I’m up in the treehouse. Doreen, the youngest Devil child, declared that it was for babies, and stopped coming up here, so I’m safe. I’ll wait here until they come for me. I’m not waiting around, worrying about my new home. Let them come to me.

My name is Shane McCutcheon and I’m twelve years and thirteen days old. I’m a girl, even though I have a boy’s name. They say I’m a lot like a boy, but I don’t think so. I’d rather listen to music than play softball or soccer. I like Def Leppard and Guns and Roses, but my favorite is, and always will be, the Beatles. I really don’t think I’m much like a boy. I’d rather hang out with girls anyway. Except for Frankie. He’s got the poor luck of living next to the Devil family, and for the last two years he’s been my best friend.

Today I’m moving to yet another home. I’ve lived in six homes, with six families, so far in my life. I’m tired of moving, but in this case I can’t wait to get away from these Devlin fuckers. Doreen, and Dorien, and Darien, and I hate all three of them. I’ve been stuck here since I was nine. If it weren’t for Frankie I’d be nuts.

I wish I could go back to my dad, and what good does that do? Wishing is useless. Besides, my dad is dead, somewhere in Montana. I was at his funeral. I saw him in his casket. I should know better.

I clearly remember the funeral, the flower smell, the green carpeting, the hushed whispers, the way every adult in the place looked at me with unbearable pity. I don’t remember things very clearly from when he was living. I try not to think about it. I remember he had brown hair, and green eyes like me, and that he was so big. He was like a protective tree towering over me.

Mostly I remember that he was too good to be true. But I didn’t realize it at the time. Now I know better.

I dunno why I’m thinking about my dad today. Thinking doesn’t do anything. Nothing is gonna bring him back. Snap out of it, Shane. Tomorrow’s another day.

Except tomorrow I’ll be living with some family named Greene, in a whole new world.

I lay in a stripe of sun from a board that fell loose and try to count the leaves in the window. I once tried to count the leaves on the whole tree, but I couldn’t. The tree is a jacaranda, the biggest one I ever saw. In the spring, it blooms this unworldly purple, a purple so vivid it looks like it was plugged in. I like this tree, the tree house. I’ll miss it.

How can I miss something from the Devil family? I’ve hated it here, from day one. But in all the places I’ve been there was at least some thing, if not somebody, that I would miss. Life is just a list of people and places, good and bad, and you can’t take them all with you when you go.

But for all the times I’ve wished myself gone, the next stop could be a million times worse. Number one rule of being a foster kid.

.

Whittier and everything in it looks new, and I suppose it’s nice. My social worker Petra is excited on my behalf, anyway. She keeps talking about how good the schools are, as if I care about school. The streets are nice, very clean, with neat driveways and rain gutters and ranch houses, not a single one over one story. Except the one at the end of the cul de sac. I like the house immediately. It’s well groomed.

I get an emotional feel from houses. Ones that aren’t maintained, broken downspouts and overgrown weeds, are sad to me. But this one has neat grass and flowers, simple bright ones in orange, yellow, and purple. Unpretentious, Rona Leister would have said. Rona was my foster mom two stops ago. I don’t want to think about her as Petra pulls us in front of the Greene house, because I could never be so lucky again.

Rule number two, expect the worst, that way you can only be pleasantly surprised.

And actually, now, the Leisters’ was three stops ago, because we’re here.

I tell myself not to be so pleased with the house. Number three of being a foster kid: things aren’t necessarily what they seem.

I get out and start to haul my bags out of Petra’s beat-up car. This is the worst part. Being sized up by a new family I can handle, but there’s no way to hide or shield the few things I own. Embarrassing. My Mutant Ninja Turtles sleeping bag, inherited from some other foster kid, my shabby clothes. It sucks.

A woman comes out of the house, and my gut twists. Ok, I take it back, being sized up by a new family sucks too. The woman is barefoot, and again I think about Rona saying “unpretentious.” She’s dressed in shorts and a tank top with a gauzy button-down blouse overtop, graying hair done in a pony tail.

“Hi, Sandy,” Petra says. She seems to know her well. That’s telling. I’m clearly not the first foster kid to pass through here. I wonder what the house is like inside.

The barefoot woman smiles, and I instantly like her. I feel myself start to relax against by better judgement. “You must be Shane.”

I nod. “Hi.” I should smile but the look on my face is probably constipated instead.

“I’m Sandy.” Perfect name for her, I think. Her hair is light soft brown, almost blonde, shot through with strands of silver. I glance at her boobs and then away. They are huge, tight, high.

“Leave your things in the car for now, come on in and I’ll make us something to drink.”

I obediently put my sleeping bag and duffel back into the car, glad to delay the parade of my lame possessions. Sandy lets me follow her up the terraced bath to the front door, and places a hand on my shoulder. “She’s so pretty,” she says, looking at me, and my stomach turns.

Calm, down, Shane, I tell myself. There’s no reason to think that gesture was anything but motherly, and a lot of people call me pretty.

That sounds like it’s a good thing, but trust me, it’s not always. So much that one day last summer I cut all my hair off. Now it’s shoulder length, bangs, nothing spectacular. At the front patio I stop and let her go ahead of me, and let Petra pass between us. Petra is as always lugging a briefcase with a bulging purse. Calm. Breathe.

I notice a small handprint in the corner of the patio, set into the cement. A name spelled out with marbles. Charlotte. Huh. That’s cool. I bet it was fun to make. But the hand is so little that it probably required parental supervision.

“Shane, would you like some lemonade?”

Huh? Why do they always try to feed you when you’re nervous enough to puke? “Um, no thank you.”

“You sure? I just made a batch. Petra?”

“Lemonade sounds great.”

I sink dutifully into a chair while Sandy bustles around the kitchen. Petra brings out a ream of paperwork, and two pens from the depths of her bag. She takes off her glasses and rubs her temples. Petra always looks tired, even though she always greets me with a smile, and always does her best for me.

“Where are the kids?”

“Oh, Jakey went with his dad to work today, and Charlie is at violin camp until next Tuesday.” She pronounces it “SHAR-lie.” That must Charlotte, with the tiny hand and marbles.

I wait to hear her say more, but she doesn’t, so I guess I’m the only foster kid at the moment. This could be good or bad. Good because I doubt these Greene kids, with their nice house and flowers and marbles, will steal my stuff.

I look around. The kitchen is pretty standard except for a stainless steel refrigerator-freezer, and the counters are clean. They must get someone in to clean. Either that or Sandy does it herself. Black and white tile.

I notice a white cat sitting in a pool of light by the sliding door. It is regarding us strangers, blinking. I keep watching it. After a minute, it stretches into a sphinxlike position, and then it rolls over, curling like a shrimp, belly in the air.

I watch, incredulously, as it sleeps like that. This calms me. This house can’t be bad with a cat that mellow. If this were the Devlins', it would be shaking and pissing under the bed by now.

“Do you like cats, Shane?”

“Yeah. What’s its name?”

“Her name is Dora, she’s very friendly.” The cat, in its dream, hears its name. Only one ear twitches, and her fluffy tail curls into the air. Calm, I think, looking at Dora. Calm.

There are drawings and photos all over the metal fridge, and one in particular catches my eye. It’s a fancy portrait of a girl my age, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, sandy hair like Sandy’s, and she’s posing with a gleaming violin.

I instantly know what my problem will be here. Stuck up rich bitch, it’s clear.

Violins always fascinated me, and frightened me. The fact that you could saw a bow back and forth over the strings and make amazing sounds to come out always seemed totally supernatural. Like witchcraft.

One day during a field trip our music teacher took us to a matinee of the symphony, and we passed a store front full of violins like that, gleaming like honey in the light. “Those cost thousands of dollars,” he said, an I remember snapping back, out of my trance, pulling my grimy fingers away from the window.

Out of my reach, for sure.

In the picture, the girl looks so fulfilled. It’s like she’s mocking me. I hate her already.

Sandy notices my discomfort a few minutes later, and tells me to go up and check out my room. “It’s the second door on the left. I hope you don’t mind sharing with Charlotte.”

What else am I gonna say? No, she looks like a spoiled bitch and I need my own accomodations? As if.

The air up here is somehow cooler, calmer. Potted spider plants in the windows, pale gray carpeting. It’s nice. But I feel like a tresspasser, even though Sandy has sent me upstairs.

The second door on the left opens up into an L-shaped room. There are two canopy beds, with identical white lace covering. Both have stuffed animals and pillows. They are equally welcoming. I’m not sure which one I’m supposed to take.

There are two desks, two bulletin boards, one vanity with a mirror. A shelf goes around the room, full of books and plants and wooden letters that say Charlie. The letters are painted, each in a different pattern. There’s a music stand in the corner, and next to it is an entire shelf of old sheet music. My eyes bulge. She can play all that?

I get the same feeling I got when my teacher talked about the expense of violins. That snapped back feeling. Someone else’s room. I don’t know where I belong in it. I don’t even know where to sit. I guess the desk is fair game, since it is clear which one belongs to Charlotte. Unless they both belong to Charlotte. I’m lost here. Much as I dread seeing her, I wish she’d come back from her stupid camp already and let me know where I belong.

I walk to the bulletin board, hers, and as I walk by I catch my reflection in the mirror.

Plain brown hair, plain green eyes. I kind of look like a boy. My chin is funny. I tuck my hair behind my ears, but that makes it worse.

I’m wearing my most presentable ensemble, a pair of jeans that aren’t quite outgrown and a white shirt. It makes me look generic, like a black and white box is generic. It’s a good outfit for the first day in a new home. The only color is the red and yellow of Frankie’s friendship bracelet.

“She has blow-job lips,” Darien Devlin once said, and his friends all sniggered at me as they stood there in the driveway on their bikes, watching me take out the trash. At the time I didn’t know what that meant, but their tone left no doubt that it was a very bad thing.

As if I’d ever suck a boy’s dick, least of all Darien’s. Ick. Gross.

The Shane in the mirror sneers and I laugh. Then cover my mouth so they don’t think they have a crazy kid on their hands. Though I guess I’m born to be crazy, so I might as well embrace it.

I look away from the mirror, pulling my hair back out from behind my ears, and look at Charlotte’s bulletin board. There are blue ribbons, and a single red ribbon, and I wonder if it’s for winning second place.

There are pictures. In them she doesn’t seem so snobbish. In one of them she’s laughing with two friends. Her eyes look friendly, but the mere fact that there are three of them and one of me is intimidating. There’s a picture of two little kids, and a class picture, and a family picture.

That makes me sad. Makes me think of my dad. Stop it, Shane.

I look at Charlotte’s book collection. It’s huge. She’s got the usual Nancy Drew and Judy Blume ones, and the whole Little House series. There are some more grown-up ones, too, classics like A Tale of Two Cities and Of Mice and Men.

One book sticks out, because of its yellow spine. The Violin for Dummies. That’s me, all the way. I pick it up and slink down out of this confusing room, and down the stairs.

“Sign here,” Petra is saying. “And here.”

“She’s awfully quiet.” That’s Sandy, and I freeze, warmth rushing into my face as it always does when adults talk about me.

“She’s a good kid. We’ve never had a single complaint about her.”

I rush down the stairs. There is a side door, off of the living room. I slip through there and out onto a wooden deck. My face is blushing.

The Greenes’ back yard is very wide but not very deep. Two trees in the corner hold up a hammock and this time of year the leaves are full and green from recent rain. Best of all they can’t see me from where they are.

The rope of the hammock is still damp from last night’s rain, but I don’t realize that until after I’ve hoisted myself on to the hammock. I hate when they talk about me. It’s always in hushed tones, as if there is something important and fragile about me that must be delicately managed.

A good kid? Doubtful. You can only be so good when you’re born where I was born.