Free Silent by Sara Alva

for dinner on Friday, and you’ll take a turn on dusting, sweeping, mopping and cutting the grass. You can figure out when with Brandon and Dwayne. Laundry days are Tuesday and Saturday. We use the laundromat down the street, and we all wash and fold or we don’t get no clean clothes.”
    Air brushed against my tongue, and I realized my mouth had fallen open as she continued to bombard me.
    “Twice a week you’ll help Andrew and Ryan with their homework. Ms. Cecily and me check it before it goes to school, so you’d best be doing a good job.”
    The paper in my hand slipped from my fingers, and I watched it fall in gentle arcs to the floor. “Are you fucking kidding me? I could’ve just lost my mom, my home, my whole life…and you’re giving me a list of fucking chores ? Don’t you even care?”
    Ms. Loretta headed for the door. “Don’t I?” She glanced over her shoulder at the threshold to pin me with another ruthless stare. “Clean up this mess…and that best be the very last time I hear foul language coming out of your mouth.”
    I geared up for an angry retort, but she whirled around one last time and leveled me with a look. I blinked twice, somehow strangled into silence. She nodded, then left.
    I swore that woman was a fucking witch.
     
    Brandon replaced her a little while later, strolling into the room with arms folded in smug victory. “Told you.”
    His dimples were starting to get on my nerves, since they seemed to go hand in hand with that high-and-mighty smirk.
    “Fuck off.”
    “Hey, at least you get a few days off before you have to go to school. Fucking lucky.”
    Lucky again. Did these people even know the meaning of the word?
    “Can you please just fuck off? I don’t feel like talking right now.”
    Jesus. Now I was resorting to asking please .
    “Can’t.” He leaned against the plain wooden dresser, one hip jutting out, allowing his t-shirt to pull a little tighter against his abs. And damn it, I wasn’t thinking about his body again when my life had taken a turn for complete shit. “This is my room. Dwayne’s coming up in a sec anyways. He never finished that paper.”
    Fuck.
    I got up from the bed to grab my jacket—at least it was good to have some of my own things around again—and left the room without another word.
    And definitely without another glance at Brandon’s abs.
    “Just where do you think you’re going, young man?” Ms. Cecily caught me at the foot of the stairs.
    “I need some air.” I kept on my path for the back door. Ms. Cecily didn’t freak me out the way her sister did. She was softer, somehow—and not just because she was quite a few pounds heavier.
    “You can go out to the backyard.” She followed after me. “But only until lights out. And you should know, child—you only get one shot at this.”
    I stopped, but didn’t turn around. “One shot at what?”
    “At staying here, with us. If you plannin’ to run away…well, we not gonna have a place for you here anymore if you do.”
    What had Brandon said to me when we’d first met? That there were worse places than this? I hadn’t given his words any thought at the time, and not just because I was distracted by the rise and fall of his chest against my back. But now I did pause to wonder…if I ran away and got caught, would I end up in some sort of foster care jail?
    “I’m not running away. I just really…I need to be by myself, okay?”
    Her heavy footsteps stopped echoing mine after that.
     
    Out in the backyard, I took a long, deep breath and attempted to calm myself enough to think. The night sky above me was the same hazy purple it was at home—nice to see that hadn’t changed—but somehow the air smelled different. I ducked behind a metal shed for some form of privacy and sank to the dirt and grass below.
    Now I was trapped. Really trapped. And I just kept getting caught up on the fact that the tiniest little thing…a measly shoe …had set this all in motion.
    Not that