The Foster Family Read Online Free PDF Page A

indicate whatever he was going to say wasn’t his fault, but then he only sighed, shook his head, and went up the steps.
    He was in my room folding clothes into a laundry bag when I got there with an armload of damp jeans and underwear. “Do you believe they actually took the time to rip my books in half?” I dumped the clothes into the pile on the floor. “Every single one of them. Did they go in your room?”
    “Yeah. They took my iPod and the docking station. Most of my PC game disks and the console games. Didn’t really touch anything else, though.”
    “Good.”
    Doubly good, since most of my textbooks were on the bookshelf in his closet, and I couldn’t afford to replace them. The fiction books I was going to miss, the computer I could replace with insurance money, but the textbooks were too expensive to lose.
    “Listen, Kerr, you know I love ya, right?”
    I picked up a pair of jeans and folded them for the laundry bag. “Sure.”
    “Dude, you’re going to have to find another place to live.”
    My hands continued the motions of putting the jeans in the bag. I watched as though the movement had nothing to do with me. I couldn’t quite feel most of my body for a moment. Only when I realized I was getting light-headed and needed to breathe did I straighten and look at him.
    “Seriously?”
    “Look, I’m sorry. I know the timing is shitty.”
    I huffed and puffed a bit. “Um.”
    “I was going to bring it up last week. Then the rent thing came up and I didn’t want you think it was about that, because it’s not, I swear.”
    “Hey, I just asked. It didn’t end up mattering. I paid my share on time.”
    “I know, I know. This time. But what about next month?” He flicked the strings on the laundry bag. “You have to wash every stitch of clothing you own, man. That’s going to cost a fortune.” He glanced around the room, at my slashed mattress and the broken drawers of my dresser. “I’m being an asshole.”
    “Fucking right you are.” I grabbed a T-shirt out of his hands and stuffed it into the bag. “You already have someone lined up to move in?”
    “No.”
    I stared at him. “How you going to pay for this place on your own?”
    “I’ll talk to my folks.”
    “I thought the whole point of asking me to move in was so you didn’t have to ask them for help.”
    “Well.” He slumped against the wall. “That was when I had a year of school left and my thesis half-done. Now I have three months and I have to start from scratch. I can’t really afford distractions.”
    “I’m a distraction?”
    “You….” He closed his eyes. “You’re a little lost, Kerry,” he said when he finally looked at me again. “Blowing school so you could blow some fresh-out-of-high-school jock asshole.”
    “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
    “You know, when I came out to my folks, I ran up here because I figured that’s what they would want. After spending my entire life squeezing my gay ass into their perfect all-American mold, Lamar Redskins, athlete of the year!” He punched a fist in the air as he mocked a cheer. “Prom king. Fuck, it was hideous. I thought, ‘Now they’ll leave me the hell alone. They’ll want me as far away from their socialite friends as they can get me.’” His lips crooked up into the perfect half-smile that always got him second glances. “Man, was I off the mark. I had my scholarship, and my valedictorian speech, and my prom crown, and all they wanted was more. They wanted to make me the poster boy for gay rich kids all over the country. I was so fucking sick of being their perfect little social tool.”
    He sank onto the ruined mattress and began playing with his watchstrap, pulling it loose and doing it back up over and over. “I came up here and I was going to do it all myself. No money from them, no backing from the rest of the Houston social scene. I left all my friends behind.” He glanced up at me. “I miss them, Kerry. I miss my family. I