“I can’t permit you to leave the premises.”
I’m standing too close to the woman to pretend I don’t hear her, and honestly I don’t think I would if I could. I need to stop trying to fake this out. I need to leave this system once and for all and it has to be now.
“Are you going to try and stop me?”
She’s looking like she might, her hands tensed, like she’s weighing if I would be out the door by the time she called in reinforcements. But eventually she gives up, because really she’s only the frayed edge of this system, and she’s too busy trying to do her part to hold it together to care about the low risk misfit who slips between the thread.
“Where will you go?”
“I have people, and I’ll manage.” She’s nodding, like she gets it. but I know she doesn’t, she couldn’t because of the misfortune she see’s every day. She knows I’m in a good spot in comparison to some of the others, but she’s silently crossing herself for my dead body anyways because foster kids don’t get lucky often enough not to.


I cross a little farther over that line, get a little closer to the door, until I can feel the coldness of the knob radiating onto my too hot skin. She’s counting off statistics in her head, and I see them as she blinks for just a tad too long, flitting across her eyelids. All the statistics saying I’ll be dead by 18.
And all I’m thinking as I open the door and propel myself into Bobo’s waiting car is, Screw statistics