“What is it?” I asked again. A gnawing feeling was growing in my stomach. I tried to smile.
There had been a conversation like this before, in which they first proposed the idea of Foster coming to live with us. Only that time we were in the living room, and there were cookies, and something about my parents’ demeanor was vastly different. My mom was staring out the window now, her arms folded in front of her, her lips pursed. She looked … sad.
Dad spoke. “You know that when we agreed to take Foster, we did it on the assumption that this was a … a temporary situation. We’re Foster’s guardians, but his mom still has the legal right to decide what’s best for him, whether it be staying here or going back to live with her.”
All at once, the bottom of my stomach dropped out, and this awful, terrible rush of blood swelled from the back of my neck to my cheeks, up through the top of my head. Foster couldn’t go back there. Foster would implode there.
In an instant, in the tiniest head of the smallest pin, I was concentrated like Ezra. I was ready to fight for Foster.
And then my father spoke again. “We’ve been in contact with Elizabeth, and with Foster’s social worker, and”—he took a deep breath—“honey, Elizabeth’s surrendered her rights as Foster’s mother. She’s going to let us adopt him.”
“Adopt?”
“Yes. Adopt.”
Adopt. Adopt. Adopt. If you say any word enough, eventually it loses all meaning.
I blinked, and the only thing I could think to ask is, “Does he know?” After Dad answered yes, I sort of lost the ability to concentrate. My mind was going in too many directions.
I closed the office door softly behind me and climbed the stairs to my room, my parents’ reassurances still floating around in my head and that adopt still pounding in my ears. My heart was racing, and each beat said the same thing.
I was relieved. I was hopelessly relieved, but at the same time, so incredibly pissed off. I hated Elizabeth, and I hated the world, too, because if I was meant to have a brother, why couldn’t I have gotten him the normal way? None of this was right. If I was going to have a brother, I didn’t want him just because Elizabeth was a fucking coward.
I should’ve been better. But sometimes all you can really stand to do is think about yourself. Sometimes it’s the only way to cope. The only way to make sense of something as colossal and intimidating as the world is to make it about you. I slammed my bedroom door and fell across my bed wondering if my parents would be able to help me with college now that Foster would be their responsibility, too.
And then … then I thought about Foster, and all that selfishness washed out on a tide of guilt. It was one thing to put a kid up for adoption straight out of the gate. But who spends fourteen years with her kid and then decides she doesn’t want him? Whoops, sorry, no—I’m going to need to return this one. Like some sort of cosmic user error. Return to sender.
I dragged myself out of bed. I had to see Foster.
I knocked on his door, and he answered with a perfectly clear, perfectly composed, “Come in.”
I opened the door and there lay Foster on his bed, wearing his bright red TS helmet.
I tried to make my voice sound normal. What do you even say in this kind of situation? How do you even start?
“How’s it going?”
Ugh. An auspicious beginning.
Foster seemed unfazed. “Okay.”
“What … uh … I mean…”
“It’s cool, Dev.” Foster looked at me through the helmet’s grille. “It’s not like it’s a surprise or anything. She called and talked to me, and it’s okay.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Do you … want to watch TV or something?”
He shook his head.
“We could call Ezra.”
He turned his face up to the ceiling. “Okay. But you have to call him.”
“What do you want me to say?”