I’d learned two things growing up in a system created to screw kids over for their parents’ mistakes:

First, life throws crap at everyone.

Second, you can duck and make something of yourself or bitch and take it in the face.

Of course, life also taught me not to expect anything from anyone.

So, when I’d been called into an incredibly expensive looking office with its equally expensive looking woman, I’d been suspicious. Nothing like that drop into your lap without a catch.

The trick was finding the catch and knowing if you could say “screw it” and take a chance…or if you were the one who was just going to get screwed.

There weren’t many reputable opportunities for a foster kid with little education and almost no formal job experience.

I watched as the woman looked over my resume again, unimpressive as it was.

Tutoring or short sprints with families who traveled for the most part. A taste of good luck.

It had started as an odd way to make money. Families who wanted to give their nanny a break while they took a vacation but God forbid they deal with their own children for a week or two.

It had been the only work I could get that paid the bills without a college degree or formal experience. Susan, the rep at the placement center, had somehow understood what my life had been like in Brookfield and the type of experience that could give a girl.

But this woman, Ms. Maxwell, wasn’t looking at giving a girl a break. That was obvious right away.

“So, Miss Byrne.” She read through my eclectic resume again, not bothering to look at me. “You have an interesting background that drew our attention when Susan sent your documents our way.”

I couldn’t figure out if that was a compliment or not, so instead of saying thank you, I gave her my most bland smile. One I’d perfected after years in Brookfield.

“You must understand,” she continued, turning the page of whatever report she had on me, “we go to extremes to staff childcare for a very specific subset of clientele. I work with people who have certain…expectations. Expectations that can’t be filled by just any girl who knows how to sing a lullaby at bedtime.”

The dismissive way she referred to the people raising our future business leaders was off putting, but not so much that I’d already written this off.

I’d managed my way through Brookfield and other worse houses, by the skin of my teeth. I wasn’t going to put myself in a situation where weird rich people’s expectations could kill my income.

“Ms. Maxwell—”

She raised a hand, cutting me off.

“You’ve lived most of your life in foster care, is that correct?”

Her tone didn’t leave me a lot of room to argue. I figured the worst that happened is I went through the interview, then told Susan I wasn’t interested.

This office had sent a car for me, so I hadn’t needed to come up with the money for a cab. Not to mention, I’m not sure a cab could have found this place with NASA and Siri working together.

“That’s true,” I replied. It was. I wasn’t ashamed of that. It wasn’t my messed up life that had me living with strangers.

She watched, waiting for me to fill in more information, but that suspicious lifestyle taught me many things. Answer the question asked. Don’t volunteer information. Keep your tone neutral. Stay under the radar.

“You were sent to foster care after your aunt declined custody when your parents died in a car accident.”

“Also true.”

“You were five at the time.”

“Almost six.” I broke the rule just enough to not sound like a parrot.

“At that time you entered your first foster group home.” She flipped through the packet she had on me, thicker than expected.

“Yes.”

I really couldn’t see what this had to do with being a nanny to some super special snowflake client, but I was there until the car came to take me back, so there was no sense fighting it.

“My reports say you were a stubborn child but not prone to creating mischief or trouble for no reason.”

“I’m not sure Mrs. Barker would agree with that.” I laughed, trying to lighten the mood. If we were going to go all the way back to my sixth year it would need lightening.

“We have our ways of reading between the lines.” She turned to the next page. “You were taken from that home and moved to another one when there was a report that one of the boys was a danger to the girls and the Barkers hadn’t reported it.”

I’d never heard the reason I’d been moved. But, living in the system you begin to lose your ability to be surprised by anything.

She flipped more pages, then pulled out what could only be seen as a timeline.

It struck me as odd anyone outside of Facebook made life timelines.

“You stayed with the next family and their three other foster children until they moved. That seemed to be a very normal home, not overly loving. They never attempted adoption, but the reports were more positive than most homes. Decent school system. Your school records report you were a quiet child. Not outgoing, but neither were you withdrawn. Nothing of note to worry your educators. You seemed to like books more than people.”

She looked up at that point, giving me a moment to wonder where this was all going.

“Is that true?” she asked.

“The timing? I suppose so. I was young and remember I’d felt settled at that home.”

“No. Do you like books more than people?” Of all the things she’d reported back to me about my life, that seemed an odd one to grasp onto.

I wondered how honest to be, but since I’d already decided her shiny town car would be driving me away at the end of the interview, never to return, I figured what was the harm in a little honesty.

“I’ve found that for people who don’t have a support system, books are far more entertaining, educational, and kind than most strangers are.”

“So, you don’t care for people.” It was a statement not a question.

“No. That’s not what I said. I just choose very carefully who the people I care for are.” This was true. The number was small. Especially since very few people stuck around for long.

And, when you follow that up with temporary work with children, you learn quickly there’s no point in getting attached.

“I see.” She nodded to herself and I wondered if I’d done something to finally gain a bit of approval from her. “When you were eleven you were moved to the home in Brookfield.”

“That sounds about right.”

Unlike many kids in the system, I couldn’t tell you dates. I worked hard not to track my past. Not to know timeframes and timelines.

There was no point in the past.

She pulled out a manila folder that was tucked into the middle of the report. And glanced through it. I could see small, neat written notes in the margins for the first time. It surprised me that this was the where her interest rested.

“Our reports show the next six years of your life take an interesting turn.”

I guess you could call it that. I usually thought of my time at Brookfield as The Indentured Servitude Years, but I had a feeling that wasn’t the answer she was looking for.

“This particular house has been shut down about six months ago.” She glanced up at my gasp. “Oh, had you not heard?”

I’m guessing she already knew that. But, she enjoyed getting the reaction out of me.

That was a slip on my part and slipping never gets you what you want. The only reactions you show are the ones you want people to see.

“No. I hadn’t.” I gave her my flat smile, bringing the reaction back into as bored and as distant as I could. “But, then again, I wasn’t that interested in what went on there after I left.”

“Really?” She sounded genuinely surprised by this. “You never looked back?”

“No.”

I’d been trained by life not to look back, to only look at where my feet stood right at any given moment. I didn’t dwell over how the day I’d turned eighteen I’d been told I was out. I’d just gone upstairs and packed.

It was one of the few times I’d been surprised since I was eight or nine and learned that the system was more of a game—and that those of us in it were pawns for hire.

She stared at me, eyes narrowed giving more attention than she had since I’d walked in. I’d taken her by surprise and ruined her script. She was regrouping, figuring out where to go from there. She opened the folder again and focused on it for a few minutes. I began to wonder if she was actually reading or just stalling.

“My reports come from several sources for the time you were twelve through when you were eighteen. Our people spoke with the staff, teachers, and the three other foster children we found. It was a very inclusive discussion with them. But, each one said very similar things.”

I looked at her trying to read where this was going, and highly doubting that everyone said the same thing. She must have guessed my thoughts this time because she gave me a bit of a smile before saying, “Like I said, we read between the lines very well.”

They must be extremely good at it if they think everyone said the same thing. Of course, I assumed it was good since I was here. Perhaps everyone did what they do best in the system—selling out others to keep themselves safe or warm or dry or fed or front of the line.

I waited. She was going to drive this where she wanted it to go. I had already realized there was nothing I could do to take control of this conversation.

“You came into the house when you were eleven. Your grades had always been good, that didn’t change. You shifted schools again. The teachers reported very similar things to the past teachers. They thought at first you were withdrawn, but soon words like, quiet, shy, and bookish replaced anything that might flag a caseworker.”

Like anything every really flagged a caseworker.

“The new foster home wasn’t one of the most reputable, but didn’t have anything that could allow the state to shut it down.”

I’d always thought not being reputable would be enough to remove children from a house, but that was just me and that whole naïve bull I’d had squashed out of me as a kid.

Back when I thought going to live with people meant they wanted you to be part of their family, not just a paycheck to supplement their income.

“What were your initial impressions of it?”

“I was eleven.”

Ms. Maxwell gave me a look that clearly said she wasn’t an idiot. “As if at that point you didn’t have ideas how this was going to go.”

Maybe the research wasn’t about me. Maybe this was a home check.

A really, really weird home check.

“My first impression was that there were more kids in the house than I’d lived with before but that the house wasn’t that much bigger. I knew right away that meant sharing a room with several girls. It was a co-ed house again. Which sometimes made you safer…but sometimes not. If the boys felt responsible for you, it stopped the bullying at home and when you went to school.”

“Were there a lot of bullies at school?”

“Not many that paid attention to me.” I grinned, a bit proud of that. “I wasn’t interesting enough.”

She nodded again as if I’d given her exactly what she was hoping for. She asked more questions about the home, the school, the staff.

“This is where you fine-tuned your Spanish?”

This was the first question that felt even remotely related to being hired out as a nanny.

“Yes. I’d taken Spanish through middle and high school, but several of the girls in my house spoke mostly Spanish at home.”

“So you feel like your knowledge of it is both fundamentally strong in the academic sense and yet still viable for fluid contemporary conversation.”

I nodded, because there was really nothing to add to that. I’m sure she didn’t really want to know that I could tell a man in four different languages exactly what to do to himself anatomically if he tried anything.

Finally, I felt her purposefully relax and knew the hit—whatever it was—was next.

“You were there when Michelle Macomber died, correct?”

Ah.

“Yes.”

“You were actually found with her.”

“Yes.”

“And yet, you weren’t high.”

“No.”

“But she overdosed.”

“Yes.” These weren’t questions and I began to wonder why I was answering her narrative.

“The report says she came home drunk and high and you checked on her and stayed with her in her room, sleeping on the floor since you didn’t trust the other girls to do anything if she started getting sick.”

“Yes.”

“But she overdosed while you slept.”

I looked away, across the brightly lit room with its expensive art and uncluttered air wondering how this woman got to sit here and judge me for doing the best I could when no one else did—or would.

“Yes. She ODd.”

I met her gaze as she waited, staring at me, hoping for more. But I wasn’t here to be her entertainment.

After a moment she continued. “You took care of the children, watching them even more closely, making sure they got an education. Basically, running the home.”

“I did what I could.”

“I see.” She closed the report and set it aside. “And now you are completely alone. No family. No friends to speak of. No long-time employers who you’ve kept in touch with. Just you.”

“Yes.”

“That’s a difficult place to find yourself in.”

“No more difficult than some others,” I answered, because really. Did this woman not know what happened to girls out there?

She smiled now and it made me a bit sick, as she rose and put both her hands behind her back so as to not have to offer one to me. I suddenly felt like one of the most impressive things on my resume was the fact that I was alone in the world.

That kind of shit gives a girl pause.

“I see.” She made another note along the edge of the file then nodded as if I’d shared a great truth of life with her. Maybe I had, but I seriously doubt it. “We’ll be in touch.”

And with that, I was dismissed.