Falling Harder Read Free Page A

just fine here.” She closes the door behind
us, and so begins my new life as a member of the Goldstein family.
    For the first
few nights, I don’t even sleep. My room is essentially a laundry closet decked
out with a cot. I can hear my foster brothers and father snoring through the
door, and the house all but rattles with the force of the sound. I lie awake,
staring at the water stained ceiling, and wonder when I’ll wake up from this
strange dream I’ve fallen into. How long before this world vanishes before my
eyes and I feel my mother’s hands on my shoulders again, shaking me out of a
deep sleep?
    But as much as I
keep hoping to be wrenched out of this place, I’m just not that lucky. The days
pass in a haze of boredom and wariness. Eventually, it sinks in that this is
simply the reality I’ve been dealt. This is what my life looks like, now. And I
have to figure out how to accept it.
    I last at the
Goldsteins for the better part of a year. Every Wednesday, I obediently shovel
meatloaf into my mouth. I laugh along with the bad sitcoms that play nonstop on
the TV. I even manage to call Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein by their first names,
after a while. I’m enrolled in a new school, study hard every night, and bide
my time, waiting for something good to happen.
    But that year, I
turn thirteen, and things start to change. My mother was always frank with me
about what was in store for me, as a girl. I knew that my body would start to
become more grownup, far faster than my mind and heart might. Overnight, it
seems, I stop being a little girl and start looking, and feeling, like a young
woman.
    My chest starts
to swell, and my baby fat seems to disappear by the minute. I find baggy
sweatshirts to wear, to cover the unexpected shifts in my body, but I can feel
the eyes of men and women alike settling on me. People start looking at me
differently, especially my foster brothers.
    One night, my
red-headed housemate Daryl grows bold and corners me in the kitchen as I finish
up the dishes.
    “Have you ever
kissed anyone before?” he asks earnestly.
    “No,” I say
flatly, drying off a plate with the hem of my sweatshirt.
    “Do you want
to?” he goes on, his eyes fixed on me.
    “Leave me alone,
Daryl,” I say, “I’m busy.”
    “I said, do you
want to kiss someone?” he repeats, “Do you want to kiss me?”
    “Not even a
little—” I start to say, but the words get cut off as Daryl spins me around and
mashes his lips against mine. I drop the plate, sending little sharp shards
flying all over. Daryl howls as a piece of glass nicks his shin, and he hops
mercifully away from me, cradling the shallow wound. I dash out of the room,
ignoring Mrs. Goldstein’s shouted questions as she pushes past me.
    The next
morning, I wake up to find blood in my underwear. I figure that I’m being
cursed for letting Daryl kiss me, that’s the only possible explanation. Before
anyone else in the house is awake, I call Miss MacCoy and ask her to pick me
up.
    Before I know
it, I’m off to a new home—an apartment on the outskirts of Chicago. My next
foster mother is a platinum blonde former model named Cheryl. She’s not a
serial foster mother like Mrs. Goldstein, she’s just trying the whole kid thing
on for size, or so she tells me. The first night I stay with Cheryl, she lets
me have a cold beer with her.
    “To us,” she
says, tapping her can against mine. “This is start of a beautiful friendship,
Nadia. I can just tell.”
    I smile and take
a tentative sip of my beer. The taste is overpowering, but I’m persistent. I
want my new mother to like me, after all. Maybe she’ll keep me around, if she
likes me.
    “You have the
most beautiful blue eyes,” Cheryl says, setting back into the zebra print sofa
beside me. “Like little blue oceans. You have that whole...exotic thing going.
Are you mixed race?”
    “I don’t know
what that means,” I admit.
    “Never mind,”
she says, “You can just say that you are. Multi-ethnic