I jumped awake. Years of living with strangers will do that.
I think I terrified Mrs. Carpenter as much as she terrified me. She cowered in my doorway, staring at me with wide eyes.
“We had better get you an alarm clock,” she said shakily. “You nearly stopped my heart. Did you sleep well, child?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You know, you are allowed to speak in my home. I appreciate the respect, but I wish you’d talk a bit.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied out of habit. I bit my tongue.
“Well. We need to leave for school in twenty minutes, so you’d better get ready. And dress warm. The wind’s still blowing.” Mrs. Carpenter turned and strode away with her hands on her hips.
Twenty minutes to get ready for my first day at a new school? I ran to the bathroom and took a shampooless, soapless shower. I brushed through my sopping hair, dabbed concealer on my black eye, and put a layer of black mascara on my pale lashes. In my room I put on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, pulled on socks with holes over both my big toes, then slipped my feet into Jenny Sue’s old running sneakers, which were a size too big. I got my jacket out of the closet and pushed my arms into the thin sleeves. There were three minutes to spare.
Mrs. Carpenter stood waiting in the kitchen. “Here you go, Maggie Mae,” she said, holding out a plate with two slices of bacon and two fried eggs shimmering with grease. I took the plate and sat at the table.
“Have you been raised with any particular religion?” she asked, sitting across from me.
“Yes. I’ve been preached to by everyone from Baptists to Catholics to Buddhists. When I was five, I lived with the Sharpwhites. They were Wiccan, or astrologists, or something.” I could hardly remember a thing about their religion, except on clear nights we would dance under the stars. Mrs. Sharpwhite always told me that when my stars lined up, my life would be in harmony. I’m still waiting for my stars to line up.
“Well, in this house I like to say grace at every meal. Do you mind?” Mrs. Carpenter asked.
I closed my eyes, clasped my hands, and bowed my head.
“Dear Lord, thank you for this glorious morning. And thank you for blessing me with the chance to foster this child. But please, Lord, let her keep her clothes on while she’s in my care. Because if she doesn’t, I might be tempted to spank her bare butt. And bless this food we are about to partake of. Amen.”
I unclasped my hands and stared at Mrs. Carpenter. She winked and grinned.
I ate like I was going to die—I was starting a new school. At least no one at my new school knew my past.
“We need to go,” Mrs. Carpenter said as I stuck the last bite of egg into my mouth. She grabbed her keys from a holder by the front door. I grabbed my empty duffle bag and followed her outside.
She was right about the wind. It tugged at my clothes and whipped my wet hair into my face. I hugged the jacket to my body and shivered. And that is when the quiet morning filled with snarling and baying.
“There must be a fox in the barn.” Mrs. Carpenter gasped, running toward a dark building on the far edge of the gravel driveway. She threw the door wide and the barking grew louder. Two shadows streaked out of the dark building and ran straight at me. A solid mass hit my chest and I was thrown to the ground. Muzzles snarled and snapped at my face, their breath hot on my cheeks.
I threw my arms over my head and rolled onto my side. The barking turned to whining and two slick, hot tongues began covering every inch of my exposed skin with slobber.
“Shash! Duke! Get off of her before I tan your hide!” Mrs. Carpenter demanded. She dragged the dogs from me, but I was too shaky to get up.
“Maggie Mae, I apologize!” Mrs. Carpenter said. “I don’t know what’s gotten into my dogs. They usually only bark like that around a wild animal. I thought they were going to eat you for breakfast, but it seems they like you well enough now.” One of the dogs, hardly more than a fluffy black-and-white shadow in the gloomy morning, slunk over and licked my face from my jaw up to my hairline.
“Shash, get back here!” Mrs. Carpenter ordered. The dog took a second long lick of my face, then turned and sat at Mrs. Carpenter’s feet, beside a long-eared, copper-colored dog. Finally able to move, I wiped the slobber from my cheek and pushed myself to a sitting position.
“My second husband was part Navajo. He taught Native American culture at the university, specializing in Navajo religion. He always said animals can sense a person’s true nature,” Mrs. Carpenter said, her shrewd eyes studying me. “If my dogs take a liking to someone, that is a sign that I should like them, too. I can see why my son sent you to me.”
“Your son?” I asked, baffled.
“My son, Dr. John Petersen, child psychiatrist and social worker. Your counselor. He called me up at the crack of dawn yesterday morning and asked if I’d take in someone special. Said he didn’t trust anyone else with this particular girl and wanted to give her a chance to graduate from high school and get her feet under her so that she might make something of herself.”
“Mr. Petersen is your son? But you have different last names.”
“That’s because John’s father died when John was a teenager. Years later I married ‘Bob’ Bidziil Carpenter. He died, too, a few years back,” Mrs. Carpenter explained. “Anyhow, Maggie Mae, let me lock the dogs back in the barn and we’ll go.”
I nodded because I couldn’t talk. Mr. Petersen had handed me over to his own mother in spite of all my flaws? I felt a funny ache behind my eyes.
After the dogs were locked up, we got into a baby-blue Ford pickup truck that looked older than me. Mrs. Carpenter leaned toward me and plucked something from my hair. “A stick,” she said, showing me a twig with a strand of black still attached.
“So, tell me, Maggie Mae—what happened to your mother and father?”
My hand froze on the seat belt and I looked at her. “I don’t know. They died before I can remember.”
“What about your grandparents?”
I hooked my seat belt. “They’re dead, too. Child services couldn’t trace a single person who I was related to. That’s how I ended up in foster care.”
Mrs. Carpenter studied me for a long moment before starting the truck engine.
“John told me that you didn’t enter the program until you were five years old. Who did you live with until then?” We bounced down the long gravel drive.
A child’s face flashed before my eyes—brown hair, blue eyes, bright red freckles on her full cheeks—the face of Lucy Reynolds, my cousin. But Lucy didn’t have freckles.
“I lived with my aunt and cousin.” My voice was barely audible above the truck engine.
“What happened to them?”
“They … died.”
“Well, Maggie Mae, you and I are alike. Seems that those closest to us die. I lost two husbands; you lost your parents, your cousin, and your aunt. We’re two peas in a pod.”