Page 5 of Dallas

That’s the simple answer. The whole story of where I’ve been since we last saw each other is much longer.

“Let’s go get a drink.”

I look away, feeling suddenly embarrassed, and I don’t know why. “Oh, I…”

“You aren’t old enough to drink, are you?”

“Well, the...” I don’t know why that makes me feel small and silly. Young. I never feel young. I feel tired already. I work as many hours as I possibly can to afford my apartment, taking as many college courses as I can online while I try to get to a place where I can go full-time. I’ve had to take care of myself for so long, I don’t just feel like an adult – I feel old.

But I’m not allowed to go into a bar and order a beer. I bet if I tried to buy a beer the cops would involve themselves in my life. I can’t get them to handle my stalker, though.

“The diner I work at is open late,” I say.

Though I don’t love the idea of going there because what if he’s waiting for me?

You’ll be with Dallas.

“We don’t have to leave now,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Your…the rest of the event.”

“I don’t care.”

I’m more important. He doesn’t say that, but I feel it. I feel it warming me from the inside. No one has ever treated me like I mattered. No one except him.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he says, looking at me like I’m a ghost – but maybe a good one.

“Neither can I.”

He’s happy to see me. For the first time in so long, I feel something like hope, and that’s going to go a long way in healing all these tears in my soul.

I’m a terrible cliché, and I know it. I want to get into social work because of my experiences in the foster care system. Genuinely, I can’t think of anything else to do. The foster care system is what I know, inside and out. Good social workers are a gift.

Bad, detached, disinterested ones can quite literally be the death of you.

I talked to my old case worker about this when I decided to go to college. She warned me that I was destined to repeat my same situation, over and over in slightly different ways, with different children, trying to do better than what was done for me.

Trying to repair a system that’s as broken as the people in it.

But what else is there? Leaving kids like me to drown.

I’m drowning now.

Reunification with bio parents is good for so many people, but it wasn’t good for me. Instead, it stripped me of the support system I did have and left me vulnerable to the man who victimized me.

No. I’m not vulnerable. I have options.

I have Dallas.

I decide I don’t want to take Dallas tomydiner, because not only do I not want to chance seeing Chris, Idon’t want to get asked questions by my coworkers tonight. Those questions will be unavoidable eventually. But not now.

I suggest that we walk to the Withered Cactus, which would be my favorite non-bar place to go to late because it has some nice food, but isn’t pretentious. Which just means it won’t break the bank if I want to go get some hipster food with a fried egg on it.

Sometimes I do go out.

Or at least I did.

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