The girls were quiet, waiting for him to speak again.
“So one day, about six months after the adoption went through, Natalie was almost two, and it was a Saturday afternoon, and I was having this epic meltdown.” Joaquin tried not to feel the carpet on his back, the way his hair tangled against it as he writhed on the floor, howling for something, for someone, that was always just out of reach. “No one could even touch me. I wouldn’t let anyone get close. And then the dad, Mr. Buchanan, he tried to pick me up and set me on my feet, right? Like, to stand up. And I just started throwing everything that I could get my hands on. We were in his office and there was a stapler on the desk. . . .”
Joaquin paused. He could still feel the cool metal of the stapler in his hand, the heaviness of it as he picked it up. His hands were shaking again, and Grace just held his fingers even more tightly between hers.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“I threw it,” he said, and then there were tears on his cheeks, sliding down his throat, burning him all over. “I threw it,” he said again, clearing his throat. “I threw it at him, but it went out the door and Natalie . . . Natalie was coming around the corner right then.”
Joaquin dropped his head, closed his eyes, sick with shame. “It hit her in the head.” He gestured her up toward his temple. “Right here, and she just dropped. And Mr. Buchanan, he let out this . . . it was like a roar, like a lion, and he grabbed me and threw me backward, and I flew into the bookshelf. Broke my arm.” Joaquin could still hear the crack of bone, one white-hot pain replacing another, but nothing was as loud as the sound of Natalie falling to the floor.
Joaquin was crying steadily now. He hadn’t even cried when he told Mark and Linda and Ana the story. They had wept, but Joaquin had been unmoved, like it had happened to someone else. “I would have never hurt the baby,” he sobbed. “I loved Natalie. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”
Grace was holding him now, and Maya’s arm was around his shoulders, and Joaquin put his hand to his forehead and rested his elbows on his knees. “What happened after that?” Grace asked him.
“Emergency room,” he said. “They signed me back into foster care that night.”
“People can do that?” Maya asked. Joaquin was pretty sure that she was crying now, too.
“People do it all the time,” he said. “They said I was a danger to the other kids. And if you’re violent in a home, they put you on a psych hold for a few days, and then I went to this group home out in Pomona. I was ‘special needs,’ they said. I was too old, too violent.” He thought of his foster sister Eva’s words. “Too much and not enough. I think people were scared of me.”
Grace cleared her throat before speaking again. “And Natalie, was she . . . ?”
“She was fine, ultimately,” Joaquin said. “I asked my social worker as soon as she showed up at the hospital. It was a concussion, but . . .” Joaquin couldn’t even finish the sentence. “She’s fine,” he said again.
“But you broke your arm?”
“It was a clean break,” Joaquin said, like that made the story better. “The Buchanans weren’t allowed to have any more foster kids after that.”
“Good,” Maya spat out.
“I just sort of went from group home to group home,” Joaquin said. “After that, I couldn’t stay with just any foster family. They had to have special training to be able to handle kids like me. They got paid more, too, because of the danger, but yeah.”
“And Mark and Linda have that?” Grace asked.
“They got it after they met me,” Joaquin said. “When I was fifteen, almost sixteen, they came to this adoption fair thing at one of the group homes. They liked me, they said.” Joaquin still didn’t entirely believe them, but it was a nice thought, all the same.
“I think they love you, Joaquin,” Maya murmured.
“Is this why you won’t let them adopt you?” Grace suddenly asked. “Because you’re afraid they’ll give you back like the Buchanans did?”
Joaquin wiped his eyes, glancing over at her. “I don’t care about going back,” he said. “I just love them too much to hurt them—to hurt anyone—like that. Once was enough.”
Both of his sisters seemed to sag against him. “Oh, Joaquin,” Maya sighed.
“No,” he said, before she could start telling him how he felt, how he should feel. “You don’t understand, okay? You saw me with that asshole. It just came up out of me—it’s like I can’t contain it. I could have really hurt him.”
“But you didn’t,” Grace said. “You didn’t, Joaquin. You were defending me. He said something really terrible that he knew would hurt me, and you defended me. That’s not the same thing at all.
“And,” she continued before he could argue with her, “remember how I told you that I punched a guy at school?”
Joaquin waited for her to continue, and when she didn’t, the realization dawned on him. “That was him?”
Grace nodded, her face grim.
“Wow. Okay.” Joaquin felt a tiny bit less terrible about wanting to murder Adam.
“Then that guy is an even bigger idiot than I thought!” Maya said. “When do I get to punch him?”
Joaquin smiled at that, and Maya hugged him, pressing her face against his arm. “You’re not a bad person, Joaq,” she whispered. “You’re not.”
“I threw a metal stapler at a baby,” he replied. He had thought that by saying it out loud, he would diminish how terrible it was, like ripping off a Band-Aid, but it was the completely opposite feeling, the words cutting his mouth as he said them.
“You threw a stapler because you were scared,” Grace corrected him. “The baby happened to be there. It was an accident. They shouldn’t have hurt you, too.”
“You were a just a kid yourself,” Maya added.
Joaquin had to close his eyes at that, felt like he was going underwater, his sisters the only thing buoying him.
His sisters. Holy shit.
“Is it okay that I said that?” Joaquin asked, glancing over at Grace.
She frowned. “Said what?”
“You know. I called you my sister.”
The edges of Grace’s mouth trembled even as she started to smile. “That’s fine,” she said. “That’s what I am, right?”
On his other side, Maya rested her head on his shoulder. “Me, too,” she said quietly.
When he could talk again, Joaquin swiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his T-shirt. If Linda had been there, she probably would have handed him a packet of tissues.
“So—I’m a monster,” he said. He was trying to keep it light, trying to bring them back up after almost drowning in the tide, but it felt forced. He didn’t even believe his own tone.
“I think anyone who’s been in that much pain must have a pretty big heart.” Grace’s voice was thoughtful. “And no matter what, Maya and I won’t give you back.”
“Nope,” Maya added. “This was a final sale. No returns, no backsies.”
Joaquin smiled a little. “But what if—”
“Nope!” Grace said. “You heard Maya.”