You wait until you are completely alone before you let the panic crack your ribs.

So I sat there, and I waited, the way I had learned to wait for everything my whole life.

There is a particular stillness that foster children learn, and I had learned it better than most.

It is not calm.

It is the opposite of calm — it is a control so total that it looks, from the outside, like peace, while underneath, everything is screaming.

You learn it young, in offices and hearing rooms and at kitchen tables in houses that are not yours, watching adults decide where you will sleep and who you will belong to and for how long, none of which you are permitted to influence.