook his head. “It’s just—different. But not bad. Not at all.”
“Hard to get our brains to figure that out sometimes,” Hank said with a grin. “Go brush your teeth again and get to bed.”
Connor, his eyelids suddenly as heavy as the dumbbells from P.E., was happy to obey.
“Hey—Connor…” When Connor turned around Hank was frowning. “You and Markus, you’re, uh…” Hank winced. “friends?”
Connor considered the question. “I think so. I haven’t really had a lot of friends before. I’m eager to discover what that’s like.”
“Right, but I mean like…are you…” Connor continued to look at him, and Hank eventually sighed. “Ugh. Never mind. Get outta here.”
Ralph was snoring when he got back to his room. He lay in bed and listened as Markus and Leo had a not-so-silent argument about acute and obtuse angles in the attic, while below Hank argued with Sumo to stop hogging the blankets.
Connor slept like a baby.