July 15th.

This short story mentions brief substance abuse, self-harm, and talk of suicide.

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I can remember the day fairly well. It rained the night before, so the ground was still wet, the grass was shiny, and full of rain. It was warm but not quite sunny. I knew my mom had court this morning, but I tried not to worry. My mom and my aunt Cathy had been telling us not to worry about it since we were sixteen, nearly adults, so they wouldn't waste their time on us. So I kept on telling myself that. But when I asked my mom how court went, she wouldn't give me an answer. She was just chain-smoking cigarettes and had this look on her face. She got this look anytime she was mad or upset; you could just see the bad mood. But I just tried to keep on with my day. At this time, we were staying with my mother's newest husband, Mike, at his mobile home. Since we had lost power at our house, the upper half of a duplex. Now, I mean, our power was shut off due to lack of payment. Since it was the middle of July in the Midwest, it was too hot to stay there with no power. My mom met him because my boyfriend, Peyton, and his mother had rented a room from him. My mom only knew Mike for a few months before they decided to get married. This was my mother's third marriage. Third time's the charm, right? WRONG. By July, Peyton had moved down the street from Mike's house, so I was pretty excited to be so close to him, as he was my first real boyfriend. So that day, I decided to head down to his house to see him. We were just watching TV, at some point, we walked up to the party store, his mother, Lois, worked at, for a cigarette. On our way back to Peyton's, I got a call to come back home. The tone of the call was urgent, so back home I went without asking too many questions, but I had a bad feeling in my stomach.

Child protection services were already there by the time I got there, which only took a few minutes. It wasn't the first time we've been greeted by them. Cps had been involved in our lives since we were pretty young, maybe four or five? Most sixteen year olds get cars or cellphones for their sixteenth birthdays, but me? A visit from cps, over the newest concerns, Salem's much, much older boyfriend, Daniel, living and sharing a room with them. My mother allowed it, more like welcomed it. Daniel would later end up in jail for the situation between Salem and him. Salem and I were told to pack a bag. Police showed up as I was shoving things into my bag, a crusty old leather bag. My thoughts raced, trying to process what was happening. As we were led outside, things were going in slow motion. This wasn't supposed to be happening. My mom told me this wasn't going to happen. What, how, why. How did we get here? What is going to happen now?

Put in the back of an old van, the van felt like a police car, with metal bars separating the back seat from the front. The worker, a lady, wasn't very friendly, so it just made the situation feel even more like a punishment. When we finally pulled up, we went inside a building and were handed off to some new people. We were led into the basement, told to strip (to get checked for injuries, bruising, self harm.) Weighted. Head checked for head lice. Normally, you hear about lice during grade school, not high school. As embarrassing as this is to admit, we had head lice. At 16, we had lice. It wasn't the first time we had it, the first time we got lice, age 8, or 9. Struggled with it on and off since then. We would treat it, the whole shampoo and lice comb thing. But it never stayed gone for too long. When we had gotten lice again, we were shamed for it, and the treatment was neglected. So when it would come back, we were too embarrassed to tell our mom about it. Too broke to treat it. I felt helpless. I was trapped, stuck with lice. I spent years living like that. They shampoo and condition my hair, trying to get rid of and prevent the spread. Surprisingly, it wasn't enough, so once again, too embarrassed to say anything, the head lice continued. We were taken to our new bedroom. Which only had a dresser, a set of bunk beds, and a single closet. Windows that didn't open. Shown the bathroom, which was kept locked, and we were to ask to use the bathroom. It felt like jail, but somehow summer camp all at the same time. A summer camp I didn't want to be at. At first, we were convinced it was a mistake. That things would be fixed, and we weren't going to be there very long. Days turned into weeks. Every day feels like it lasted forever.

The only light in this dark situation was that I was with my twin, Salem. My best friend. I don't think I could have survived this without them. At least I wasn't alone during one of the worst moments of my life. We would play card games, garbage, go fish. We would make up stories as we laid in bed at night. Talking about being so excited to leave, what we would do when we got out. Daydreaming. I spent a lot of time reading true crime books too. I loved dreaming during foster care. I often dreamed I was with my mom, Peyton, or Cathy, without actually having to see them.

We were at this place, an emergency shelter for children in foster care, just one building out of the many that were there. Some of them long-term housing, some of them more like classrooms. We were only there for a month, but no way in hell did it only feel like one month.

Any good memories of foster care were hard to recall at first. Sometimes we did get to do stuff. We went to the zoo, even got to go to the Ymca for the first time. During the weekdays, we were to attend a school-like program, even though it was technically summer. I can't recall much of what we were taught during it though, I’m convinced it was just to keep us all busy and out of trouble. We had music, art , gym, stuff like that. We played kickball once during gym. One time we even got to go to the mall and then got milkshakes.

I always looked forward to visiting with my mom. Despite everything, I still looked forward to seeing her weekly. We would go to a therapy place to have our visits supervised for a while in the beginning, before she was allowed to be alone with us. We often played board games, ate snacks, and sat outside. One time, mom even brought our cat, Rascal up to see us. We made gingerbread houses during Christmas time. We played a lot of Jenga. I also loved the visits we had with our aunt Cathy. It wasn't as often as I wanted, because Cathy is disabled, so she did what she could to see us. Even when she couldn't visit, she called every single day, multiple times a day, the whole time we were there. So much so that the workers at this facility knew her phone number by heart. She was the stability we needed during this crazy period.

Even at 16, foster care was scary. It felt like our mom didn't share the same types of feelings, though. She was off doing chili cook-offs with her husband's family. Going fishing, camping. She even had the time to take up wine-making. She often didn't answer our calls. Dozed off during our visits. I felt like my mom had given up on ever trying to regain custody of us. Often saying we were so close to adulthood. Don't get me wrong, She was made to take parenting classes, can't say it taught her much in hindsight. I wanted my mom back so bad, but I'm not sure if she even missed me.

As I mentioned, we were in this facility for a month, until my eldest sibling, my brother, would took us in.

Why wasn't my father an option, you may be thinking? Parent alienation, mostly, we refused to go with him. Our mom worked very hard to convince us that our dad was a bad person. My parents divorced when I was three. My mom is still very bitter over the breakup. Paired with my father, “ not forcing us kids to visit “, we went years without seeing him. However, being in foster care changed that. Visits had started. Weekly, like my mom's visits. Forced into having a relationship with my father. We spent our time playing Uno, Yatzhee, and on occasion, a trip to the local Craig cruisers. A place with go-karts, arcade games, crane games.

Now, my brother was from my father's first marriage, he was in his early to late 30s by this point. He was married and had a daughter of his own, expecting a son in a few weeks. I didn't grow up with him; us kids barely saw them. I felt like I didn't know him or his wife. The first thing I remember his wife saying was that he said, “ Do we really have to take them in?”. That part stung the most for me. It made me feel so unwanted. Feeling like my mom didn't want me, neither did my dad, and now my brother. I also remember how he'd only make enough dinner for his family, and I'd slither out of the room I was sharing with Salem and my niece, to eat some slices of white bread, some ramen noodles, or slices of cheese.

Packed into a two-bedroom apartment like a can of sardines. We spent a lot of the time living with them, babysitting their kids. Binging netflix, or youtube. Going on walks up to the strip mall, just so we didn't have to be there. Once school had started that year, I loved school, it was an escape, getting to act like my life was normal for seven hours a day, pretending my life hadn't fallen apart during the summer.

During my time spent living there, my needs were neglected as it has been for a lot of my life. My depression worsened, my self injury behavior continued. I had been cutting myself since I was 12, mostly hiding it from everyone close, but my mother acted as if it wasn't a concern, getting me band aids in my stockings or easter baskets. I continued abusing my medication to help mask all of what was going on. I was still smoking cigarettes and struggled a lot with thoughts of ending my existence. By 16, I had already attempted suicide twice. Neither of those were taken seriously either.

That Christmas there with them was probably one of the worst ones. It already felt like we weren't family. I got a fuzzy blanket and a bag of sour candy that year from my brother, while his two children were spoiled. It made the feeling of being a burden even heavier, or was I an afterthought?

The beginning of the end with them went like this.

My brother was finally able to afford a house, so we were finally able to move out of that small apartment, we had all been staying for over a year. I was going to be sharing a room with the youngest, an infant. Salem was going to share a room with their oldest, again. Salem was not happy about that. I don’t remember what started the argument, but a full-blown screaming match erupted. That was the end of living with our brother.