Note: This story is nowhere near done, for the record. Chapter 6 is not complete - this is just what I have so far. I work on it when I have time and am in the zone (writers and artists will know what I mean), and I haven't been in that situation for quite a while. Please bear with me, and enjoy what's here so far.

Note: This is a work of FICTION. Some characters are based on people I know, and Andy is VERY loosely based on myself, but this isn't an autobiography. I was never a ward of the state, and my name was not Annie. :-)

Questions? Comments? Sign my Guestbook and/or E-mail me.

Ann Doe, Female.

Born March 28, Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts. Hospital: None. Mother: Unknown. Father: Unknown. Residence: Unknown.

That's what my birth certificate says. The people who found me, shivering under my blanket on the steps of the Department of Social Services office, showed it to me when I asked about it, when I was four. Wrapped in a single blanket on that cold morning, March 29, when the janitor came to unlock the doors and almost tripped over me. Attached was a note: Born March 28. The handwriting was painstakingly neat, as though to disguise it. The janitor took me inside and called Julie, who was in charge of such cases. She came to the office right away. They cleaned me, diapered me, and brought in a pediatrician, who examined me thoroughly and pronounced me a healthy little girl.

'A wonder how she survived the night,' he said. 'This is one determined little lady.'

The DSS people contacted the police and tried to hunt down my mother, but it was impossible to know where to look. I had dark hair and eyes and no particular oddities about me that could help determine the genes that spawned me. After a few months, the police gave up, and I officially entered the state system.

The people at the DSS named me Ann, for the stupidest reason they could think of — they wanted their very own Little Orphan Annie. I wasn't supposed to know that, but I overheard Julie and Dave and a couple of other people talking about me, and that was what they said. I didn't know what it meant, so I asked Thomas, my friend and six years my senior.

'Little Orphan Annie used to be a comic strip,' he told me. 'It was about this little girl with no family, named Annie — like you — and she runs away from the orphanage where she lives, because the woman who ran it was really mean. She finds a dog and names him Sandy, and they have all these adventures together in New York City before this millionaire, Daddy Warbucks, finds and adopts her.'

'His name was Daddy?' I asked, incredulous.

'No, stupid — that's just what he was called, because he became her daddy. They turned it into a musical too — you know, a play with songs, and it was on Broadway and it was really popular. They called it Annie. Like you.'

I'd been named after a play and a comic strip character? I wasn't sure what to make of that. Besides, I hated the name Annie. I always had. It was just so — so — girly.

'Why do you want to know, anyway?' Thomas asked.

I didn't want to tell him I'd been eavesdropping, because listening in on 'grown-up business conversations' carried a strict punishment — no dessert for a whole week. I lived for dessert.

'No reason, I just heard some kids talking about it.'

Julie came in just then. 'Thomas, can I talk to Annie for a minute?'

'Sure,' said Thomas. 'I need to go find Alan, anyway. I want my book back.'

'I think I saw him in the courtyard,' Julie said. Thomas nodded and took off.

'No running!' she called as he disappeared. Then she turned to me. 'Now Annie,' she said, sitting down. I waited, nervous. Did she know I'd been eavesdropping?

'We've found a placement for you.'

I exhaled. A foster home. 'I don't want to go,' I said.

'I know, Annie, but you can't just stay here. You need to live with a family. You should have a family.'

'They're not my family,' I said darkly. 'They're just people you pay to take care of me until they get sick of me, and then I come back here.'

'Annie,' Julie said with a sigh. 'It's very hard to place you. Most people want babies, and you're a big girl. You're already four. The older you get, the harder this will be.'

'Good,' I said. 'Then I can stay here.'

'Annie, I'm afraid this isn't a choice. The McCarthys want you to come and stay with them for a while. And maybe they'll even adopt you someday. Wouldn't that be nice? They don't have any children, you'll get all the attention, you won't have to share.'

I shook my head.

Julie stood up. 'It's too late, Annie. The papers have been signed. They're going to come pick you up the day after tomorrow, Wednesday. If you stay for a while and you're not happy there, you can come back. We won't approve an adoption where you don't like the people. You know that.'

'I don't want to go.'

'I'm sorry, Annie. We have to keep trying out families until we find one that fits you, so when you grow up you'll have everything you need. We can't take care of you once you're grown up.'

'I'll take care of myself.'

'Not if you don't get certain things while you're still a kid. The McCarthys are coming Wednesday morning, so be sure to pack up your things before you go to bed tomorrow.' Julie started for the door. 'I'm sorry, Annie. The decision has been made. It's for the best. It'll be okay.' And she was gone.

I kicked the wall. Thomas came back in, carrying his book. 'Placement?'

'Yeah,' I muttered.

'Bummer. Well, you'll be back. You always come back. No one kept you even when you were a baby. I remember. Give it a month, you'll come back home.'

'I don't want to give it a month. I want to stay here. Maybe I'll run away.'

'Annie, you can't run away. They'll catch you and then you'll really be in trouble.' Thomas looked at me oddly. 'You're not still thinking about that Little Orphan Annie stuff, are you? That was a story, it'd never happen like that in real life. Running away isn't fun like that.'

Thomas knew. Two years ago he'd run away himself. I didn't remember it, but I'd heard about it lots of times.

'Come on, Annie. You're weird, but you're not stupid. Everybody talks about how smart you are. You can read and everything. You're not really going to run away, are you?'

I sighed. 'No, I won't run away.'

'Good. Relax, Annie, just go to your placement and do whatever it is you do that gets you sent back here every time. You'll be fine. I'm gonna go read my book, okay?'

I nodded. Thomas left and I kicked the wall again, then slumped down on the floor.

 

'And this must be Annie!'

I stood uncertainly in Julie's office, my little gym bag at my feet. Mrs McCarthy beamed at me, and Mr McCarthy came forward and shook my hand formally. 'Nice to meet you, Annie. Are you looking forward to staying with us for a while?'

I looked up at him and nodded slightly. He seemed very nice, if reserved. I liked the way he shook my hand. It made me feel like a businessman, which I loved to be in my games of pretend. Mrs McCarthy, on the other hand, made me a little nervous. She was smiling at me so broadly that it seemed like she was faking it. I suppose she was trying to make me feel better or something, but it looked kind of scary.

Julie put her hand on my shoulder. 'All set, Annie?'

I nodded mutely. She crouched down next to me and looked into my eyes. 'I'll come to check up on you in a few days,' she said. It was the same routine, every time. 'You be good, okay?'

I nodded again, and she gave me a hug. She whispered in my ear, 'They're really nice. They want to be your friends. Let them just be your friends, okay? Then we'll see what happens.'

She withdrew and I picked up my bag. Mrs McCarthy offered me her hand, but I didn't take it. She looked kind of offended, but let me walk behind her as she started out of the room, saying 'Thank you' to Julie. I stopped at the door and waited for Mr McCarthy. He shook Julie's hand and thanked her, and said we'd see her in a few days. Then he smiled down at me, for the first time, and indicated that I should go out ahead of him. I took a last look at Julie as I left her office. She smiled encouragingly at me, but I didn't smile in return.

 

'Well, here we are!'

Still with that falsely cheerful smile, Mrs McCarthy opened the door to a small, warm kitchen. She turned on the light and led the way through the kitchen, saying, 'This is where we eat all our meals, unless it's a special occasion. Then we use the dining room.'

Mr McCarthy, bringing up the rear, added, 'We were going to use the dining room to celebrate your coming, but we thought you might not want it to be so fancy. Do you like fancy things?'

I stopped and looked up at him. He stopped too, and looked me right in the eye. I could tell he was genuinely interested in my answer, and wasn't just asking to ask the way grown-ups sometimes did. I shook my head.

'There, you see, Shirley? It's a good thing we decided to use the kitchen.'

Mrs McCarthy, who hadn't realised we'd stopped, was a few paces ahead. She turned. 'You don't like fancy things at all, Annie? Or do you just like them sometimes?'

I turned and tried to look her in the eye the way I had with Mr McCarthy, but she avoided my gaze. I turned back to Mr McCarthy and told him, 'I don't like fancy things at all.'

He smiled. 'Well, that's okay. We won't force them on you.'

Mrs McCarthy turned and started off again. 'Come along, Annie, let me show you where you'll sleep.'

I followed her, after another look at Mr McCarthy. He seemed to understand that I wanted him to come too, and followed me.

Mrs McCarthy opened a door and flipped the switch. I looked around my new bedroom, which, I reminded myself, was only temporary.

The walls were pink, the curtains were pink-and-white checked, and a bedspread with flowers on it covered the little twin bed in a corner. There were shelves with some children's books, but when I looked at the titles, I didn't see any stories about astronauts of dinosaurs or the things I liked to read. These stories were about puppies and kittens, and even the ones that looked remotely interesting were nothing but baby books.

'You can look at those all you like,' Mr McCarthy said to me, noticing how intently I was inspecting them. 'And we're happy to read them to you, too.'

I turned, still holding my bag. 'I can read.'

'Well then, you can read them to us,' he responded with a smile.

'Are there any other books?'

'What sort of books?' Mrs McCarthy asked. She was straightening the bedspread.

'Bigger books, with more words.'

'Well, we have books in our room, but you can't go in there unless it's an emergency or you get our permission,' she told me. 'Besides, those are grown-up books, you wouldn't be interested in them.'

'I'll show you some of our books, Annie,' Mr McCarthy cut in. 'Why don't you put your bag by your bed, and we'll go see?'

I nodded and pushed my bag under the little bed.

'You don't need to hide it,' Mr McCarthy said with a smile, but I just shook my head. He shrugged and led the way out of the room. Mrs McCarthy followed us out of the room, but she went into the kitchen. Mr McCarthy turned the other way and opened another door. He led me right past the king-sized bed and twin dressers and nightstands to the large bookshelf along the back wall. I scanned the titles: 'War and Peace,' 'Crime and Punishment,' 'The Unabridged Mark Twain'—

'Can I borrow that?' I asked, pointing to the Mark Twain book.

Mr McCarthy looked surprised. 'Well, the stories are pretty hard to read, Annie—'

'I can read them. He wrote Tom Sawyer.'

'Well — yes, yes he did. Sure, Annie, you can borrow that one.' Mr McCarthy pulled it off the shelf and handed it to me. 'Careful, it's heavy.'

Satisfied, I started out of the room. Mr McCarthy followed me back to my room, and stood in the doorway as I put the book on my bed and pulled out my bag. 'Are you all set, Annie?'

I nodded and he smiled slightly. 'All right, then. I'm going to go get some food. If you're hungry at all, come on into the kitchen. Shirley's making lunch.'

'I'm not hungry. I just want to read.'

'Okay. When do you usually go to bed?'

'Eight.'

'Okay. We'll come in then to say good night, okay?'

I nodded and he left. I pulled out my teddy bear and looked through the Table of Contents for 'Tom Sawyer,' which I'd started reading about a month before. I found where I'd left off and read until I fell asleep, there in the pink room.

 

The next day dawned bright and chilly, with a definite hint of fall in the air. I woke early, as I always did. I dressed and went to the bathroom, made my bed, and then lay back down and continued reading 'Tom Sawyer,' holding my teddy bear.

It was a long time before anyone bothered me. My door was closed, and the McCarthys no doubt assumed that I was still asleep. Finally there was a knock at the door, and Mr McCarthy peeked in. He looked surprised when he saw me. 'Oh! Annie, you're up. We thought you were sleeping, you were so quiet. How long have you been reading there?'

I shrugged. I lost all sense of time when I read, and I hadn't looked at a clock before starting.

'Well, come on and get some breakfast. How's the reading going? You like it?'

I nodded and stuck a bookmark in 'Tom Sawyer.' I put Teddy under my bed next my bag, whispering to him, 'Sorry it's dusty and dark, but you're safest here.' I gave him a kiss and withdrew, following Mr McCarthy into the kitchen.

Mrs McCarthy was already there, buttering a piece of toast. 'Good morning, Annie!' she exclaimed when she saw me. 'Did you sleep well, dear?' I nodded. 'Well, come on and sit down, don't be shy. Have some breakfast.'

I sat down across from her. Mr McCarthy sat down next to me and took a piece of toast for himself. 'Help yourself, Annie,' he told me. 'Whatever you'd like.'

I took some toast and buttered it, and ate it slowly. Mrs McCarthy studied me. 'You know, Annie,' she said, 'I have a box that's just full of dress-up clothes and jewelry and such. Would you like to go see it after breakfast?'

I looked at her and shook my head. 'No thank you.'

'Why not?' she asked. 'All little girls like to play dress-up.'

'I don't.'

Mrs McCarthy looked shocked, but Mr McCarthy said to me, 'Well, what would you like to do today, Annie? I took the day off so we could spend a little time together, the three of us. Anything you want. Within reason, of course.' He smiled.

I thought, finishing my toast. 'Is there a park?'

'A park? Sure, we could go to the playground. It's just a little walk.'

'Can we play catch?' I asked him.

'Sure, there are a few balls in the basement. Should we use a big one or a small one?'

'Arthur!' Mrs McCarthy said sharply. We both looked at her, surprised. 'You shouldn't be encouraging her to run around and get all dirty playing ball—'

'Oh come now, Shirley, it won't hurt her any,' Mr McCarthy said, and turned back to me. 'Big or small, Annie?'

'Big.' A big ball could be either thrown or kicked, and we could play longer.

Soon we were on our way. Mrs McCarthy said she wanted to stay at the house and get some things done so it was just me and Mr McCarthy walking down a little-traveled road. I carried the ball and sometimes bounced it, but I always ended up chasing it and Mr McCarthy said that wasn't safe, even on a street as quiet as this one. So we walked in silence until we reached the playground.

We played catch, and kicked the ball back and forth, and I played on the playground all afternoon. By the time we got back to the house it was twilight, and I was covered in dust and wood chips from falling down a couple of times as I ran. 'Wait till Shirley sees you,' Mr McCarthy said with a grin.

Sure enough, when we traipsed through the door into the kitchen, Mrs McCarthy — at the table reading the paper — looked like she was about to faint. 'Annie! Look at you! All covered in dirt — Arthur, what were you thinking? She's not a boy, this is completely inappropriate—'

'She had fun, Shirley,' Mr McCarthy interrupted. 'We both did. And she's not hurt.'

'That is not the point at all!' Mrs McCarthy snapped. 'She's only been here a day, and you're already transforming her into some sort of ruffian! Who knows what will come next — toy guns, I suppose, and playing football and joining Little League and—'

'Come on, Annie,' Mr McCarthy cut in. 'Let's go get you cleaned up for dinner.'

He led me outside, and instructed me to brush myself off as much as I could. He brushed off my back for me, and then brought me to the bathroom and watched me wash my face and hands. 'There, that should satisfy her,' he said. 'You mustn't mind her, Annie — she's just not used to having a little tomboy about the place. She'll adjust.'

Tomboy. I'd been called that before, all my life. When I was little, two, three years old, people would take me home and put me in little dresses and say I was such a little lady. I always threw a tantrum when that happened. One couple tried to make me carry a little purse when they took me places, but I threw it at them and yelled until my throat was sore. That's when they took me back, saying that 'this arrangement wasn't going to work out.' One family had had another child, five years old when I was two. She branded me a tomboy almost immediately — she hated me, her dreams of a sweet little sister to play with were ruined when I arrived and showed no interest in her Barbies, except to pop their heads off and throw them.

'You're such a tomboy!' she'd yell. 'Why can't you act like a normal girl?'

I lasted about three weeks in that home. I wondered if I'd ever forget any of these stories, each a little different and all exactly the same.

As it happened, I didn't last much longer than that with the McCarthys. Mr McCarthy, unfortunately, was wrong about his wife — she couldn't, or wouldn't, adjust to the way I was. She tried to mold me, bringing me dresses and other girly things in which I showed no interest at all. After a month, she gave up.

As much as I liked Mr McCarthy, I was overjoyed to get back home. I gave Mr McCarthy a hug when he dropped me off — Mrs McCarthy had said goodbye at the house, saying she was sorry but she had too much to do to come with us. I knew she was lying, she was just glad to see the last of me, but I didn't care. I was glad to see the last of her too, and pleased at a little more one-on-one time with Mr McCarthy before saying goodbye.

After Mr McCarthy left, Julie turned to me with an exasperated sigh, but she was smiling slightly. 'Do I want to know what happened, Annie?'

I shook my head and she laughed. She gave me a hug. 'Well, welcome back, but I still think it's a shame it didn't work out with the McCarthys. They were such nice people.'

I dropped my stuff off in my room and wandered into the playroom. Thomas was there, bouncing a tennis ball. He dropped it when he saw me. 'Hey, Annie! You're back! See, I told you. How was it?'

'The same.'

'They all are. I'm glad you didn't run away, though. I was kind of worried you would.'

'I wouldn't run away, Thomas. You told me about it. I know it's not fun.'

'Okay, I know. Anyway, I'm glad you're back home.' Thomas gave me a high-five. 'Way to beat the placement.'

I grinned and we started playing catch with the tennis ball, until it got away from us and rolled down the hall. We heard Dave shout, 'Who's playing ball inside?'

Thomas and I ran for it, laughing, and then raced each other to the swing set out back.

Julie sat down across from me at dinner, all smiles. 'Great news, Annie. I found you a placement.'

I dropped my fork. Another placement — I thought I'd seen the last of those. Placements were few and far between now that I was ten. 'Are you kidding me?'

She shook her head. 'A woman, Miss Rosenberg. She's not married, no kids. She's really nice. And she was perfectly happy to take a ten-year-old. What do you think?' I bent to pick up my fork. 'Don't use that one, Annie, get another one.'

'I know that. I'm not stupid, you know.' I sullenly went to exchange forks and took as long as I could at the counter. When I returned, Julie was finishing her dinner. She looked up. 'All right, Annie. Miss Rosenberg is coming on Saturday morning. My office, ten sharp.' She took the last bite of chicken and stood up with her tray. 'I know you're sick of hearing this, but she really is nice. She seems really sincere about wanting a family, which is hard if you're not married. Her house is neat, I went to see it myself. You'll like her. Same old routine, okay? Let her be your friend, and we'll go from there.'

Julie walked away. I picked up my tray and went to sit with Thomas, who was eating alone. 'Hey, kid,' he said, not looking up from his dinner.

'Hey.' I plunked my tray down and sat across from him.

He looked up. 'What's eating you?'

'Placement.'

'Wow, at your age? That's great. Try to hang onto this one, will you? You know they don't come so often anymore.'

'I know, I know.'

'Seriously, Annie. Get out while you can. Don't screw yourself over like I did. I'm gonna age out in two years and I don't know what I'm gonna do then. Find someone who will take care of you when you're 18, because these folks sure won't.'

'What are you talking about?'

'You don't know? DSS only has to take care of us till we're 18. Then—' Thomas drew a finger across his throat. 'They cut us loose.'

'So what are you supposed to do when you turn 18?'

'You're supposed to be in a family by then. Or else you gotta find a job and a place to stay and try to take care of yourself.'

'That's messed up, Thomas. What are you gonna do? You'll never get a family between now and then.'

'I know, I'm screwed over. I fought my way out of too many placements, and now I'm too damn old. Nobody wants to adopt a kid who's old enough to borrow the car.'

I finished my dinner and stood up. Thomas caught my arm. 'Don't screw yourself over, Annie. Give this one a real chance. You gotta reform about this before it's too late or you'll end up like me.'

I nodded. 'You'll be okay, Thomas. If I get a family to take me, I'll make them take you too.'

He laughed sadly. 'Sure, Annie, sure. When's this new one coming?'

'Friday.'

'What're they like? 'Really nice,' I bet.' He smirked.

'Not they. She. Just a woman.'

'Wow, a single parent? They're getting desperate. They don't like doing that. Try to keep this one if she's halfway decent, because they're running out of options if they're doing this.'

'I will, Thomas. It'll be okay, don't worry.'

He laughed again. 'I'm not holding my breath for me, but I'll count on you. Live the good life for me, kid.'

He sounded like he was a hundred years old. I wished he'd stop talking like that. But I didn't say that. I just nodded, and left him there.

 

I arrived at Julie's office with my bag a few minutes before ten. I wore my nicest jeans — the ones without any holes in them — and a clean T-shirt, neatly tucked in. Julie looked up when I came in. 'Annie! You're early, good. Have a seat.' She looked me up and down and smiled. 'You look good, you did a good job.'

I sat down on the little couch and opened a book. Time passed. I was absorbed in my book, and when I looked up again, hearing footsteps, I was surprised to see that it was 10:15.

Someone entered the office. At first I couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman, but Julie smiled and stood up. 'Miss Rosenberg! We were getting a little worried.'

'I'm so sorry I'm late,' Miss Rosenberg responded, shaking the hand Julie offered her. 'There was a ton of road construction, I had to take three detours.'

'That's all right, we're glad you made it. Annie, come say hello to Miss Rosenberg.'

I put a bookmark in my book and stood up. I looked closely at the woman as I approached her. She smiled at me, and offered me her hand. 'Good to meet you, Annie. I'm looking forward to having you stay with me.'

I shook her hand, still staring at her. Her dark hair was cut short like a man's, and she had a masculine build. Her chest looked pretty flat, and she wore a man's work shirt and jeans. I was surprised at the firmness in her grip as she shook my hand, and tried to imitate it. Her eyes, as they looked right through her glasses into mine, were a pale green. They smiled as much as her mouth as they looked at me. Something about this woman both unnerved and comforted me, and I wasn't sure why.

'Well! All set, you two? Do either of you have questions for me before you hit the road?' Julie looked from Miss Rosenberg to me and back again. We both shook our heads. She smiled. 'Well then, I guess this is it.'

She knelt before me to give me a hug, the way she always did. When she knelt like this, I was almost a head taller than she was. She put her arms around my waist and I wrapped mine around her neck, the opposite of how we hugged at all the previous goodbyes. She whispered in my ear, 'I'll see you in about a week, okay? Same routine. Give her a chance. You know how hard it's getting to find placements for you, we have to seize every opportunity. Okay?'

I nodded, but she couldn't see that, so I whispered 'Okay' back. She let me go and stood up, and ruffled my hair. I followed Miss Rosenberg out the door, not looking back.

 

Miss Rosenberg glanced over at me as she drove. 'You know, you needn't call me Miss Rosenberg,' she said. 'It makes me feel old. Just call me Sam.'

I looked at her. 'Sam?'

She smiled. 'Only my enemies call me Samantha.'

I thought about that as we drove. It would be nice to have a name that shortened into a boy's name so easily. I had thought a lot about names, because I wanted to change mine as soon as I found a family that would let me, or turned 18. I had tried on a whole bunch of them, but none seemed to fit. I even thought about Oliver, because when I found a book of 'Little Orphan Annie' comics, when I was eight, it said that Daddy Warbucks' first name was Oliver. And Thomas told me that Oliver was the name of another orphan who found a home, in a Charles Dickens book. So I found Oliver Twist and read it, and loved the story. I hoped I could find a rich great-uncle the way Oliver did. Thomas had told me that it was made into a musical the way 'Little Orphan Annie' was, and that they had even made a movie of it. So I asked Dave, and he found a copy for me to watch. I loved it, and was trying to imitate the dancing for weeks.

The name Oliver didn't really feel right, though. So I kept trying different names, thinking about them and discarding them one by one. Finally, though, I found what was probably the most obvious name of all — Andy. Annie turned into Andy pretty effortlessly, and even my full name — Ann Doe — turned into Andrew without much thought. And the more I thought about being called Andy, the more I liked it. But that was different from being named Samantha, where it's no big deal to be called Sam. Calling myself Andy wasn't just having a nickname, it was really changing my name. Nobody would ever agree to call me that. So I never told anyone.

Sam finally pulled into a little driveway on a quiet tree-lined street. I could still hear the sound of distant traffic from the highway through my open window. 'Well, here we are.' Sam cut the ignition and opened her door. 'Welcome.'

I got out of the car and pulled my bag out from the back seat. The house stood on its own on a slight hill, the front yard sloping sharply to meet the sidewalk. The gray paint was peeling and the black shutters had slats missing, and the house was kind of square looking. It made me think of the way haunted houses always look so broken-down and creepy, with ghosts oozing out of shattered windows and bats in the chimney and stuff. But this house didn't look creepy at all, for all its shortcomings. It looked — well, like a home, although I couldn't explain why.

Sam led the way to the back door, which opened into a little mudroom, filled with muddy work boots and jackets and tools. We traipsed through and found ourselves in the kitchen. I looked around. White walls, white appliances, sturdy wooden kitchen table and chairs. A few pictures were on the fridge, of different people. I went to look closer. 'My family,' Sam said, coming up behind me. 'My nephew — he's seven — and those are my parents, and this—'

Just then the screen door slammed behind us. Sam smiled. 'That's from when we came in. It's got kind of a delay.'

A woman's voice called from upstairs. 'You back?'

'Yeah,' Sam shouted back. 'Come on down.' She saw me looking at her quizzically. 'That's Sarah,' she explained. 'My best friend. That's her mom, here, and her sisters.' She pointed at more pictures on the fridge.

I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, and a moment later a woman came in, taking off a pair of work gloves. She wore a man's shirt and jeans, just like Sam. Her hair was also cut short, but it wasn't quite as dark. She stuck her gloves in her back pocket and offered me her hand. 'Hey there, young fella! I'm Sarah, I'm Sam's best friend. You'll be seeing a lot of me.'

I felt a smile slowly creep over my face as I took her hand and shook it firmly. Her grip wasn't quite as strong as Sam's, and her smile grew as she felt my solid grasp. I looked through her glasses into her eyes, which were a light brown. They had a greenish tint, as though they couldn't quite decide what color they were. They looked like they were laughing, but I didn't have time to worry about whether she was laughing at me because Sam cleared her throat. 'Annie, why don't I show you your room, okay? You can drop off your bag and get settled a little bit.'

I saw a look of surprise cross Sarah's face as she heard my name, but she quickly recovered her composure. My smile faded, but I looked up at Sam and nodded.

She started off, but Sarah caught her arm. 'Hang on, Sam, can I talk to you for a sec?'

Sam looked at her. 'Can it wait?'

'It won't take long.'

'Let me show Annie her room first.'

'I can find it,' I cut in. 'If you need to talk.'

Sam looked at me and smiled. 'Well, you don't have to conduct a search. Okay. Top of the stairs, turn left, the door at the end of the hall.'

I started off, but paused on the second step as I heard Sarah start to speak. They couldn't see me, and didn't seem to be listening for my footsteps to fade upstairs, so I stayed.

'Jesus, Sam, I really thought she was a boy when I saw her.'

'I noticed. She is butch-looking. She carries herself like a butch.'

'But there's more to it than that. When I called her 'young fella,' her face lit up like Christmas. You should've seen it.'

'We can talk with her about it. But we have to be careful. We don't want her to freak out or anything. We've waited too long—'

'I know, I know. Relax, will you? It'll be okay.' Sarah's voice dropped. I strained to hear it. 'Everything's gonna be fine. We can be a family, we'll make it work. I know we need to take things slow. I just wanted to let you know, because I know you didn't see her face. And then when you said her name, her face just clouded over. I think somewhere in there we need to talk to her about it.'

'Fair enough. Let me go check on her.'

I took the stairs two at a time as quietly as I could, found my room, and flopped on the bed. I dug my current book out of my bag and then shoved the bag under the bed like always, and started to read where I'd left off in Julie's office. I'd just gotten through my first paragraph when Sam appeared in the doorway. 'Hey, kid. Everything okay?'

I looked up as though I'd been thoroughly absorbed in my book. 'Huh? Yeah, everything's fine. Thanks.'

'You hungry?'

I nodded. 'A little.'

'Okay, we'll get some lunch in a sec. I wanted to ask you about something, though.' She came over and sat on the bed, and looked right at me.

I swallowed. 'What?'

Sam said gently, 'Well, I noticed that Sarah called you a boy by mistake, and you didn't correct her ... did it bother you? It's okay to say something if it did.'

I wondered why she didn't just come out and say she knew it didn't bother me, that Sarah told her I smiled when I heard it. But I played along. 'No, it didn't bother me.'

'Do you ... prefer it, when people call you a boy? Or does it just not matter?'

I swallowed again. Would they send me back if I told them the truth? But as I saw Sam looking me square in the eye, I couldn't lie to her. The words caught in my throat at first, but I swallowed and spoke them as clearly as I could.

'I ... prefer it.'

'Would you like it better if we called you a boy?'

This caught me completely off-guard. 'You mean ... I can choose?'

'Sure, if that's what you want. It's your identity. We want you to feel comfortable here.'

'Uh ...' I stammered. 'Uh, yeah. I'd like that, if you called me ... a boy.'

Sam smiled. 'When I was your age, sometimes I liked it when people thought I was a boy. Not all the time, though. But people almost always thought I was a boy, because my hair was short the way yours is, and everybody called me Sam.'

'I wish I had a name like that,' I said wistfully. Then I heard what I'd just said and I felt the color rise in my face.

Sam smiled. 'Annie a little too girly for you?'

How did she seem to know what I was thinking? I nodded, unable to take my eyes from hers. They looked unwaveringly into mine, but somehow it didn't feel like she was staring at me. I already trusted her, and I didn't know why, but I knew it had something to do with the way she looked at me. Her smile grew. 'I don't suppose you've thought about alternative names.'

I wanted to look away, but I couldn't. She held me steady with her gaze, and even as I felt afraid of what could happen if I told her, I trusted that somehow it would be okay. 'I ... I kind of like ... Andy.'

At this, Sam fairly grinned. 'Andy, huh? That's easy, Annie into Andy. We can do that, if you want. Would you like that?'

I still couldn't believe she was giving me a choice. I nodded eagerly.

'Good, that's all settled then.' Sam broke our gaze and stood up. She put a hand on my shoulder. The weight felt reassuring. 'If you ever want to talk, or anything, you can always come to Sarah or me. Okay?'

I nodded and she smiled again. 'Come on, let's go get some lunch.'

Sam led me downstairs into the kitchen, where Sarah was rummaging through the cupboards. Sam touched her shoulder and whispered in her ear. She nodded and turned to me. 'Well, big guy, what do you want for lunch? I've been looking, and I see hot dogs, mac and cheese, leftover Chinese food, and a couple of TV dinners.' She grinned. 'I wouldn't trust the Chinese food. I'm not sure how long it's been sitting there. It may have mutated into another life form by now.'

'Hey, who bought that Chinese food?' Sam cut in.

'Hush, you.' Sarah looked back at me. 'Well? Preferences?'

I grinned at her. 'Mac and cheese would be great.'

'Good choice. We're going to get along just fine.' Sarah pulled out a box. 'Sam, you want some?'

'Sure, why not.' Sam put some water on to boil. 'Hey Andy, just so we know, is there anything you can't eat?'

I fairly jumped at the sound of my new name. Almost equally surprising was the question itself. Nobody had ever asked me that before. 'I don't think so ... I mean, I don't like beans and broccoli and stuff, but I'm not allergic to them.'

Sam and Sarah laughed. 'When I was in the fourth grade,' Sarah said, 'I told my teacher that I was allergic to chlorophyll. Anything that was green, I couldn't eat it.' We all laughed together. 'I tried that in the third grade too,' she added, 'but I didn't know what I was talking about and I said I was allergic to chloroform.' We choked on our laughter, and it was a couple of minutes before we realised the water was boiling.

After lunch, Sam and Sarah took me on a tour of the house. I saw Sam's room, the walls decorated with pictures of friends and family and several ones of Sam and Sarah together. I saw the guest room, with pieces of wood and tools strewn all over the floor. 'I'm putting in shelves,' Sarah explained. That explained the work gloves she'd been wearing. I looked curiously at all the different tools, and the plans lying nearby.

'Do you like to build stuff?' Sarah asked me.

'Yeah ... I always liked Legos and blocks and stuff when I was younger.'

'You could lend me a hand with these, if you want. I'd love the help.'

I looked up at her. 'Really?'

She smiled. 'Sure. Four hands are better than two, and two brains are better than one.'

'Sarah was a math major,' Sam told me.

'Oh be quiet.' Sarah whacked her shoulder.

We saw the living room — more pictures, and very comfy-looking furniture. An empty fireplace stood on one wall. A real fireplace. I grinned.

'We can do the fireplace thing in the winter,' Sam said, seeing how I was eyeing it. 'But I don't think we'll be doing that in July.'

In the winter? What was she saying? Nobody had ever hinted like that, given me any indication that they expected me to stay for more than a few weeks.

I saw the bathrooms — one with a shower, one without — and the dining room. 'We hardly ever use the dining room,' Sarah told me. Then she seemed to falter. 'That is—'

'I hardly ever use the dining room,' Sam cut in. 'I hardly ever have guests. Sarah doesn't count, we're too close.'

'Right, that's what I meant.' Sarah recovered her composure. 'Sam hardly ever uses the dining room. But if she did, I better be invited.'

I followed them back up the stairs, into the study. There were two desks, with a computer on each. They sat along opposite walls, so that when people worked at them, their backs were to each other. 'Sarah does a lot of her work here,' Sam told me. 'She lives with her folks and it gets hard to concentrate in that house.' Sarah nodded in agreement.

'Why are they facing the walls?' I asked.

'So we don't distract each other if we're working at the same time,' Sarah said. 'We can talk or turn around if we need something, but if we were facing each other, we'd be sneaking looks at each other's work all the time, and we'd never get anything done. Even if we're both doing really boring stuff, the other person's work always looks more interesting. Does that ever happen with you and your friends, when you're doing your homework?'

I nodded. 'Friends' was stretching it, though. It was really just whoever happened to be around. The only friend I had was Thomas. I remembered the promise I'd made him at dinner before I came here. I vowed again, this time to myself, that if Sam and Sarah — no, wait, just Sam — adopted me, I'd make sure they took Thomas in too.

I was actually already hoping that I could stay here long-term. That had never really happened at a placement before. Everyone wanted me to be a girl, and when I couldn't — or wouldn't — do it, they ditched me. But Sam and Sarah didn't want me to be a girl, they wanted me to be myself. They were even calling me Andy! It felt more like a dream than anything real. I hadn't even been there for a whole day, and I kept wondering when I would wake up.

We found ourselves back in the kitchen. 'Well, that's it,' said Sam. 'What do you think?'

'I like it,' I told her. 'I like it a lot. It's nice.'

Sam smiled. 'Glad to hear it.' She looked me over. 'Say, do you need a haircut?'

I ran my fingers through my hair, which was getting close to my shoulders. The DSS people — and certainly all my previous foster parents — had never let me get it cut like a regular boy, but they let me wear it pretty short for a girl. They didn't like it, and they made sure I knew it, but they tolerated it in the same way that they tolerated my being a 'tomboy.'

'Uh ... yeah, I guess I do.'

'Do you want to get that done today? We've got a friend who can cut it right here in the kitchen. She's a professional hairdresser, don't worry.' Sam smiled. 'She won't butcher you. Or we can do it some other day, if you'd rather do something else. There's a park and playground not far from here, or we could show you the games on the computer.'

'Can I get it cut really short?' I asked. 'Like yours?'

'Sure, if you want. Just tell Esperanza what you want her to do. Do you want to do it today, or let it go for now?'

'Can we do it today?'

'If she's free. I'll call her.'

'Andy,' Sarah cut in. I jumped again. Would I ever get used to that name? 'While we're waiting, do you want to check out the computer games? There aren't a whole lot, but they're not bad.'

'Sure,' I agreed.

'You go ahead up,' Sam said to us. 'I'll call Esperanza and see if she's free. Maybe she'll want to stay for dinner, too. Is that okay with you, Andy?'

I jumped. This was getting annoying. I wished I were used to my own name. Every time I heard it, I couldn't believe it was really being used to refer to me, and at the same time I thought I could hear angels sing.

I looked over at Sam, who was looking at me expectantly. 'Yeah, that'd be fine.'

Sam smiled and picked up the phone. 'C'mon, kiddo,' said Sarah, and I followed her out of the room and up the stairs.

'The name takes some getting used to,' she told me as we entered the study. 'Esperanza will tell you. She wasn't always called that. I remember when Sam and I first met her, she was still getting used to it, and she jumped a mile whenever anyone said her name.' She smiled. 'Her name is Spanish ... it means hope. Isn't that pretty? I always thought that if I had a daughter, I might name her Hope.' She turned on one of the computers. 'Have a seat.'

I sat in the big wheely chair in front of the computer and waited for it to boot up. Sarah sat on a low file cabinet next to the desk and watched me. 'I like Andy on you,' she said. 'You look like an Andy. What's your last name?'

I looked up at her. 'I ... I don't have one. They gave me the name Doe because they didn't know my real name.'

'Oh ... sorry. Maybe someday you'll take a last name of your own, eh?'

'I guess so. What's yours?' I asked her.

'Ellis.' Sarah glanced at the monitor. 'Good, here we go.' She stood up and took command of the mouse, and opened up a menu. 'There you go, bud. Take your pick.'

There were four games. I chose 'SimCity' and began building my own metropolis, ready to destroy it with attacking monsters and earthquakes once it began to prosper.

Sam came in. 'She'll be here in about an hour,' she said. She stood behind me to watch me play. 'Raise their taxes,' she told me. 'Bit by bit, so they don't even realise it. Bleed 'em dry.'

'Sam for President,' said Sarah. I grinned at her and set a giant lizard loose on Annietown. Sam noticed the name of the town, and watched the lizard's tail knock out the police station. 'Is that symbolic?' she asked me. I looked up at her and smiled slyly. She laughed. 'Atta boy.' She clapped a hand on my shoulder.

'What'd he do?' Sarah wanted to know. She joined Sam behind me and peered at the monitor. Sam pointed, and Sarah started to laugh. 'Didn't I say we were going to get along just fine?' she said. I set a second lizard loose and set several small fires, and we all laughed together as Annietown descended into rubble.

 

An hour later, I was busy cultivating Andytown into prosperity when the doorbell rang. 'That's probably Esperanza,' said Sam, getting up. She left to answer the door. Sarah pointed to an empty patch in the middle of my town. 'Put some roads through there,' she said. 'Make people want to build there.' I did as I was told.

A call came from downstairs. 'Guys, come on down, Esperanza's here.'

I looked at Sarah. She smiled encouragingly. 'Come on, save your game and let's go down.' I froze time, saved my city, and followed her down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Sam stood by the stove, putting a kettle on to boil. Behind her stood a Latina drag queen. I'd never seen a drag queen before except in the movies. I sucked in my breath when I saw her, then looked around quickly to see if anyone had heard. No one reacted. 'Andy,' said Sam, making me jump again, 'this is Esperanza. Esperanza, this is our — my new foster son, Andy.'

'Ooh, Sammy, you weren't kidding, he is a butch! Come here, child. And you, Sarah, get over here and give me a kiss.' Esperanza's voice wasn't the fake-sounding falsetto I'd heard in the movies. It didn't sound like any woman's voice I'd ever heard, but it didn't sound like a man's voice, either. Above all else, though, it was friendly. She and Sarah kissed each other on the cheek as I approached her. She took my face in her hands and tilted my chin up gently. 'Lord, boy, how long have you worn your hair like this?'

'Um ... all my life, but it's usually a little shorter than this,' I told her.

She shook her head and clucked. 'Well, you're lucky I'm here now. We're gonna fix you up real nice. You won't even recognise yourself. Sammy, does this boy have a suit?'

I was startled, but Sam's voice came across calmly. I couldn't see her because Esperanza was still holding my face. 'He just arrived today, Esperanza. And I told you about his situation. It may be a while yet.'

She sighed. 'He needs a suit. This haircut I'm gonna give him needs a suit to compliment it, not T-shirts and jeans.'

'He's ten years old,' Sarah cut in. 'He doesn't want to get all dressed up, do you, kid?'

Esperanza finally let go of me. I looked at Sarah. 'Well, I don't think I'd mind too much if it were a suit, but I usually have to wear a dress.'

'A dress?' Esperanza said over the whistle of the tea kettle. Sam turned the heat off and poured cups of tea. 'I'll wear the dresses. When's your birthday?'

'March 28.'

'That's too far away. We'll get you a suit for Christmas, okay?'

'Christmas?' I repeated. They were expecting me to still be around at Christmas? That was five months away. I couldn't imagine being that lucky. 'Uh, yeah, sure. That'd be great. I always wanted my own suit.'

Esperanza snorted. 'If I knew I'd meet you somewhere down the line, I'd have saved the Sunday suits my father made me wear. Lord knows I had no use for them.'

'Andy, want a cup of tea? Do you ever drink tea?' Sam asked me.

'Sure. I've had it a few times.'

'I'll put lots of sugar in it,' she said with a smile, pouring a fourth cup.

Esperanza set a chair in the middle of the floor. 'Now you sit down, child,' she instructed, 'and I'm gonna turn you into the butchest ten year old on the playground.'

I sat down obediently. What did 'butch' mean anyway? They kept using it — Sam when I eavesdropped on her and Sarah earlier, and now Esperanza. They all seemed to agree that I was butch, so maybe it was like being a tomboy. Esperanza draped a smock over me. 'I swiped this from the salon where I work,' she told me. 'Don't tell on me.'

She started to work. Sam and Sarah watched, sipping their tea. I sat nervously, feeling my hair being cut away from my neck. Sam caught my eye and winked, and I smiled at her. Esperanza clipped the hair on the top of my head, and finally she put her scissors down on the counter and I thought she must be done. I started to get up.

'Where you going, boy?' Esperanza demanded. She put a hand on my shoulder and plunked me back in my seat. 'We're not done here yet. You look silly like this, I gotta even it out. I'll tell you when I'm finished.' I stayed put, fidgeting slightly. A second later, I heard the buzzing of an electric razor. I'd never been buzzed before. I looked anxiously at Sam and Sarah, who both smiled encouragingly. Sarah nodded at me.

Esperanza buzzed the razor over the back and sides of my head, and I heard a snap as she removed an attachment. Then I felt the razor on the back of my neck, right against the skin. It tickled. I fidgeted a little.

'Hold still,' Esperanza told me. 'I know it tickles, but I don't want to shave a patch out of your hair because you're wiggling around.' I stopped fidgeting, but kicked my legs a little as the razor went over the back of my neck. Sam noticed and chuckled.

Esperanza finished with the razor and turned it off, and brushed off the back of my neck. 'Lean forward,' she told me, 'and rub your head as much as you can until all the loose hair comes out. Hair dryers never get it out, I don't even bother with them.' I did as I was told, all three of them watching me, for what felt like hours until they said I could stop. Esperanza ran a wet comb through my hair to put it back in place. I stood up and she took the smock off of me. Sarah put the chair back and Sam went for a broom. Esperanza beamed at me. 'You look a sight better, child. Go on, take a look at yourself.'

I ran into the bathroom and stopped dead when I saw myself in the mirror. It felt like I was looking at a different person. I looked, without question, like a boy. It was like seeing my own twin brother looking back at me. I felt the excitement start to bubble up in my stomach, rising into my chest and causing my heart to beat faster. It rose into my throat, into my mouth — I couldn't hold it in — I opened my mouth and heard myself yell, 'Oh, WOW!'

I heard the three of them burst out laughing in the kitchen. I ran back in, unable to contain my euphoria. I grinned at them all. Sarah finished dumping the dustpan full of hair into the trash can, brushed it out, and went to put it and the broom away. Esperanza and Sam sat at the kitchen table with their tea. Sam pointed. 'Your tea's all ready, kid. I put plenty of sugar in it.'

I took my tea from the counter and sipped at it tentatively. It tasted minty and very sweet. 'Good?' Sam asked as Sarah came back in. I nodded, smiling like an idiot. I couldn't contain my euphoria. I stood to drink my tea, as I couldn't imagine being able to keep myself in a chair. Sam caught my eye. 'Too excited to sit?'

How did she do that? I nodded, unable to get rid of that stupid smile, my eyes locked with hers. They looked deep into mine in that way she had, congratulating me.

'Esperanza,' Sarah said, sitting next to her at the table. 'You're staying for dinner tonight.'

Esperanza raised her hands in surrender. 'All right, all right. You don't have to twist my arm like that.' Sarah laughed.

Sam broke our eye contact and looked around the table. 'I thought we'd barbecue, if that's all right with everybody. It's a beautiful day.'

'Sounds good to me,' I piped up.

Esperanza looked over at me and laughed. 'Will you look at him, he's so excited. Dog food would sound good to him right about now.' I felt myself turn red, but still couldn't stop grinning. She saw my color change and her tone became gentler. 'It's okay, honey, I understand how you feel. I remember the first time I looked into the mirror and liked what I saw. I was dancing around the room like a damn fool, and I didn't care. Nothing mattered, I was just so happy.' I saw Sam and Sarah nodding in agreement. I nodded too, emphatically.

Esperanza smiled at me. 'You'll get used to it, child. As long as you're here, we'll get you used to it. They'll tell you out there that you've got no right to be who you are, you gotta be who they want you to be. You gotta show 'em what they want to see, tell 'em what they want to hear. Not here. Here you be yourself, whatever that means. So long as you don't hurt anybody, you do what makes you happy. Don't let them tell you they know you better than you know yourself.' She stood up and approached me. She took my face in her hands again, and kissed my forehead. 'Welcome to the family, child.'

 

That night, I stopped by Sam's room to say good night before going to bed. Sam and Sarah were both lying on Sam's bed, fully dressed and reading books. I knocked lightly on the open door. They looked up. 'I just wanted to say good night.'

Sam sat up. 'Do you want to be tucked in or anything, or are you too big for all that?'

I shrugged. 'Nobody ever has before.'

'That sounds like a good reason for us to do it now,' Sarah said, sitting up next to Sam. She stuck a marker in her book.

Sam looked at me. 'What do you think? It's your call.'

It felt a little funny, since I was ten, but I hadn't been tucked in since I was about four, and then it was just Julie. It sounded nice. 'Sure, why not.'

They followed me to my room and I got into bed with Teddy. Sam smiled. 'What's your bear's name?'

'Teddy.'

'Classic. Can't go wrong.' She pulled the covers up over me and smoothed them. 'All set?'

I nodded and she turned out the light. 'Guys?' I asked through the darkness. I could see just their outlines standing by the bed. 'Will you stay for a little while?'

'Sure,' I heard Sam say, and they sat down on the floor next to my bed, their backs resting against it.

'Does the dark bother you?' Sarah asked.

'Not really. A little, but ... not really.'

'Want us to leave the hall light on when we go?'

'Nah, you don't have to. Um ... can I ask you guys something?'

'Sure,' said Sam.

'What does butch mean?'

I heard them both chuckle, and then Sam said, 'It's like you. Like us. I guess the easiest way to describe it is to say it means masculine, but there's more to it than that. It's hard to explain in detail. But does that help at all?'

'Yeah. Thanks. I figured it was kind of like being a tomboy.'

'Yeah, Sam and I were both called tomboys when we were little,' Sarah said. 'Do you get that a lot?'

'Yeah.'

'That can hurt, I know. But it can also be a source of pride if you let it. I've been called butch as an insult, and I just smiled and thanked them. I'm proud of who I am. And when you do that, the people insulting you have no idea what to do with themselves. They're waiting for you to act hurt or angry, and when you act like they complimented you, they fall all over themselves trying to come up with something cool to say.'

I laughed and rolled over, hugging Teddy. I shut my eyes. I felt Sam and Sarah stand up and kind of hover over me. It could have felt threatening, but it didn't. It felt protective, and I let myself relax.

I heard Sam start to sing, very softly. It sounded like a lullaby, but no lullaby I'd ever heard before. I felt a hand run gently through my hair. I heard Sarah whisper, 'Good night, Andy.' And as I felt myself slip towards unconsciousness, a single thought ran through my head: Welcome to the family.

I felt the sunlight, warm on my face, before I opened my eyes. I opened them and blinked rapidly as the bright light streamed in through the open window. I lay there for a moment, remembering. The previous day seemed like a dream, a dream too fantastic to believe. I reached back and touched my hair, shivering slightly as my cold fingertips — my hands were always cold — touched the bare skin on the back of my neck. I ran my fingers through it and marveled at how short it was. I could see the mirror over the dressed along the wall across from me, but I wasn't high enough to see myself in it. I remembered seeing myself in the bathroom mirror the night before, and my heart rate increased.

I rubbed my eyes, sat up in bed, and looked around. It was the first time I'd really taken a look at my room. It was on the big side, which was a real luxury for me. The walls were stark white, with a few paintings of landscapes hanging. The two windows, both on the wall to my left, were open, and the sounds of birds chirping and someone's lawnmower drifted in. A desk and chair sat between the two windows. A bookshelf and dresser were along the wall across from me, along with the door to the closet. A nightstand sat to the right of my bed, with only a small lamp and a clock radio on it. The door leading to the hallway was also to my right, near the far corner.

I glanced at the clock — 8.35. A little early to be getting up, given that it was summer vacation, but I wasn't tired at all. I pushed back the dark green bedspread and got up. I pulled my bag out from under the bed, quickly dressed, and left the bag on the floor next to my bed. I sat Teddy on the bed by the pillows to survey the scene and headed into the hallway.

As I descended the stairs, I heard voices and music coming from the kitchen. I went in and saw Sam and Sarah at the kitchen table, drinking tea, reading the paper and talking. I wondered when Sarah had arrived. They both looked up as I came in, and both smiled.

Sam waved me over. 'Morning, Andy! C'mere, there's plenty of breakfast.'

I joined them at the table, and Sarah ruffled my hair. 'How'd you sleep?'

'Good.'

'Well,' she corrected. 'It's an adverb. I'm a stickler for grammar, you'll learn that soon enough.'

'Well.' I smiled at her.

'What'll it be?' Sam asked me. 'We've got cereal and we've got scrambled eggs. Pick your poison. The eggs should still be hot.'

'Eggs, please.'

Sam hopped up and served me a plate of scrambled eggs, sprinkled with pepper and salt, and a tall glass of orange juice. 'Get your blood sugar up,' she told me. 'You a morning person?'

I thought. I didn't like getting up early, but I preferred doing things in the morning to doing them late at night. 'I guess so.'

'Well, you may need less juice than some folks do, but everyone wakes up with low blood sugar. That's why you feel so sluggish sometimes. Orange juice helps that a lot.'

I took a gulp of juice obediently. 'What are we gonna do today?' I asked.

Sam shrugged and sat back down at the table. 'What would you like to do?'

'I don't know. Whatever you want.' I took a bite of eggs to test. They were really good.

'I refuse to believe that any ten year old is that easy to please,' Sam told me. 'Think about it. We could go to the park, we could cruise the town ...'

'We could go clubbing,' Sarah volunteered.

'That's enough out of you.' Sam looked back at me. 'Give it some thought, and we'll figure it out after breakfast.'

I gave it some thought as I finished my eggs, drank my juice — I did feel a bit more energetic afterwards — and shared the comics with Sarah. I settled — no big surprise — on the park, and soon we were walking with a baseball and three gloves, and a generic bouncy ball that could be used for a number of games. 'I don't ordinarily like games with balls,' Sam told me. 'I'm making a major sacrifice here. You owe me.'

We soon found ourselves at the park, several playing fields separated by low chain-link fences or nothing at all, with a playground in one corner. 'That's the elementary school,' Sarah said, pointing at a low building nearby. 'You're going into fifth grade, right?'

'Yeah.' I wondered how she knew that.

'That's where you'll go, then. It's K through five.'

My school? I looked at it curiously for a moment. It had a flat roof and was kind of square in shape, and was only two stories high. The bottom half was painted light blue, and I couldn't see what it was made of from where I was standing. The top half was larger and made from brick, and it jutted out on the sides to form overhangs. It didn't look bad. I wondered what it was like on the inside.

I felt Sam's hand on my shoulder. Funny how I knew that it was Sam, even though I was looking in the other direction. She spoke. 'Come on, bud. If you're going to make me throw a ball around, we might as well go do it.'

And so we threw a ball around. A lot. I loved sports, especially baseball, and was busy pretending I was making the winning play in the World Series as Sam and Sarah tossed me pop-ups and rolled grounders my way. They were really impressed with my throwing ability — 'That's not an arm, that's a cannon!' Sarah said at one point, shaking the sting out of her hand. I flushed with pride.

After a while, Sam and Sarah's arms started to get tired from throwing, so we kicked the bouncy ball around. I showed them a couple of soccer techniques that Dave had taught me at DSS. Then Sarah challenged me to a game of one-on-one soccer, which pleased Sam as she got to sit down and play ref from the sidelines. Sarah kicked my butt, which surprised me. I didn't know she could play soccer. I asked her to teach me, and she agreed. 'But not today,' she said. 'I'm old and I'm tired, and Sam's been old and tired for a while now.'

'I heard that,' Sam called from where she was sitting. She got up and we started back to the house for lunch.

That afternoon we took a tour of the town — in the car — and we barbecued hot dogs outside for dinner. Before I knew it, it was time for bed. I was playing SimCity again on the computer, working on Andytown, which was flourishing. Sarah was sitting with me, critiquing my methods. She looked up at the clock occasionally, and finally she said, 'Okay, kid, it's 9:30. How about you get ready for bed?'

'Let me finish.'

'Nope. Save the game and let's get going.'

I sighed, froze time, and saved my game. I knew that Sam was my foster parent and not Sarah, but it seemed more like they were both my parents. Except that two women couldn't be parents together. But that was sure how it felt anyway.

When I was finally in bed, Sam and Sarah tucked me in just like the night before. 'Want us to stay?' Sam asked.

'Yeah.'

They sat up against the bed, just like last night, and I heard Sam start to sing again. The music was soothing, but the words spoke to me and I fought sleep in order to listen to them.

After the battles and we're still around,
Everything once up in the air has settled down,
Sweep the ashes, let the silence find us.
A moment of peace is worth every war behind us.
You and me of the ten thousand wars.

Sam and Sarah stood up, and I shut my eyes tightly and pretended to be asleep. Sam ruffled my hair. 'G'night, faker.'

I didn't respond and she chuckled. 'See you in the morning, buddy.' I heard them go out softly, and with the last words of the lullaby echoing in my ears, drifted into sleep.

 

The next several days passed quickly. Sam and Sarah both worked in the computer room, and one of them would often hang out with me while the other worked, or I would play computer games if a computer was free. We went to the park several more times, watched videos, and just generally got to know each other. They answered all my questions about being butch, and why I was the way I was, and so forth. A lot of it they didn't know, but they weren't afraid to tell me that they didn't know, and we'd have real discussions about it — way more interesting than anything I ever discussed in school. Before I knew it, it was Friday, which turned out to be the first stressful day since I'd arrived.

The call came during lunch. Sam got up to answer it. 'Hello?'

I watched her face change as she listened. She gestured for something to write with, and I handed her pen and paper. She wrote, nodding. Then she said, 'Okay, thank you. We look forward to seeing you.'

She hung up and turned to Sarah and me. 'That was the DSS woman — Julie. She's coming tomorrow for Andy's one-week checkup. She'll be here at 1:00 tomorrow afternoon. I forgot all about it. Did you guys remember?'

Sarah and I shook our heads. I realised that this was the first time in my life I'd forgotten about Julie and even DSS itself. The closest I came to thinking about them was when I thought how great it would be if I got adopted and could stay here.

Sarah looked a little worried. 'You want me to clear out?'

Sam sighed. 'Probably. I don't like it, but—'

'It's fine, I understand. But what are we going to do about—' Sarah gestured toward me.

Sam turned to me. 'You know Julie, right?' I nodded. 'What's she gonna say when she sees you like this?'

I swallowed. That hadn't even occurred to me. What would Julie say? She wouldn't like it, I knew that much. She never really liked that I was a tomboy, but it was cute when I was little so she put up with it. Lately, though, she'd started nagging me to act more feminine, saying that I was reaching an age where those things mattered. 'She won't like it,' I admitted. 'But I don't know exactly what she'll say or do.'

'Will she hate it, or will she just not like it? Like, is it going to cause trouble?'

'It might.'

Sam sighed again. 'Well, we're going to have to make the best of it. Your hair's not going to grow out overnight. Has she ever seen it this short?'

'No, it's never been like this.'

'Great. Well, we can work around that. Let's just hope she doesn't freak out.'

We spent the entire rest of the afternoon strategizing. 'Sarah won't be here,' Sam told me. 'Julie can't know that she's here all the time. If she finds out, she might think—' She broke off. 'Well, anyway, you have to act like Sarah doesn't exist. It's been just you and me all along, got it?' I nodded.

Sarah spoke up. 'How long is she supposed to be here? What happens?'

'An hour or two,' I told her. 'She'll take a tour of the house, and then we'll sit and talk. Then she'll talk to me alone for a little while, to see how I'm doing, and then she'll leave.'

Sam nodded. 'So at least it's not all day. We can deal with this. When she's gone, Sarah, we'll call you at your folks' house and you can come back over. We'll all go get ice cream or something. How does that sound?'

'Sounds good to me!' I said.

Sam laughed. 'I thought ice cream might appeal to you.'

Suddenly something seemed to occur to her. Her face clouded over as she looked at me. 'We're gonna have to call you Annie, kid. I just remembered. If Julie's not gonna like your haircut, she sure won't like it if we call you a boy.'

I winced. She put a hand on my shoulder. 'I know. But it's gotta be done if you don't want her to freak out. It's just a couple of hours. Okay?'

I nodded slightly. She smiled. 'Good boy. It'll be okay.' She ruffled my hair.

We strategized a bit more, practicing conversations and stuff to get used to calling me Annie and 'she.' I felt my stomach turn each time I heard it, but I knew it had to happen if I wanted to stay. Sam and Sarah shot me sympathetic looks each time I was referred to as a girl. I knew they didn't like it any more than I did, but they managed to make a good show of it, and if I didn't know any better I'd have believed that they saw me the same way Julie did.

Sam suggested we order pizza for dinner and call it an early night. She wanted to clean the house in the morning so it would be sparkling when Julie arrived. Sarah and I both groaned, but agreed. We had pepperoni — my favourite — and root beers in bottles, and Sam showed me the difference between how butches and femmes hold their root beer bottles. Before she explained it, she told me to pick mine up, and when I grabbed it by the neck — not around the middle — she pronounced it a very butch grip. I grinned and Sarah patted my shoulder. 'Small pleasures,' she said with a chuckle.

I was in bed before 9:00. I think Sam and Sarah knew how nervous I was, because instead of sitting next to my bed they stood over me, the way they usually did right before they left the room. I closed my eyes and tried to relax, but I was almost shaking. I felt a hand run through my hair — Sarah's. 'Don't worry,' I heard her say softly. 'Everything's going to be fine. It's all right.'

Her hand withdrew and another one — Sam's this time — lightly ruffled my hair. 'Everything's okay, Andy. It's all okay.' Her hand continued to stroke my hair as she started to sing. It was a different lullaby, every night, but they were all similar. They were all popular songs, as far as I could tell. Maybe they were by the same person.

As I concentrated on the song, on Sam's hand still running through my hair, I slowly felt myself relax. I was still scared, but Sam and Sarah's presence was reassuring, and I trusted the feeling. I felt my fear die down and an overwhelming sense of calm rise to replace it, and let Sam's song lead me into sleep.

 

The next morning, I awoke to the sound of a vacuum cleaner. When I started into the kitchen a few minutes later, still rubbing my eyes, an authoritative voice commanded, 'Stop!'

I froze and blinked rapidly, trying to shake the sleep from my eyes. As they adjusted to the light in the kitchen, I saw Sam furiously mopping the red tile floor. The fake lemon smell of cleanser rose to greet me, and I sneezed.

Sam smiled. 'Bless you. There's a cup of tea and cereal waiting for you in the dining room. Then you gotta help us clean.'

I downed my tea as quickly as I could, since it was kind of cold and didn't taste great. I had two bowls of Crispix, and left them on the dining room table. I'd bring them to the sink once the kitchen floor was dry. I went upstairs and got washed and dressed. I wore the same outfit I'd worn when Sam had picked me up a week before. It made me think about how much I'd changed in such a short amount of time. Seven days ago, I was a little girl named Annie who didn't know anything and was going to just another dreaded foster home. Now, I was a little boy named Andy who wanted nothing more than to stay here for the rest of my life. And if I had to pretend to still be that little girl to do it, then so be it. I looked at myself in the mirror and set my jaw, and said aloud, 'Bring it on.'

I dusted all the furniture in the whole house. By the time I finished, I felt like my arms were going to fall off. Sarah vacuumed everywhere and Sam washed all the windows. By noon, we were all worn out, but the house sparkled. Sam said it didn't even look this clean when she first moved in. We collapsed on the couch, me in the middle.

'What's for lunch?' I asked.

Sam whacked my shoulder. 'What's for lunch? All this work, and you want us to cook you something?'

I hit her back. 'We could just get pizza or something. You don't have to cook.'

'Anybody that delivers sounds good to me,' Sarah said.

We did wind up having pizza — plain cheese. Sarah said she was tired of pepperoni, and I didn't feel like arguing. Besides, I liked cheese pizza. At 12:45, Sarah finished her root beer and stood up. 'I guess I better get out of here before Julie gets here.'

Sam stood up too, and I followed suit, swallowing the last of my slice. Sarah squatted slightly so she and I were at eye level. 'You can do this, kid,' she told me. 'You nervous?'

I nodded. She put her hands on my shoulders and looked me square in the eye. I noticed again how cool looking her eyes were — not green, not totally brown, definitely not hazel. 'You and Sam are two of the strongest people I know, and my favourite butches,' she told me with a smile. 'We even practiced having conversations, for God's sake. Just keep your guard up and you'll be fine. I know it.'

She hugged me then, for the first time. She'd put an arm around me before, but she'd never hugged me. I held on real tight for just a moment, and then she let me go and ruffled my hair.

'Hey!' Sam cried. 'Now he's gotta comb it again.'

Sarah stood up and turned to Sam. 'And you, you behave yourself.' Her voice softened slightly. 'It'll be fine. I know it will. This isn't rocket science, and you guys know what you're doing.' She glanced at the clock on the wall. 'I better get out of here.'

She kissed Sam, right on the lips. I was surprised. Obviously, they were best friends, and it had occurred to me more than once that they acted kind of like they were married — but two women couldn't do that. But then again, they just did.

Sarah and Sam hugged briefly, then Sarah gave me a wink and was gone. Sam turned to me. 'Well, big guy, go comb your hair now that she wrecked it. Does Julie usually come on time? Do you remember?'

'Yeah, she usually does.' I looked at the clock. Five minutes to one. My heart started to thump in my chest.

Sam must have noticed the panic rising in my face, because she said, 'Relax, kid. Sarah's right, this isn't rocket science. We'll just stick to our stories and we'll be fine. Sarah doesn't exist, you're a girl, and everything's going just fine. The haircut was just the work of a bad barber. Okay?'

I nodded and she squeezed my shoulder. 'Go comb your hair.'

I combed it quickly, and as I was smoothing the static out with my hands I heard the doorbell ring. I felt my heart leap up into my throat. I crossed into Sam's room and looked out the window onto the street. Sure enough, there was Julie's car out front. 'Show time,' I thought. It felt kind of like I was overdramatizing the whole thing. Like Sam and Sarah said, this really wasn't that big a deal. But it felt like life and death to me.

I heard Sam call from downstairs. 'Annie? Come on down, Julie's here.'

I felt a little sick at the sound of my old name. Then I thought about what it took for Sam to say it, and to make it sound so effortless, given that she had known me as Annie for only a few hours. If she could do this, so could I. I set my shoulders and went downstairs.

Julie looked surprised at my haircut, but pleased to see me nonetheless. 'Hey, Annie!' She knelt to give me a hug, just like all the times before. I went and hugged her, but the whole thing felt weird and foreign. A week before, I had trusted her above almost everyone else. Now she felt like a stranger. But I reminded myself what was at stake and smiled as genuinely as I could.

'Why don't we sit down?' Sam suggested. She and Julie each took chairs, and I sat alone on the couch.

'So how are things going?' Julie asked, taking out her pen and notepad.

'Very well,' Sam said. 'Annie and I are getting along pretty well, getting to know each other. She loves pepperoni pizza, we've already had it three times. And we had cheese pizza for lunch today.'

Julie looked at me. I smiled and nodded. She smiled back at me. 'Well, I'm glad to hear you're getting along. Annie, are you having fun?'

'Yeah,' I answered quickly. 'We've been going to the park, and playing catch, and we toured the town, and there's computer games—'

'Great!' Julie said, writing. 'That's really great. Miss Rosenberg, have you been taking time off from work this week?'

'I've been working from home,' Sam told her. 'I have two computers, so Annie plays computer games while I work for part of the day, and then we hang out and do different things.'

Julie seemed satisfied with that response. She asked a bunch more questions, writing all the while. Every now and then she'd shoot me an encouraging smile, just like always. It was the same old routine, but it felt really different. Usually, I'd try to find any reason to leave. Now, I was clinging to every reason to stay.

After about half an hour, we took Julie on a tour of the house. She wrote more stuff down, but she always did that, and she seemed to really like what she saw. Then she asked to speak to me privately. Sam gave me an encouraging smile of her own and headed upstairs. That smile gave me some strength, and I faced Julie readily.

'So?' she asked me. 'What's the story? You like it here?'

'Yeah,' I answered. 'I actually do. She's really nice, and it's fun.'

'What happened with the haircut? Miss Rosenberg told me that some barber messed it up.'

'Yeah,' I agreed. 'I said I wanted it shorter, because it was getting too long, and it came out like this.'

'Well, it'll grow back, I guess. What else is going on?'

'Not much. We've been going to the park a lot — I played basketball with some kids on Tuesday, that was fun.'

'Kids your age?'

'I guess so. I don't know how old they were.'

'So everything's really okay?'

'Yeah, everything's fine. I like it here.'

Julie put down her pad. 'Annie, are you holding out on me? You've never liked a placement in your life. What's different about this one? I'm not complaining, mind you.'

'She's nice. None of the others were nice. She does stuff with me, and talks to me, and listens to me. She doesn't yell whenever I do something wrong.'

'Do you think you'd like to stay here long-term? Or not sure yet?'

'I think I'd like to stay.'

Julie smiled. 'Well, this is really encouraging, Annie. Maybe we've finally found a home for you.' I felt my heart leap up into my throat again, but it wasn't out of fear this time. I grinned.

Julie stood up and I followed. 'Anything else you want to tell me?' she asked. I shook my head. 'Okay, then.' She called upstairs. 'Miss Rosenberg? We're all done talking.'

Sam came back down. 'All set, then? Or is there something else?'

'No, I guess that's it.' Julie smiled at her. 'I'm really pleased to see Annie enjoying herself. She usually hasn't done this well at her placements.'

We paused at the front door. Julie knelt to hug me again, and told Sam she'd be back in three weeks to check up on me again. Sam shook Julie's hand and thanked her, and then Julie left.

I peeked out the window next to the front door after it had closed, watching Julie get into her car. When she pulled away and drove off down the street, Sam and I both let out a yell. 'We did it!'

I threw my arms around Sam and hugged her tight, and she kissed the top of my head. 'I'm gonna go call Sarah,' she said. 'We're getting ice cream.'

Sarah was there in a heartbeat, and when she arrived, she had a big hug for each of us. She kissed Sam again, and kissed me on the top of the head too. Then we piled into Sam's car.

We wound up at the local ice cream parlor, where the three of us shared a huge banana split. 'This is a major celebration,' Sam said after she ordered it. 'One big hurdle out of the way. She'll be back in three weeks ... what happens after that, Andy? A month? Two?'

I sighed with relief at the sound of my own name. It still felt new and different, but it fit so much better than Annie did that I was already getting used to it. Then Sam's question hit me, and I realised I didn't know the answer. I had never made it past that one-month checkup. 'I ... I don't know,' I said. 'That was always the meeting when I went back to DSS. I never stayed at a placement longer than a month before.'

Sarah grinned. 'Well, there's a first time for everything, isn't there?' She looked over at me. 'Was it weird?'

'Yeah. Just hearing Sam call me ... that ... made me feel weird.'

Sam and Sarah laughed at my reluctance to even say my old name. I smiled. 'And seeing Julie was really weird. I've known her my whole life, and it felt like we were meeting for the first time.'

Sam nodded. 'I hear that. I'd only met her twice before, but it did feel really different this time. I guess it was because you're so different now, and we're in such a different place than before, even though you're still the same person.'

'I don't feel like the same person.'

'I know, but you are. You've changed a whole lot, but it's more about starting to realise your potential than actually changing who you are. At least that's how it seems to me. What do you think?'

I thought about it. 'I think you're right. I mean, I always knew I was like this, I just didn't know how to express it. And everyone told me it wasn't okay.'

Sarah put her hand on mine. 'If it's who you are, it's okay. Never forget that. Don't let people deny you your identity.' She smiled. 'If you can't feel comfortable in your own skin, where can you feel comfortable?'

I laughed. Just then the waiter brought our ice cream, and we forgot everything else as he set it before us and handed us each a spoon.

When we finally got through our banana split, we all went back to the house and hung out in the computer room for the rest of the day. Sarah, as it turned out, had gotten me a present — a new computer game, 'King's Quest V.' It looked neat, and was much harder than the stuff I had been playing. It was a strategy game, so Sam and Sarah gave me tips as I went along, and we did pretty well for the first time.

For dinner we had Chinese take-out, which Sam went and got. When she suggested dessert, Sarah and I looked at her like she was crazy. She laughed and put up her hands. 'Okay, okay. Geez, if I can get a ten-year-old to not want dessert, I must be doing something right.'

Once more, we trooped upstairs and I got ready for bed. When I was under the covers, Sam and Sarah tucked me in and turned out the light as they had every night. They didn't sit down, though. They stood over me the way they had the night before. I opened my eyes and looked up at their silhouettes. 'Guys?'

'Yeah?' Sam answered.

'Are you married?'

They both laughed a little, and I heard Sarah say, 'If only.'

'If life were fair, we would be,' Sam told me. 'But the government doesn't let same-sex couples get married.'

'Why not?'

'They think there's something wrong with it. Or at least enough people in power think so that they keep the laws in effect.'

'But why?'

Sam sighed. 'There's no real reason, Andy. We're different, and that threatens some people. They say we threaten the traditional family and the sanctity of marriage. But over a third of all marriages end in divorce these days. Did you know that?'

I shook my head, but it was dark enough that they probably couldn't see that, so I answered out loud. 'No.'

'Marriage and family are in enough trouble as it is. I don't see how people who actually love each other and want to stay together could make things any worse.' Sam sighed again. 'But that's how it is, and it'll probably be that way for a while yet. There are people fighting it, but they haven't gotten much done so far.'

'If I ... get adopted—' I swallowed.

Sam said gently, 'Yeah?'

'Who — who would adopt me? Just you, Sam? Or can it be both of you?'

Sarah answered. 'Just Sam. They don't let two women or two men adopt a kid.'

'That's not fair! You both take care of me.'

'They don't care, Andy.' Sarah sighed. 'They just don't care. They'd rather hate us, say we're sick, deny us the right to a family.'

'That's why Sarah had to clear out today,' Sam put in. 'And that's why Julie and DSS can't know about her. If they found out that she was such a big part of my life, and now yours, they'd yank you faster than you can say 'lesbians.''

I started slightly at the word. I'd heard it a few times before, but only in a negative way, and hadn't really dared to think of it in conjunction with Sam and Sarah. But there wasn't really any other way to put it.

'You okay, pal?' Sam asked me.

'Yeah ... yeah. It's just scary. I don't want to have to leave.'

'And we don't want to lose you. You're very important to us. That's why we have to cover ourselves for a while, until we get papers that say we can stay together. Once an adoption is finalized, it's finalized. I think.'

'You think?'

'Well, I sure as hell hope so. I'll look into it more, but it's hard for me to ask questions without making people suspicious, you know?'

'Yeah.' I sighed. There was a lot of sighing going on. I felt kind of depressed.

'Hey.' Sam ruffled my hair. 'Everything's okay. We did it. You were awesome today. And now we've got three weeks before we have to think about it again. Let's enjoy them, okay? Close your eyes.'

I obeyed and she sang a song I already knew — 'You and Me Of the Ten Thousand Wars.' I liked that song a lot. I tried to remember the words, but I was too tired and I hadn't heard it in a while. By the time Sam got through the first verse, I felt myself start to slip into unconsciousness, and something she had said echoed in my ears: We don't want to lose you. They actually cared about me, they really did. I felt my heart swell up and tears come to my eyes. What if I had never come here? I would have missed out on all this love. I knew I'd never take them for granted, not if I lived forever. The way I lived, I couldn't afford to. And I knew that they couldn't, either. They had as much to lose as I did. In a strange way, that thought was reassuring, and I clung to it along with my teddy bear.

I didn't want to lose them either, but I also didn't want to lose myself. Before I fell asleep, I made myself two promises: if DSS tried to take me away from Sam and Sarah, I'd find my way back to them somehow, and now that I finally knew who I truly was, I'd never let myself forget it.

A week later, Esperanza showed up at the front door. I opened it, and she almost dropped the mid-sized package she was carrying when she saw me. 'Andy! Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes. You gonna let me in?'

I stepped back and she swept into the hall. I closed and locked the door behind her, and she looked me up and down with a well-trained eye. 'You look good, child,' she said. 'Glad to see you're still here. Those vultures still don't know about Sarah?'

'Nah. Julie was here a week ago—'

'I know, Sammy called me. Where are they?'

'Sam!' I called. 'Esperanza's here!'

'Coming!' Sam called back from upstairs.

'Sarah not here?' Esperanza asked.

'Nah, she's grocery shopping.'

Sam came down the stairs and gave Esperanza a hug. 'Where you been?' she demanded. 'You never called me back.'

'Sorry, honey. I been running around all week. It's summer, the whole world wants a haircut, and treatments for the humidity, and—'

'Okay, I understand. Come on and sit down.'

The three of us sat in the living room. 'What's that?' Sam asked, indicating the bundle Esperanza was holding.

'Oh, this is a present!' she exclaimed. 'I forgot I was holding the damn thing. This is for you all.' She handed it to Sam.

It was a boom box. 'Oh, wow!' I said when I saw it. It looked like it could play CDs or cassettes, and there was a radio antenna. I'd never been around a CD player before.

'Esperanza, this is way too much,' Sam said, shaking her head at it.

'Oh please, child, you know I can afford it. I got a nest egg. Besides, I been wanting to give it to you for a while now. It's been sitting in my apartment since January. It was gonna be for Christmas, but I couldn't get it in time, and it's been sitting waiting for an occasion to give it to you. So when you called me last week, I thought, well, here's something to celebrate. So there you go.'

She turned to me. 'And this, boy, this is for you.' She handed me a small, flat, square package. I tore it open. It was a CD — 'Rites Of Passage,' by a group called the Indigo Girls. There were two women on the cover. 'That's their new one, came out last May,' Esperanza told me. 'Sammy told me she'd introduced you to a few of their songs, and I thought you'd like this. There's some great songs on there.'

I looked at Sam. 'What songs?'

'The ones I sang you at night,' she told me. 'You remember. 'You and Me Of the Ten Thousand Wars,' that's theirs. He loves that one,' she told Esperanza.

'You've got taste, child,' Esperanza said to me. 'That's a beautiful song. It's not on that one, though.'

I turned the CD over and read the titles. They looked interesting. 'Can we listen to it later?' I asked.

'Of course,' Sam said. 'It's not for decoration.' I grinned.

Sam took the boom box out of the box, set it on the low shelf next to the fireplace, and plugged it in. 'Thank you, Esperanza,' she said. 'That's really sweet. This is going to get a lot of use.'

'Glad you like it, honey. And you, Andy, you get good use out of that CD. They got some powerful lyrics, if you pay attention. Sammy's got more lying around somewhere.'

Sam nodded. 'I have their others, on cassette. Guess we gotta start buying CDs now, eh?'

'I should hope so, now you've got that piece of technology lying around,' Esperanza said with a smile. 'So what've you all been doing these past days?'

'A lot of the same stuff,' Sam said. 'The park, movies, hanging out. Sarah and I have both been working from home, too.'

'Good, glad to hear you're keeping busy.' Esperanza stood up. 'I can't stay, I'm just here because it's my lunch break. I bought some food that I can eat while I work, but I wanted to stop by.' She started for the door, and Sam and I followed.

Just as Esperanza was about to step outside, she remembered something. 'Oh!' she said, digging into her purse. 'This is for you also. Now this is to borrow, I could never find another copy. Listen to song number five.' She handed me another CD. I read the name: Frankie Vallie and the Four Seasons. Song number five, according to the back, was called 'Walk Like A Man.' I laughed.

Esperanza gave Sam a hug, and chucked me under the chin. 'You'll like it. Listen to the others too, they're good. They're from the sixties. I gotta run. Sammy, call me!' She hurried out the door and got into her car, and beeped as she drove away.

Sam closed the door, shaking her head. 'Esperanza,' she said with a smile. 'Isn't she something? Why don't we put that CD in?'

'Which one?'

'Whichever you want. If you want to listen to that sixties CD — who is it?' She looked at it. 'Oh, Frankie Vallie. Good stuff. Listen to the song she told you about, and I'll see if I can find my Indigo Girls tapes.'

I nodded, and then realised something. 'Um ... I don't know how to work a CD player.'

'You?' Sam teased. 'A child of the late twentieth century? You're supposed to be the technological one here.'

'Sorry. I've never used a CD player before.'

'Well, let's see if we can figure it out.' Sam led me back into the living room and we leafed through the owner's manual. 'Aha!' She pointed to a page, then looked at the boom box. 'Okay, you stick the CD in ...' I did. 'Now you use these buttons to pick what track you want ... five, right?'

'Yeah.' I scrolled through to track five.

'Okay, now hit Play, there. Hit that again to pause it, if you hit Stop then it'll stop the CD altogether, and when you hit Play again the whole CD will start over.'

'Okay.' I hit Play, and music started. I fiddled with the volume until it was at a good level. Sam patted my shoulder, got up, and went to find her tapes.

I liked the song, and played it again when it finished. I worked on learning the words, and by the time Sam came back from digging out all her tapes, I was singing along. She laughed. 'So that's the song Esperanza wanted you to hear! You like it?'

I nodded, grinning. She sang with me:

Walk like a man,
Talk like a man,
Walk like a man from you,
I'll tell the world,
Forget about you, girl,
And walk like a man from you.

She laughed. 'There's not much to it, really, but I bet it's fun for you to hear.' I nodded again, and as the song faded out, she stopped the CD. 'Now we listen to my stuff.'

The first tape she put in was called 'Nomads*Indians*Saints.' It had kind of an odd-looking cover, with two faces drawn in and broad paintbrush strokes. She sang along with every song, and I tried to learn the lyrics. They were really good. I recognised one of the lullabies she'd sung to me in 'Southland In the Springtime,' and 'You and Me Of the Ten Thousand Wars' was on there too. I decided I was a huge Indigo Girls fan.

We put my CD in next, and tried to learn the lyrics. I especially liked 'Galileo' and 'Virginia Woolf,' and Sam agreed. 'Joking' made me feel like dancing, and 'Jonas and Ezekial' had a haunting quality that I really liked.

'Virginia Woolf' was just ending when we heard the back door slam and Sarah call, 'Hey in there!'

Sam hit Stop on the boom box. 'Let's go help her with the groceries,' she said.

'Wait,' I said. 'Did you press Pause or Stop?'

She looked back at the boom box. 'Oh, damn!'

We decided that it didn't really matter, since we weren't in the middle of a song, and helped Sarah haul in the bags of groceries. There were a ton of them. 'Thank you so much,' Sam said to her. 'We really needed this.'

'No kidding. I eat here too, remember?' Sarah passed the carton of eggs to me. 'Careful, buddy.'

I put the eggs in the fridge and went back for another bag. Sam was lugging a really heavy-looking bag up the back steps, and I held the door for her. 'What is that?' I asked as she set it on the kitchen table with a thud.

'Canned goods,' she replied. 'There's a drive going on, the mailman's supposed to pick up any food we leave outside on Monday.'

'What kind of canned goods?' I asked, following her back out to the car. Sarah handed us each a bag and we headed back in. I heard the trunk slam shut. Good, that was the last of them.

'Stew and soup, mostly. There's some stuff like creamed corn, I think. You can go look. Just help me put this stuff away first.'

It took five minutes for the three of us to get all those groceries put away. There was a gallon of chocolate ice cream and a package of rainbow sprinkles, and when Sarah produced a container of Hershey's chocolate syrup, I felt my face break into a wide grin. Sam and Sarah laughed.

I took a look in the bag on the table, and pulled out a few cans. Sure enough, there was a lot of Dinty Moore beef stew and the like, low-fat soups, chili, creamed corn ... maybe 20 cans in all. I set the cans back carefully so as not to dent them. 'How's the mailman supposed to carry this?' I asked.

'We'll write 'heavy' on it,' Sam said. 'They didn't give a weight limit. I'm sure he'll have a mail truck to put all these bags in.' She added with a smile, 'He walks around all day, every day, carrying mail and packages. If I can haul those cans from the car to the kitchen, I'm sure he can haul them from the front door to the street.'

'I don't know,' Sarah said. 'He's kind of skinny.'

'Maybe he'll take some of the food for himself then,' I suggested.

My parents laughed again, and Sam rumpled my hair. 'He better not.'

I liked it when she messed up my hair. A lot of times when I was younger, if someone messed up my hair it would just make me mad. But when it was Sam or Sarah, I knew it was a real expression of affection, not just a gesture that meant 'I'm an adult and you can't stop me from doing this,' or something like that. And it was easy enough for me to fix it. I grinned at Sam as I smoothed it back down.

Sarah was really impressed with the boom box. She wanted to hear my new CD, so we started it over from the beginning. Sam and I were starting to get a handle on the lyrics, so we sang along with the parts we remembered. Sarah liked it a lot. 'I should get a copy of this on cassette, so we can listen to it in the car,' she said. Sam and I agreed.

We listened to the rest of Sam's tapes — at least, they were mostly Sam's. 'There it is!' Sarah exclaimed, picking up one called 'Back On the Bus Y'all.' 'I wondered where this went, Sam Rosenberg.'

'Oh, is that yours?' Sam asked innocently. 'How about that. It must've gotten mixed up with mine by mistake.'

'Yeah, yeah. And you never noticed this.' Sarah turned the case over to reveal a wide piece of masking tape with 'Ellis' written on it in permanent marker. 'Tell it to the judge.'

Sam turned to me. 'Well, Your Honor?'

Sarah looked at me too, and grinned. I looked from one to the other. 'Can I plead the fifth?' I asked.

They laughed. 'Judges don't plead the fifth,' Sam said. 'You gotta issue a verdict.'

'I'm sending it up to the Supreme Court,' I said. 'I can't sit on this bench. I have an emotional investment in the outcome.'

'And what investment would that be?' Sarah demanded.

'Um ... this court is adjourned. Say, Sarah, can I see that tape?' I reached for it.

Sam grinned and grabbed me in a headlock. 'You're too much, kid.' She let me go and handed me Sarah's tape.

It had some interesting-looking songs on it. When we listened to it, I discovered that I was a Bob Dylan fan, too. I told Sam and Sarah that I really liked 'All Along the Watchtower,' and they told me that the Indigo Girls actually hadn't written that one, it was Dylan. I didn't know anything about Bob Dylan, but quickly decided that I liked his music. 'You've got taste,' Sam told me.

'Takes after me,' Sarah said with a smile.

'Oh, whatever,' said Sam. 'You know I introduced you to Dylan.'

'You did not! I had this tape before I met you.'

'Yeah, but that was the only Dylan song you'd ever heard.'

'I still liked him.'

'What-ever.'

I laughed. I loved how they bickered like that. They weren't actually arguing, they were just bantering for the fun of it. I hoped that someday I'd have a marriage like theirs.

Their relationship and my thoughts about my own future were colliding a lot in my head these days, and it was several days later that I asked them, 'Am I a lesbian?'

They looked kind of startled when I asked. I suppose that was to be expected, since the question must have seemed to come out of thin air. We weren't discussing anything in particular when I asked, but it had been in my head for a good while now, and I couldn't hold it in any longer.

Sam put down her knife and the carrots she was slicing for dinner. She came and sat beside me at the table, and looked into my eyes with that way she had. 'I don't know, Andy,' she said, 'but right now I don't think it really matters. You're ten years old. Very few people know their sexual orientation when they're ten. I know people in their forties who still don't know. Are you starting to be attracted to people, thinking about dating and stuff?'

I shook my head. 'Not really. But I've always pictured myself marrying a woman and being a daddy someday. And I'm butch.'

'Just because you're butch doesn't mean you'll turn out to be gay. If you've always pictured yourself with a woman, then maybe you are. Or maybe you're bisexual. Or maybe a lot of things. Maybe you'll turn out to be transsexual, and have surgery and live as a man all the time. Maybe you'll be kind of gender-fluid, and not really be a man or a woman exactly. Maybe you'll be a butch dyke, maybe you'll be a butch straight woman.'

She saw the look on my face and smiled. 'I know, it's a lot to sort through. But my point is, it doesn't really matter now. You've got a ton of time to figure yourself out, and you don't have to know anything now. Most folks really don't know when they're your age.'

I sighed. 'I know. But I feel like ... like I'm nobody.'

At this, Sarah stopped stirring the tomato sauce on the stove and looked over at me. 'You're Andy,' she said with a smile.

'But I'm not!' I brought my fist down on the table. 'I'm not really Andy, and I'm not Annie. I'm not a girl, but I'm not a boy either, even though I wish I were. I don't know if I'm gay or whatever. The only thing I am, that I know, is butch.'

'And that's not enough?' Sam asked me. 'You've got something in that. Butch ain't bad.'

'But I don't know if I'm a butch lesbian, and if I'm not, then where do I fit?'

Sam scooted her chair over next to mine and put her arm around me. 'Right here,' she told me. I rested my head on her shoulder, and she gave me a squeeze. 'You'll figure out the rest in time. For now, be you. That's the most important thing. The labels and classifications and whatever else will fall into place. And until then, you know that you fit right here.' She pulled away from me a little, forcing me to lift my head, and looked me in the eye. 'Okay?'

I nodded, and felt tears well up in my eyes. She smiled at me. 'It's okay, buddy. Okay?' She shook my shoulder slightly. 'It's all okay.'

I nodded again and buried my face in her shoulder, letting my tears go. She hugged me tight and didn't say anything else, but as she held me, I could feel how strong her love for me was — the love I thought I'd never have.

That night, as I changed into my pajamas, I looked at my bag. My old gym bag — the one that had seen me through every foster home, had carried my diapers from DSS to each house and back to DSS again, which I always stored under my bed and never let anyone see. It had sat next to my bed, not under it, since I had arrived here. But even here, as in every other foster home, I lived out of that bag. I never unpacked my stuff, not once in my whole life. I never counted on staying that long.

As I finished changing and put my dirty clothes into the laundry basket at the foot of my bed, I looked at my bag again. I took out my toothbrush and set it on the bed, but instead of zipping up the bag, I took out the two T-shirts that lay folded on top. I carried them over to the dresser along the opposite wall, and put them in the bottom drawer.

I left the drawer open, and added my one sweater and two sweatshirts. Into the next drawer I put my underwear and socks. On top of the dresser, I laid my comb and wristwatch. I hung my three pairs of blue jeans in the closet, and when my bag was finally empty, I put it under my jeans and closed the closet door. I went to brush my teeth, and when I finished, I left my toothbrush next to Sam's and Sarah's in the little holder they had. (Since I realised the true nature of their relationship, they didn't bother to hide the fact that Sarah didn't go home to her parents' house every night.)

Sam and Sarah came in to say good night. 'Saw your toothbrush,' Sam said with a smile. 'Glad you trust us not to steal it.' She glanced around. 'Where's your bag?'

'Closet.'

'In the closet?' Sarah shook her head at me. 'What did we tell you about that, young man?'

I laughed. 'Sorry. It'll come out next time I need it.'

'Well, all right then.' Sarah ruffled my hair. 'You feeling okay? Any better?'

I nodded. 'Kind of, yeah.'

'Good.' Sarah settled down on the floor next to my bed, and Sam followed suit. This time, when they started to sing, I sang along with them. Sam laughed. 'We gotta find some new songs, you'll never fall asleep now.'

After a little while, though, the songs did lull me to sleep. The last thing I thought before I dozed off was the hope that I didn't jinx anything by unpacking my stuff. But, I reasoned, we had fooled Julie once. All we had to do was stay on top of everything and be prepared, and nothing would get in our way. Right?

 

On Saturday, while Sam was out running errands, Sarah informed me that they were going to dinner that night with a couple of people. 'A friend of ours will stay with you,' she told me. 'You'd be bored out of your mind at this thing.'

I decided to take her word for it. 'Who's coming? Esperanza?'

'No, another friend. Gary. You'll like him, he's great fun.'

'Is he ... like us?'

'What, you mean gay?'

'Yeah, or else like me.'

'Neither. Just your run-of-the-mill straight boy. But he'll fool you.' Sarah chuckled. 'He's one of the gayest straight guys I know.'

I was thoroughly confused. 'Huh?'

'You'll see.'

I certainly did see. When Gary came in at 6:00 sharp that evening, I was struck by the feminine manner in which he carried himself. He had a little plastic shopping bag with him. 'Hello, Andy!' he said brightly. 'I'm glad to meet you. Sam and Sarah have told me a lot about you.'

I offered him my hand. He laughed and shook obligingly. 'Oh,' he said, 'before I forget. Lisa wants me to tell you guys thank you for getting me out of the house, she was getting thoroughly sick of me. She's having a bunch of girls over tonight. Lisa's my girlfriend,' he explained to me. 'Almost three years now.'

'Have either of you accepted your true nature yet?' Sam asked him with a grin.

'Hey, watch it. I'm on your side. Men are repugnant and unappealing. No offense to you, young one, but you're in kind of a different boat anyway, aren't you?' He smiled over at me.

'Anyway,' Sarah cut in, taking Sam's arm, 'we have to get out of here or we're going to be late.' She put a hand on my head. 'Behave yourself, big guy.'

Sam gave me a wink and squeezed my shoulder. 'You'll probably be asleep when we get back, but we'll stop by your room anyway to check on you,' she said. They went out the door, but I didn't take my eyes off of them until the car drove off down the street.

'Well?' said Gary. 'You ate already, right?' I nodded. 'Tell you what. I'm told you go to bed at 10:00, but given that they're going to be out late anyway, I was thinking of letting you stay up an extra hour. If you can keep a secret.'

I turned to him and smiled. Staying up later definitely appealed to me. But my smile faded at the thought of keeping a secret from my parents, even one as trivial as this. I didn't like that idea. They were all I had.

'What's wrong?' Gary asked, seeing my face.

'I don't want to lie to them.'

'It's not lying, really. Tell you what. If they ask either of us outright, 'What time did Andy go to bed,' we'll tell them. But otherwise, we just won't mention it. Does that sound okay?'

I thought about it. 'Yeah, I guess so.'

'Good. And obviously, if you get tired, you don't have to stay up late.' Gary headed into the living room and sat on the sofa. I followed him.

'What's in the bag?' I asked, pointing to it.

'Oh, this is some stuff I brought over to do. There's a book for me to read after you go to bed, and some music I thought you might like.'

'What kind of music?'

Gary laughed. 'This is the main reason why my gay friends make fun of me so much for being straight. I like show tunes.' He pulled out a couple of tapes to show me: Fiddler On the Roof and Guys and Dolls. 'A gay male friend of mine introduced me to show tunes in college,' Gary told me. 'I was hooked right away. I like songs that tell a story, you know? Want to listen a bit?'

'Sure,' I agreed. I didn't know anything about show tunes, but I figured it would kill some time.

To my surprise, I really liked them. They told stories I could follow, even though I hadn't seen any of the shows. When there was a reference I didn't understand, Gary explained it to me. He told me all about the shows he'd seen, laying out storyline after storyline. He was a great storyteller — he should've been on Broadway himself, with his hand gestures and facial expressions. I could hear the passion in his voice as he talked about the theater, and I asked him if he'd ever been in any musicals or anything.

''Fraid not,' he replied. 'I teach English. But I did do a lot of high school and college theater while I was getting my degree, and I work on student plays now. It's great fun.'

By the time one of us thought to look at a clock — and then it was only because I yawned — it was 10:40. 'You want to try for the last 20 minutes, or hit the hay?' Gary asked me.

'I think I'm ready for bed,' I said, and yawned again.

'I quite agree. I just saw your tonsils. You want me to tuck you in or anything like that, or are you pretty self-sufficient?'

'I'm okay on my own.'

'Okay. Give a holler before you turn out your light, just so I know you're in bed and not climbing out the window to go cause trouble.' He winked. 'And I may check in on you at some point, depending on how soon Sam and Sarah get back.'

I nodded and headed upstairs. I changed quickly, brushed my teeth, and called from my doorway, 'Good night! Thanks!'

'Don't mention it,' he called back. 'Sleep tight.'

For the first time in three weeks, I put myself to bed. I pulled the covers up over myself, closed my eyes, and started to sing softly. It wasn't quite the same, but it did help me to fall asleep.

Much later, I awoke briefly to hear another song being sung. It was Sam and Sarah, home and making sure I was sleeping peacefully. I smiled slightly and drifted back to sleep.

 

The following week, I taught my parents what I remembered of the stories and songs that Gary had taught me. They were familiar with a lot of it, so we filled in the blanks for each other. They were glad to hear that Gary and I had gotten along so well, and said we'd all hang out sometime and I could meet his girlfriend.

Sarah and I played more one-on-one soccer in the park while Sam worked at home. I actually beat her twice, and I could tell she wasn't just letting me win. She knew I hated that. My ball handling got a lot better — I finally learned how to effectively fake out an opponent and get around them, which had always been a big hang-up for me.

The three of us hung out, too, goofing around, being silly with each other. I loved it. It made us feel all the more like a family. And when one of them snapped at me for having to be told to do something repeatedly, or whatever, it hurt, but I also knew that they still loved me. They loved me enough to make me do my best, and make me take responsibility for things. I remembered what Julie had always said to me, about not being able to be a good grown-up unless you got certain things as a kid. Now I knew what those things were.

On Friday morning, Sam announced that she had a very special project for the three of us: mowing the front and back yards. Sarah and I groaned. It would've been easier if they had a normal lawnmower, but they had the old-fashioned kind that just has three spinning blades on it, and then you rake up the grass after you've cut it. Twice the work. But Sam loved that contraption — she'd gotten it at a yard sale years ago, and cleaned it up and painted the handle bright green. She wouldn't even borrow somebody else's lawnmower. So we resigned ourselves to a day of mowing and raking. At least it was us, though. Between the three of us, we could make a game out of anything.

We did have fun. We cut our names into the grass before mowing the regular strips. Sarah chased me with the lawnmower, saying, 'It's coming to get you!' Sam stuffed a huge handful of grass down my shirt, and I responded by tackling her so we both fell into the soft pile of raked grass.

We stopped for lunch after we finished the back yard, and then went to work on the front. The streets were pretty empty — it was a beautiful day, so Sarah said everybody was probably at the beach. That sure sounded good to me. It was in the eighties and humid, and the sun beat down on our three dark heads. An occasional puffy white cloud floated by.

We had a grand old time anyway, drinking iced tea, telling jokes, goofing around as we raked the grass. I held my rake like a guitar and pretended to play as I sang. Sam and Sarah got into a duel with the handles of their rakes, brandishing them like swords and uttering random Shakespearean quotes. Finally Sarah threw her rake down and charged Sam, who dropped her rake in surprise. They held onto each other for balance as they collided, laughing.

None of us heard the car pull up.

Sam and Sarah staggered around for a moment together, trying to keep from falling, and then as they regained their balance a few feet from me, they kissed. They stayed like that for a minute.

'Ewwww!' I cried. They broke apart and each grabbed one of my arms, planting a kiss on my cheeks simultaneously. I wriggled free, laughing, and started to run away, but I froze in my tracks. So did they, as they started to chase me but saw what I was looking at.

Julie stood on the sidewalk, briefcase in hand, staring at us.

I couldn't move. I felt rooted to the spot, unable to stand up from the awkward position I was in, scarcely able to breathe. I just stared at Julie, who was looking from me to my parents and back again with a shocked, confused expression on her face. We all stayed like that, silently, for what seemed like an eternity.

Finally I felt Sam's hand on my shoulder, and I was able to stand up. I stayed close to her as I heard her say, 'I'm so sorry, we forgot all about your coming. We never heard from you.'

Julie struggled to regain her composure, but didn't come off very well as she stepped forward. 'I called this morning,' she said, 'but there was no answer. I did leave a message.'

'We were mowing the back yard this morning,' I heard Sarah say. I felt her come up behind me. 'We came inside for lunch, but I guess none of us saw the machine blinking.'

'Well ... I see that you're in the middle of something, but I really would like to have our meeting now anyway, if that's all right,' Julie said. She came forward a bit, cautiously, like she was afraid to get too close.

Sam squeezed my shoulder slightly. 'Sure,' she said. 'Come on in. Andy — er ...' She looked at me. I turned from Julie, who looked very confused, to look up at Sam. 'Will you put the lawn mower and the rakes away in the garage?'

I nodded silently, and she gave me a slight smile. She let me go, and I picked up the rakes as Julie made her way up the front path. The three of them went inside. I brought the rakes to the garage and leaned them against the wall, then went back for the mower. I felt like I was in a dream — it didn't seem quite real. My heart was thumping in my chest. What would Julie do? I knew she had incredible power over all of this. All she had to do was say the word and I'd never see Sam or Sarah again. And she didn't like it when I looked or acted like a boy. She didn't even like that Sam was going to be taking care of me alone. But with another woman ...

Once the mower was back in the garage, I went inside and pulled the screen door shut so it wouldn't slam. I heard voices coming from the living room, and stopped in the kitchen so I could listen in.

'I just don't know what to make of this,' I heard Julie say.

'Our priority is Andy,' Sarah said. She caught herself. 'Annie.'

'You're — you've been calling her Andy?'

'At her request,' came Sam's voice. 'We wanted him — her — to feel comfortable here. And she says she's never been happier.' She spoke a little more slowly than usual and her voice sounded funny, like she was having a lot of trouble using those pronouns for me. That was reassuring somehow. 'She told us a few nights ago that this had been the best month of her life.'

'Be that as it may,' Julie said, 'she is ten years old, and very impressionable. And you've obviously recognised her tomboy nature, but calling her a boy is taking things a bit far. She is not a boy, there is a difference between being a tomboy and being an actual boy.'

There was silence for a moment, and then I heard Sam say, 'Our biggest priority is—' She faltered for a moment. 'Annie,' she finished. 'And allowing her to stay here. We've become very close, and she means a great deal to us.'

'I believe that,' said Julie, 'but I have a lot of thinking to do about this, and whether it is in her best interest to have her remain here. This is very serious. You realise that, don't you?'

'Yes, we do,' Sarah said. 'We understand completely.' There was a slight sharpness in her voice that I didn't hear often. I hoped Julie couldn't hear it. She might get mad and take me away right then and there.

I heard them stand up, and prepared to get back into the mudroom and make it look like I had just come in. 'Before I go, I want to talk to Annie,' I heard Julie say. I heard their footsteps growing closer, and scampered back into the mudroom. I opened the screen door wide so it would slam shut, and as I heard them enter the kitchen, came back through the mudroom.

Julie entered first, rather briskly. 'Annie, there you are,' she said when she saw me. 'I'd like to talk to you. I've already spoken to Miss Rosenberg and Miss—' She looked over at Sarah.

'Ellis,' Sarah told her.

'Miss — Ellis. And now I'd like to have a chat with you, okay?' She tried to sound cheerful, but didn't get very far. She never was much of an actor.

I nodded slightly, looking at Sam and Sarah, who were behind her. Sam nodded at me, and Sarah gave me a wink.

Julie turned to them. 'Would you excuse us, please?'

'Would you like to use the living room?' Sam asked.

'Sure, why not. Annie?' Julie indicated that I should go out ahead of her. Sam and Sarah stayed put as we left, and I understood that they wanted to eavesdrop the way I had. That made me feel less alone, and I faced Julie with just a shred of confidence as I sat down on the couch.

She sat in a chair across from me. 'Now, Annie, tell me. Do you like it here?'

'Yes, I told you that already.' I was aware of a sharpness in my voice that sounded like Sarah's had. I tried to calm down, afraid that I would upset her and she would take me out of here. 'I love it here. They care about me. They let me be myself.'

'I have no doubt that they're fond of you, Annie. That's not the question. Does Miss Ellis spend a lot of time here?'

My mind raced, but I couldn't come up with anything. 'What's a lot?'

'Ann Doe,' Julie said sharply. Andrew, I thought. 'Don't avoid the question. Is she here every day? Almost every day?'

'Yeah. So what?'

'Don't talk back. I didn't teach you that. You didn't come back from any of your other placements talking like that.' She looked sterner than I'd ever seen her. I reminded myself that Sam and Sarah were right in the kitchen, probably listening to every word, and I looked Julie in the eye. She looked right back at me, but it wasn't like looking into Sam or Sarah's eyes at all. Instead of understanding and love, it was hostility that flowed between us as our eyes battled each other. 'Does she ever spend the night?' Julie asked.

'I don't know.'

'Don't lie to me.'

'I don't know!' I shouted. 'I'm in my room at night. She's there when I go to sleep, that's all I know.'

'And she's there when you get up?'

'Usually, yeah.'

Julie wrote on her notepad. 'Is a lot of the stuff around the house hers?'

'I don't know.'

Julie sighed exasperatedly. 'Is her toothbrush in the bathroom?'

'No,' I lied.

'Are you lying to me, Ann?'

'No.'

'Annie, you need to calm down. I'm trying to get to the bottom of this. I don't think you understand how serious this is.'

'Oh, I understand.'

'And just what do you understand?'

'You want to take me out of here because you think there's something wrong with them. And there's not. They love me. They'd never hurt me. You don't know anything.'

'Annie, there are things you don't understand. Things that are too complicated for someone your age to be able to grasp. I'm thinking about what's best for you, that's all that's on my mind.'

'It's my life.'

'And you're in DSS custody, and under my care. You're still my responsibility.'

'I don't want to be your responsibility if it means I can't stay here.' I'd never been so outspoken before. I wondered where all of this was coming from.

Julie shut her notebook sharply and stood up. 'Well, that stinks then, because you're stuck. You are my responsibility, until I find a home for you that is safe and where you'll have good role models so you can grow up well and be a good adult. And I'm not sure that this is the best place for you.'

'You can't make me leave.'

'I most certainly can, and I will if I think it's necessary. But I'm not taking you anywhere today. I have to look into this a little more before I can withdraw you.'

'If you want me to be happy, you'll let me stay here,' I told her.

'I'm sure you feel that way now, but there are plenty of ways to be happy. It's your well-being I'm concerned about.'

I decided to keep my mouth shut for fear of making the situation even worse. Julie looked at me for a moment, like she was waiting for a retort, but when I didn't say anything she started for the door. 'I'll be back in a day or two, Annie.' She turned and looked right at me. 'And I'll be honest with you. I'm going to look into this further before I do anything, but I wouldn't count on staying here if I were you. If I had known about ... all this, I wouldn't have placed you here to start with.' When she turned around again and called, 'We're all set,' I gave her the finger. I'd only done that to someone once before, but I had never been as furious as I was right then.

Sam and Sarah came in from the kitchen. 'So what's going on?' Sarah asked.

'She'll stay here for the time being. I'll be back in a day or two. I'll call you tomorrow, probably in the morning, and let you know. I need to look into this further before any decision is made.' She looked from one to the other. 'I will tell you, though, as I told her, that she probably won't wind up staying long-term. If I had known about this from the start, I certainly wouldn't have placed her here. And there is the fact that you deceived us about it, also.' I saw Sam stiffen.

Julie looked around at us all again. 'I'll be in touch,' she said. 'I will leave a message if I don't get through to you.' Sam opened the front door for her, and she headed out. Sam held the door open, and we all watched Julie make her way down the front path and get into her car. She raised one hand in a wave as she started the car, then drove off out of sight.

Sam slowly closed and locked the front door. I approached her cautiously. 'Sam?' I asked softly. She grabbed my shoulders and pulled me to her, hugging me tight. I held onto her as I started to cry, and I felt Sarah put her arms around both of us. We stood there for several minutes, none of us saying a word, shaking with fear and hurt and anger.

None of us spoke much for the rest of that day. The grass in the front yard, still waiting to be raked and bagged, lay forgotten. For dinner we had chicken noodle soup from a can, because nobody felt like cooking or making a phone call to order out. We sat for a while on the couch after dinner, all three of us. We didn't talk or do anything, we just sat there together with me in the middle and Sam and Sarah's arms around my shoulders.

I went to bed really early. I changed my clothes slowly, as if I were sleepwalking. Everything had happened in slow motion since Julie left. When I was ready for bed, I couldn't find my voice to call my parents in. I went into Sam's room and found them both sitting on the bed, leaning against the pillows and reading. They looked up and saw me, and followed me back to my room.

Before I got into bed, I hugged each of them. I felt safe as they held me tight. I wanted to stay that way forever, feeling like as soon as they let me go, someone from DSS would jump out and snatch me away.

I climbed wearily into bed, weighed down by my own sadness and fear. Sam and Sarah each kissed my forehead, and they stood over me as I settled in under the covers. I held Teddy tightly and looked up at them, and saw tears come to Sam's eyes behind her glasses. I felt my own eyes start to fill up, and I squeezed them shut to empty them a bit. Sarah wiped the tears from my cheeks, and then from Sam's, with her thumb. She blinked rapidly, but no tears fell. She ran a hand through my hair and gave me a slight smile. 'Close your eyes,' she said softly. I shook my head.

'We'll still be here when you open them again,' she whispered. She could, I had discovered, read my mind almost as well as Sam could. 'I promise.'

I looked into her eyes, and she smiled again and nodded. 'I promise.'

I looked at Sam, whose cheeks were now wet with tears again. She managed a smile too, and held my face with her hand. 'Close your eyes,' she said softly. 'Everything's—' She faltered, and I realised she had been about to tell me that everything was okay. But we all knew that it wasn't. 'Close your eyes,' she repeated. 'We're here now, it's all right. We won't leave you.'

I put my hand over hers and closed my eyes, still hanging onto Teddy. I heard Sam start to sing. She was still crying, but her voice was strong behind her tears. It was a song I knew and loved, and I fought to stay awake until she finished.

Let it be me,
This is not a fighting song.
Let it be me,
Not a wrong for a wrong.
Let it be me,
If the world is night,
Shine my life like a light.

When she finished the song, they didn't leave. Sam's hand was still holding my face, although slightly more relaxed, and my hand was still on top of hers. 'We're right here,' I heard Sarah whisper. And trusting their prese