Marred

Just when things are looking up, someone wants to kill me. 

I thought I’d found some steps forward, some positivity. Recently aged out of foster care, I have my own place, small but mine alone, giving me privacy I’ve yearned for as well as a safe space. A job that, to my amazement is turning out to be satisfying and pays enough to cover my expenses if I’m very careful. And a few new friends, including my boss and three guys any girl would give her almost anything to date. I’ve surmounted so many challenges to get to this point.

Then I return, one evening ,to find my apartment ransacked and vandalized. A clear sign things are taking yet another turn for the worse. I shouldn’t have been so quick to let my guard down, but despite all the troubles of my childhood and youth, I didn’t think I had any true enemies. Some kids from various fosters and the group home who weren’t my best friends, who were cruel even, but not one I could think of who would pursue me like this.

And they didn’t just break my belongings. They ripped out the wiring, pounded holes in the walls, smashed the toilet, broke or destroyed anything possible. My six months’ rent, bestowed as part of a program to help fosters who were aging out of the program, was ending early. Someone wasn’t getting their security deposit back. And worse, the housing officer called by the landlord declared it uninhabitable until someone put a whole lot of money and time into fixing it up. They refused to even consider my doing it myself —and I probably don’t have the skills anyway.

With nowhere to live, I am offered a place to stay by Lynn and the Ridgewood Rogue pack. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Yeah, they say I belong with other shifters but it seems like giving up on my newfound freedom. 

It’s that or the street.

Watching my back when I was in the group home or a foster home isn’t a new thing for me, but at least then I knew my enemies. 

Now, I mistrust everyone and everything. 

Maybe everyone will be better off if I just disappear.