Page 4 of Devoured
Eventually, I was sent to a group home that felt like a warehouse for unwanted kids. I hated it. The first night was the hardest. I hadn’t even wrapped my head around being an orphan, and here I was in a room full of kids, trying to sleep. I missed my parents so much that first night. I didn’t even have a picture of them. Everything was still at our house, which I wasn’t allowed to go back to.
Weeks passed at the group home and I realized this was my life now. I told my brain to accept it. Somehow it understood, and I ate the bland food, talked with other kids. Hearing their stories and sharing mine made me feel lighter. But nights were the worst. At night I’d lie in that narrow bed, closing my eyes and pretend they were still with me. Mom knitting a sweater, Dad watching TV, next to her.
It made everything bearable for a while. But one night when it was raining outside, like the night Mom and Dad died, I broke. Something cracked open inside me.
I pressed my face into the pillow. “Give them back.”The words just came out in a whisper. I wasn’t even sure who I was talking to. “My mom and dad were good people. They slow-danced in the kitchen. They were supposed to get old.”
I waited, like maybe God or someone would answer. But the room stayed quiet except for the rain.
“If you can’t give them back...”My voice broke. “Then take me too. Why did you leave me here? Why am I the only one who had to stay? It’s not fair!”
I kept whispering through snot and tears. “Take me to wherever they are. I don’t want to be here without them. Please. I’ll do anything. Just don’t leave me alone.”
The sobbing made me sick. I swallowed everything down until my stomach burned. When exhaustion finally took me, I dreamed of drowning.
And woke to stone walls that dripped water. The entire place reeked with the smell of rust and pennies. It was cold like our basement in winter but worse. The room was so dark I couldn’t see the ceiling, just shadows that seemed to move. In the corner stood something big. Bigger than any person should be. It wore some kind of metal mask with two glowing spots where eyes should be. It just stood there, watching me. Not moving. Just watching like it had been waiting forever.
I tried to run but couldn’t move. I tried to scream but no sound came out. The thing in the corner shifted a little, and looked straight at me. That’s when I knew it had heard me earlier. Heard me begging to trade places with Mom and Dad.
I woke up gasping, heart pounding. I told myself it was just a bad dream. That’s what happens when you cry yourself to sleep. Your brain gets all mixed up, makes up scary stuff because the real stuff is too sad to think about.
I completely ignored that nightmare and tried to forget it. I did forget it perhaps but somehow the dark had started to feel different after that. Like something was in it. I started leaving the bathroom light on and told the other kids I needed to see where the bathroom was.
The group home didn’t work out. After three months, they found a family willing to take me. That didn’t work out either. Then another family. Another. Another.
I bounced between homes for six years, never fitting anywhere, never sleeping right. Every new room had different shadows, but I always found a light to keep on. A desk lamp here, a hallway light there. Some foster parents understood. Some didn’t. The ones who didn’t, usually sent me back pretty quick.
But then my luck finally changed. Just a bit, even. Annie. My eleventh placement.
Annie made pancakes on Sunday mornings and never flinched when I went quiet for days. On my first birthday at her house, she threw me a small party: a store-bought cake, paper plates, a candle stuck in sideways.
For the first time in years, I felt safe. Like maybe I could stop holding my breath all the time. Annie’s house wasn’t just another placement. It was almost like having a home again.
But even with things finally going right, I couldn’t shake the worry about my future. I wasn’t good in school…that was the kindest way to put it. Teachers said I lacked focus, but it felt more like I was underwater, and no one noticed I couldn’t breathe. How I got my high school diploma is between me, God, and a guidance counselor who took pity.
Most kids got kicked out the day they aged out of the system. But Annie let me stay through my high school graduation. When I finally found my own apartment, she paid the first month’s rent without making a show of it.
Work came next. It had to. I did everything—from morning shifts at a gas station to nights bagging groceries while my feet screamed in cheap shoes. Once, I even worked the floor at a men’s boutique, pushing cologne samples while older men stared too long at my ass and left their phone numbers on receipts.
The relationships were all the same story with different faces.
Men loved the idea of me. My exotic features, my dark eyes—they were drawn to me because I was different from their usual type. They called me Jasmine, or Arabian Nights, like I was some fantasy they’d downloaded. But once the novelty wore off, once they saw me in harsh morning light or noticed how my thighs rubbed together when I walked—the texts slowed down. The excuses started.
One told me I had “such a pretty face,”then explained he wasn’t into “bigger girls.”
Another kept asking if I could cook biryani for his friends, like I was some kind of performing monkey. He dumped me after I gained ten pounds over winter.
By twenty-four, I’d stopped trying.
I started working at Kurt’s Diner off the highway—six days a week, double shifts when they needed.
After five years, it had become the closest thing I had to safety. To stability.
Mr. Kurt ran the place. Sixty-something, slow-moving. He didn’t smile much, but he always made sure the girls got a ride home after late shifts, and the back fridge stayed stocked with free pie slices for the staff.
He called me “kid,”even when the lines around my eyes said otherwise.
Sometimes, when it was slow and the only sound was the hum of the refrigerators, I’d sit near the ice machine with a book about starting your own business. Or nursing. Or real estate. Whatever dream felt possible that week.
