Troubled

Eighth grade after foster care was the beginning of the end

Twelve is a fraught age for anyone, and being put in foster care at that age has lifelong ramifications. Before, I had no real formed idea of myself. I knew I wasn’t popular. I knew I probably wasn’t pretty. But suddenly, I’d been handed an identity. This is you now. Enjoy.

In foster care, I had to be tougher than I actually was. So when I went home at thirteen and back to Eighth grade, whoever I’d been before was gone. I was now the foster kid. Troubled.

I wasn’t a great representation of the Troubled genre. I wore the Metallica shirt from foster care like a tee from a tourist shop. Sure, I’d grown my hair out and dyed it red, but I wasn’t wearing eyeliner or black lipstick or pins in my ears—nothing cool. Nothing so committed.

Still, on my first day back at school, the kids stared at me like I was a misplaced object. My old friends avoided my eyes. I tried to sit with them at lunch, but Jan, my prior best friend, made it clear her orders were for everyone to ignore me. I hid in the bathroom for the rest of lunch, locked in a stall and cried, feeling very sorry for myself. I wished desperately for somebody to tell me what they wanted me to be.

When the bell for class rang, I slunk to the administration window and informed the office lady I would be quitting school. She looked perplexed. She suggested I call home.

 My stepfather, Doug, answered. “I want to come home,” I sniffled into the phone, embarrassed to be crying at him, my worst enemy. “They . . . they . . . they . . . hate me!”

“What’s the big deal?”

 “I hid in the bathroom for lunch!”

Doug sighed. “Suck it up, kid. That’s life.”

I hung up, dejected.

 But then I did feel a tiny bit better. My identity, my role in this brave new world, was revealing itself. The path appeared as apparent as a neon sign. I just had to walk it. So, I did—right past the hall monitor and out the school’s front doors, pausing to squint in the sun, waiting for someone to stop me and call me back. No one did.

I headed across the busy street and over to the Tastee Freeze and handed over four quarters for the most extravagant purchase I could think of: a vanilla milkshake.

Trouble tasted good. Real good.