AN EERIE CALM washed over me as I made my way back to my office that morning. I stared at all the perfect folders stacked on my desk, all the pictures of campers lining the walls.

The blue duffel, that my foster mom had sent with Ray to give me, was sitting on the chair in the corner.

I grabbed it and tugged at the worn zipper until it growled its way open.

I’d only glanced inside.

I moved some of the PowerBars around that she’d tossed in there, in search of something — anything — to anchor my thoughts to make my chest stop hurting. To keep me from running over to Ray’s cabin and demanding that she listen to my explanation.

Even when I had nothing.

Because what would I say?

“The plan was to hurt you.”

Mission accomplished?

I hadn’t been thinking of hurting her this morning. All I’d thought was, my God that woman is too pretty for words.

It hurt to look at her.

I’d seen all the wasted years in her eyes.

And I’d wanted her sadness to go away.

I still wanted to know who’d put it there in the first place.

Most of all, I wanted to make sure it was eradicated by my touch if it had been me. If I’d been the guilty party.

Fuck.

A sick feeling washed over me as I threw the duffel against the wall. PowerBars scattered out of it along with what looked like a photo album.

With a grunt, I knelt and swiped across the album’s cover. It didn’t say anything on the outside, and it was dirty as if it had been in storage for a long time.

I opened the first page.

And there we were.

Me and Ray.

Laughing.

We were maybe ten.

It was the before.

Before middle school.

Before we’d known that social classes were decided by looks and name brands, by how a person talked and if you were considered cool.

She had an ice cream cone in her hand. Little drops of vanilla ice cream ran down her skin, and I was leaning in, trying to lick them off.

Damn, even at ten, I was trying to up my game with her.

I looked… happy.

And the shitty part was that I didn’t remember ever being truly happy when I was little. I was too busy being worried that I was going to get taken away from my foster mom. Too worried that my real mom would come searching for me and make me live with her.

Worried sick to my stomach that she would take me from Ray.

My first real friend.

My first real heartache.

We had sat together at school.

We’d eaten lunch together.

And then… we’d grown up.

And our childhood had shattered.

One day I’d been sharing my carrots.

The next day she’d flaunted lipstick.

That was how fast it had happened in my head.

And the days following that became harder and harder as I’d tried to stay friends with someone who was on the top rung of the social ladder while I still had holes in the only pair of Nikes that my foster mom could afford at the time.

I flipped through the rest of the pictures without a clue of what I was searching for. Justification maybe? Something that proved I was in the right and she was in the wrong.

The very last picture was high school graduation.

In the picture, I was surrounded by my foster mom and dad and the few fellow outcast friends that I’d had.

And then there was Ray, off in the corner.

No parents.

No friends.

She was staring down at her shoes, the ones with red soles.

Her fucking shoes that cost more than my parents’ rent.

I dropped the album back onto my desk as the guilt descended. Happy moments deserved to be filled with friends, with family.

I wondered how many happy moments in her life had been filled with silence.

And that damn thought haunted me the rest of the day.