Chapter 2 - HOW I ENDED UP IN ORANGE
Nobody wakes up at thirteen and decides he wants to become a case number.
It happens in pieces.
My mother, Jenna, had me when she was nineteen.
I never knew my father except for a first name that may or may not have been real.
Derek.
Mom said he played guitar.
Once she said he worked construction.
Another time she said he went to Florida.
Eventually I stopped asking.
Mom loved me.
I still believe that.
But loving somebody and being able to raise them are not the same thing.
She struggled with pills after a back injury when I was seven.
Then came missed rent.
Temporary apartments.
Boyfriends.
Motels.
Friends’ couches.
A shelter once.
Another apartment.
Another eviction.
Every year there was some new beginning we were supposed to pretend was permanent.
At nine, I learned to pack everything important into one backpack.
At ten, I knew which convenience stores let kids use the bathroom without buying anything.
At eleven, I could tell whether Mom had taken something by how quickly she blinked.
Child services came in and out of our lives.
Mom always improved just enough.
Clean apartment.
Food in the refrigerator.
Counseling appointment scheduled.
Then the file closed.
Then we fell apart again.
When I was twelve, Mom disappeared for three days.
A neighbor called police.
I entered foster care.
My first placement lasted six weeks.
The second lasted four months.
The third family asked that I be moved after I punched a hole through a bedroom door.
Nobody ever asked what happened five minutes before I punched it.
Their biological son had told me I should be grateful anybody wanted me.
I hit the door instead of him.
That distinction did not matter much in the report.
By thirteen, I had stopped unpacking.
Then I ran away from a group home.
I was gone for two nights.
On the third, I tried to sleep inside an unlocked delivery van behind a grocery store.
The owner found me.
I panicked.
Tried to drive away.
Hit a shopping-cart return.
Nobody was injured.
But I had taken a vehicle.
Even thirty feet counts.
That was how I met Judge Cole.
He looked down from the bench during my first hearing.
“Liam, why did you take the van?”
I shrugged.
“Needed somewhere warm.”
My attorney whispered for me to stop talking.
Judge Cole did not.
He just stared at me for a long time.
Then he said, “We are going to deal with what you did.”
I nodded.
“And we are also going to deal with why a thirteen-year-old believed a delivery van was his best available bedroom.”
That was the first time an adult in authority had managed to hold two truths at once.
I had done something wrong.
And something had also gone wrong around me.
May you like
I did not trust him because of it.
But I remembered.
