Page 15 of Pack Kasen: Part 1

Sadie’s cheeky smile fades, and I know exactly why. She heard about Doug. Everyone heard about Doug.

“You want to hang out tonight?” she asks, concerned. “We can order pizza and do shots.”

Why do all students think every problem can be solved by shots?

“I have work tonight,” I lie as I having a staring competition with the creep.

Any other day, I wouldn’t be so confrontational. Head down, mind my business is my usual attitude when out and about. But not today. Maybe unloading on a creep will make today a little less painful. Doubtful, but maybe.

I’m halfway across the quad when he flashes me a grin, lifts his hand in what is nothing less than a tauntingly cheery wave and pulls away from the parking lot.

I grind to a halt, glaring at the back of his car as it disappears from view.

There are fewer students around, and more cops and campus security than ever before. For the first time since the murders started, there are rumblings about the school shutting until cops have caught the animal picking off students.

Now what, Kat?

The thought of returning to my room feels like a cage that’s already suffocating me, so I walk toward my dorm building’s parking lot, unlock my car door, and slip inside.

I sit with the windows rolled down to let air in as I watch the cops and campus security patrol. I think about what I’m going to do about Doug, who cared not just about me, but about anyone who entered his orbit. A star quarterback headed to Harvard Law School shouldn’t have even noticed someone like me.

Yet he had.

I can count on one hand the people who have given a damn whether I lived or died.

In foster care, there has only been one person who cared enough about me that I thought they would keep me.

Some viewed me as a paycheck, others as such an inconvenience, I couldn’t understand why they’d agreed to be fosters at all. One or two studied me with such predatory focus that I knew exactly what they hoped to get out of it: they were looking for prey too young to fight back.

Not Robert.

Robert was rare.

When Iwan, my social worker, knocked on his door and a stern-looking Black man with white hair at his temples stoodglowering down at me, I thought I knew exactly which type he’d be.

I thought I’d figured out how the world worked.

I’d edged back, turning my body aside, ready to run.

Robert looked down at me for the longest time, seemed not to even care that Iwan was speaking. He spun around and hobbled back inside, leaning heavily on his walking stick, while Iwan was mid-sentence.

“Well, you’d better come on inside then,” he called out as he walked away. “I’m not much for standing around for long these days. My knees aren’t what they used to be.”

I’d glanced up at Iwan, who shrugged. “Guess he likes you. He doesn’t open the door to those he doesn’t like.”

I didn’t know how to feel about a statement like that. Years later, I understand it. You shut out the people who you don’t trust, and you open up to those you think you can trust. Robert knew the deal.

I’d been bounced around the foster system for years. No one wanted a troubled teenager who never smiled and had a tendency to fight back. No one seemed to care that I wasn’t the one who started the fights, but there was no way I wasn’t going to defend myself if someone started one with me.

Yes, I could have run, but a kid on the street doesn’t do well. I’d nearly starved to death before and I knew much worse could’ve happened to me than that.

I went inside.

Robert was sixty-seven. He liked to count out his money before he went to the store. He was quiet unless he had something to say and had the most incredible rage toward any commercial that dared interrupt his favorite TV show.

And he was the first person who actually listened to me.

Hecared.

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