Three years, and I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and it was the worst time of my life and it was also the only time in my life that was *mine.*

“And then the agents came, and everybody decided again. How I came home. What I was called. Where I lived. Who I saw. All of it good, Mom. All of it kind.

All of it decided.”

He looked at the yard.

“Eli’s the only thing about me nobody else picked.”

I did not say yes and I did not say no, because it was not mine to say either one, and that is the entire lesson of five years and it took me until that step to learn it.