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But I finally got what I needed. I checked to make sure I had picked up all my garbage—like Mr. Ashdale had taught me—and I headed back to the highway to catch a bus home.
    I was still in a pretty mellow mood by the time I got back to the city. I couldn’t wait to show Mrs. Ashdale my new pictures. I knew she would appreciate them. So I was swinging along, humming to myself, when I got to the end of my street. That’s when I saw the cop cars—two of them—pulled up to the curb in front of the Ashdales’ house. In the old days, I would have been shaking all over, sure that they had come for me. But I hadn’t done anything wrong since I’d been living with the Ashdales, so I knew I was in the clear. I ran up the street to see what had happened.
    Mrs. Ashdale was standing on the front walk, talking to a cop in uniform. She nodded when she saw me, and the cop she was with turned. Just my luck. It was Officer Firelli. He’d busted me a few times over the years.
    â€œHello, Ethan,” he said with a smirk on his face to tell me he remembered me and how messed up I used to be.
    I ignored him.
    â€œWhat happened?” I asked Mrs. Ashdale. “Are the kids okay?”
    â€œThey’re fine,” Mrs. Ashdale said. “I sent Meaghan to pick them up from the bus.” Meaghan was my age. She lived down the street. “Someone broke into the house while I was out shopping,” she said.
    â€œBroke into the house? Did they take anything?”
    â€œThat’s the weird thing,” Mrs. Ashdale said. “I can’t see that anything’s missing. But they made a real mess of the place. It’s going to take forever to get everything put back where it belongs.”
    â€œSomeone broke in and didn’t take anything?” That didn’t make sense. Then, just like that, my heart stopped. “They must have been in the house when you got home. You must have walked in on them.” I could see it—some crack addicts were about to loot the place when they heard a key turn in the front door. “You could have been hurt, Mrs. Ashdale.” And, boy, I would have hated for that to happen. I liked Mrs. Ashdale. She didn’t deserve to have some crack addict attack her.
    â€œ You wouldn’t know anything about what happened here today, would you, Ethan?” Officer Firelli said. He was in his late twenties and a real hardnose. I always had the feeling that he didn’t like me.
    â€œMe?” I said. “What do you mean?”
    He shook his head as if he had asked me the easiest math question in the world and I was so dumb I couldn’t even find the answer by counting on my fingers.
    â€œCome on, Ethan,” he said. “Are you going to pretend you didn’t get that gang of yours to break into Mrs. Girardi’s place when you were living there?”
    I glanced at Mrs. Ashdale. My cheeks were burning. It was true what Officer Firelli had said. At first I’d hated being put in foster care, and I didn’t try to hide it. The second week I was at Mrs. Girardi’s, I got together with the guys I used to hang with. We broke the lock on the back door, tossed the place, took whatever cash we could find along with whatever we could sell, and took off.
    A couple of the neighbors saw us. The only person they recognized was me, and there was no way I was going to give up my friends. But you know what happened? Mrs. Girardi refused to press charges. She just shrugged and said she supposed she and I were going to have to work on getting used to each other. Then she got started cleaning up the place.
    I watched her for a few minutes, and then I pitched in. I felt awful when I saw her pick up a photograph album that had been thrown onto the floor. Some pictures had fallen out and someone had ripped them up. She looked sad as she held up the pieces, but she didn’t say a word, which made me feel worse. Usually when I did