Free Just Like Me by Nancy Cavanaugh

Gina wanted to ask me. I had ditched Avery so I wouldn’t have to talk about stuff like this, but maybe spending time with Gina was going to be just as bad.
    â€œDo you ever want to go back to see it?”
    â€œNot really,” I said.
    â€œIt must be sort of cool that you guys were together in China as babies and now you’re here together at camp,” Gina said as she glued the first twig onto her picture frame.
    â€œI guess.”
    I concentrated on my piles of twigs and hoped Gina would get the hint that I was here for the craft, not for the questions.
    â€œI don’t know anyone from when I was a baby,” Gina said, looking up.
    Maybe Gina wasn’t as interested in talking about me as I thought. It sounded like she wanted me to ask her questions.
    â€œSo you’ve been in foster care since you were a baby?” I asked.
    â€œNo, but my mom and I moved around a lot when I was really young. I guess we never stayed in one place long enough to make any friends, because I don’t remember having any.”
    â€œIs that why you’re in foster care?”
    â€œNo, you don’t go to foster care just because you move a lot. My mom got caught shoplifting a couple times. Well, actually more than a couple times, and then there was some other stuff too, but she’s working on getting me back now. It just takes a long time sometimes.”
    â€œHave you been with Vanessa’s aunt the whole time?”
    â€œJust the last two years,” Gina said, squirting glue onto another twig. “I’m glad. Ms. Lena’s really nice.”
    â€œDo you ever see your mom?” I asked, peeling a piece of dried glue off my index finger.
    â€œSometimes,” Gina answered. Then she stopped gluing and turned to look at me, and I looked at her. “But I wish I got to see her more.”
    We kept looking at each other without saying anything else for a few seconds, and then we both turned back to our craft, gluing and pressing twigs to our wooden frames.
    We were quiet for a few more minutes, and then Gina asked another question. A question that had been rattling around in my head ever since Mrs. Fillmore had first talked about her famous fifth-grade heritage report.
    â€œDo you ever wonder stuff about your birth mom?”
    And maybe once you’ve used someone’s toothbrush you have some special kind of bond with them, because I actually said, “Yes,” to Gina’s question and admitted out loud that I really did wonder.
    But I didn’t go any further than that. I didn’t tell her the one thing I wondered about my birth mom that made me ache inside.
    Dear Ms. Marcia,
    Did my birth mom love me?
    All Mrs. Fillmore’s “research this” and “research that” didn’t answer that question. So because I don’t have an answer, I hold on to that baby blanket and pretend—not just that the blanket came from my birth mom, but that before my birth mom brought me to the orphanage, she hugged me and kissed me and then wrapped me in that blanket.
    Julia

16
    â€œ What is wrong with you? ” Vanessa screamed at Becca as she got her third penalty of the game for going out of her lane.
    â€œWhite Oak, that’s a warning!” the ref yelled.
    We were in the middle of a huge game of lane soccer with Red Maple.
    In lane soccer, painted lines run lengthwise on the field, and players cannot cross the lines of the lane they are assigned to. It’s a variation on soccer that makes it impossible for any one player to hog the ball. I was pretty sure White Oak was the reason we were playing lane soccer instead of regular soccer.
    I would’ve preferred regular soccer. What did I care if Vanessa, Meredith, and Becca hogged the ball? At least that way, Vanessa wouldn’t yell at me. She had already gotten mad at me for missing a pass, but she was yelling at everyone, even Meredith, so I was beginning not to care.
    Becca ran down