Page 77 of Fragile Hearts

The relief I feel when I pull into the drive and see Sloane’s car is nearly overwhelming. Slamming the door shut, I head into the house, calling out to her.

“Sloane?”

There’s no answer as I walk through the house, my heart pounding in my chest. But then I see her, sitting on the back deck, Mochi in her lap as she stares out at the ocean.

“Sloane, babe?” I say, stepping onto the deck, my heart breaking when she turns to me, tears streaming down her face.

I’m at a loss for words. Just seeing Owen’s face has me crying even harder. In the past, seeing my mother would have triggered me to hide, to run from my problems and not tell anyone how I was feeling. But here with Owen, he’s the first person I thought of when I saw her face.

I’ve thought it a million times, said it to myself, and even told Owen I love him, but it’s more than that. He’s my safe space, the place where I feel no judgment, the person I want to run to when I have a good day or a bad day. I want to share everything with him, and there’s something about it that feels so healing.

I stand and go to Owen, melting into his arms, the tears streaming down my face, desperate for him to just hold me, to tell me it’s all going to be okay. This overwhelming feeling moves through my body, a shudder gripping me as Owen lowers us to a chair.

My body is wrapped around him, seeking the solace he brings me, and I can’t seem to stop sobbing, and I tell myself that’s okay. That for once, I didn’t run. I came here, a place I call home, a place that will forever be mine.

“What’s going through your head?” Owen asks, his words like silk, soothing and soft. “You can tell me, babe. I know you’re scared, but you don’t need to be. I’m here.”

I take in a ragged breath, my lungs feeling like they can’t possibly get enough air to even speak. My head is a mess, and I hate this feeling, something I haven’t felt in years. But the second I saw her face, it all came rushing back. Every shitty moment, every memory, every bit of anxiety, and nothing seems to ease despite my best efforts.

“I don’t even know,” I finally mutter. I have a million thoughts, and I want to share them all, but it just feels jumbled and disjointed, and I don’t even know where to begin.

I want to tell him about the first time I went into foster care, a time that I thought would be my last, a one-and-only thing. That my mom would return to get me, and we’d have a life like the kids I went to school with did. But the crazy thing is, after I was placed with a family, I didn’t want her to come back.

I was ten, and she was incarcerated for drugs, a six-month stint, and in those six months, that family I was placed with treated me better than I’d ever been treated in my life.

They were an older couple, Steve and Janet, whose children were grown and moved out, and I was the only thing in their life. It was wonderful.

Breakfasts were made every morning, and my lunch for school was packed with everything all the other kids had. I never had to go through the cafeteria line, waiting for my free lunch from the state with the bright red lunch card that told all the other kids I was poor.

Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to make the poor kids have a different lunch card from everyone else? Talk about demoralizing.

I had sandwiches and juice boxes, fruit and cookies. And dinner was never random things I could find in the fridge. I didn’t eat ketchup on an old slice of bread or mangoes I stole from the trees as I walked home from school.

It was the first time in my life that I had meatloaf. I literally thought it was the best thing in the world, and Janet made it every Thursday while I lived there. Something just for me, something that she thought about and intentionally did for me.

They even drove me to school and picked me up every day since the bus was not able to pick me up at their house. They didn’t want me to have to change schools, stating to my caseworker that my life had been uprooted enough.

What they didn’t know, or maybe they did, was that school was the third one I attended that year alone. It’s not like I had any friends because I was dirty, and my clothes were messy. I was that kid. And when I did end up back with my mom, we’d move in with her friends or that’s what she called them. They were drug addicts just like her, and we’d bounce from house to house.

I loved it there with that foster family even more when I look back on it now. It was the only time I felt normal until I moved in with Alana and Daisy.

Their house was clean. I was clean and fed. I slept, and every night when I climbed into bed, I wished for my mom to never come back.

But she did. Like clockwork. Six months to the date, the caseworker came to get me, and my stuff was packed up, and I was shipped out like a sailor.

I didn’t cry, though. As much as I wanted to, I didn’t because I knew it would happen again. I had tried to convince myself that I would never end up in foster care again, that this would be the only time my mom left me, but I knew better.

And two years later, at twelve years old, I would become a permanent resident of the Hawaii foster care system. That system failed me time and time again.

I would run away from foster homes to avoid being abused. Sleeping on the porches of random houses because it felt safer than the place I was living. I’ve been picked up by the police more times than I can count, and not for doing anything other than running away.

This was all because my mother couldn’t get her life together.

I ask myself why she even had me over and over because she never wanted me in the first place. Abortions are legal in Hawaii, but they cost money, and she couldn’t possibly have had it. I knew what she did to get drugs, and it certainly wasn’t actually holding down a job.

Her proudest moment of her life, and something she held over my head, was that she was sober the nine months she was pregnant with me. Something I still doubt to this day.

“Babe,” Owen now says, his fingers moving to tuck my hair behind my ear. “What can I do to help you?”

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