8. Norah

BEFORE

"You're lucky to be coming to this home," Norah's social worker, Scott, told her as they pulled up at Wild Meadows.

Norah looked up at the house doubtfully. "Why am I lucky?"

It was an important question, Norah had determined. She was ten years old, and it was her seventh foster placement. She'd been told she was lucky to go to the last place, where she'd shared a room with a teenage boy who liked to crawl into bed with her at night. (When she'd told her foster mother, the woman was unconcerned. "If he does it again, kick him in the balls," she'd said. Good advice, as it turned out.) She'd been told she was lucky to go to the place with the cat who bit her so deeply she'd needed eight stitches and an IV drip. She'd been told she was lucky when she was sent to the place that made the kids eat hot sauce if they asked for more food. This time, she wanted to understand why she was lucky.

Scott pulled up the handbrake. "Because you have somewhere to live."

He smiled, too stupid to be ashamed of his disgusting little teeth. But his eyes remained dead, empty holes in his face.

Scott, Norah had learned, was an asshole. The type who muttered around kids and laughed too loudly around grown-ups. When he'd collected Norah that morning he'd said, "My, haven't you grown?" and his eyes had lingered on her a little too long.

Norah had grown in the previous few months. She was the tallest in her class at her last school, taller even than the boys. Taller even than Scott, which wasn't hard. She had also started to become soft and curvy in the breast area ("early for your age," her last foster mother told her), which, from the way Scott's gaze skimmed her chest, had not gone unnoticed.

She crossed her arms and stared him down. I see you, asshole.

"Miss Fairchild is a very nice woman," he continued. "She has another foster daughter around your age."

"Is there a Mr. Fairchild?"

Also an important question. At another placement, there had been a Mr. who always sat very close to Norah on the couch. Norah had seen the writing on the wall long before the day he'd opened his trousers, so she had her pocketknife ready. If she was going to need her pocketknife here, it would be useful to have a heads-up.

"No Mr. Fairchild," Scott said.

As they walked toward the house, the front door opened, and a woman emerged. She had blond hair and blue eyes, and she reminded Norah of the Barbie she'd played with at her therapist's office, except that the Barbie's hair had been hacked off and this woman's hair was shoulder-length and mousse-scrunched-wavy. She wore a pink sleeveless dress with a drop waist.

"Hello!" said Barbie. "I'm Miss Fairchild."

"I'm Norah," Norah said. "With an h."

The woman blinked.

"You look like Barbie," Norah said.

The woman let out a short, high-pitched laugh. "My goodness," she said. "Aren't you funny?"

"Call me if she gives you any trouble," Scott said to Miss Fairchild. "I'll be back in two weeks to check in."

Scott always said that when he left Norah at a new placement and then she didn't see him again for months. She wondered why he bothered. He didn't make eye contact with Norah as he climbed back into his car.

"Won't you come in?" Miss Fairchild said when he was gone.

Norah, clutching her garbage bag full of possessions, followed her into the house.

"Isn't she pretty, Jessica? Miss Fairchild was saying to the other child. "She could be a model!"

Norah snuck a look at Jessica. Despite Scott saying she was around Norah's age, she was about half Norah's height and—judging by her behavior—a quarter of her intelligence. She sidled alongside Miss Fairchild, oddly close, perhaps territorial. Norah wanted to tell her to relax; she could have the freakish blonde all to herself, thank you very much.

"First things first," Miss Fairchild said when they reached the stairs. "I want you to know that whatever happened at your last place will not happen here."

"What happened?" Jessica asked.

Miss Fairchild nudged her sharply. "Jessica!"

But Norah didn't care. She looked directly at Jessica. "I kicked my foster brother in the balls when he crawled into bed with me. He was a perv."

Miss Fairchild exchanged a glance with Jessica, the two of them raising their eyebrows in sync. They reminded Norah of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

"Well," Miss Fairchild said finally, "I want you to know that you're safe here."

"Good," Norah said. She was genuinely relieved to hear it, but she had her pocketknife for backup all the same. After the experiences she'd had, she wasn't inclined to take anyone's word for it. "So what are the house rules?"

It was yet another question she'd learned to ask up front, before she could be found guilty of an infraction she didn't know about, or that had been newly created.

"We all pitch in with the cleaning," Miss Fairchild said. "It's a big place so there's a lot to do."

This was fine by Norah. At her previous placement the house had been verging on squalor. The kids all had to share a bed, and in three months the sheets hadn't seen the inside of the washing machine. When she offered to wash them herself, she'd been told she was a snobby little brat and made to sleep on the floor.

"Is there a particular chore you'd enjoy doing?"

"Laundry?" she suggested.

Miss Fairchild smiled. "That would be perfect."

"But that's my job," Jessica protested, tugging at her foster mother's skirt.

Miss Fairchild ignored her.

"Do we have a bedtime?" Norah asked.

This tended to vary wildly from place to place. At one foster home, she'd been put to bed at 6:00 P.M., along with the toddlers and babies, so her foster parents could drink beer. At another, she'd been left to her own devices and put herself to bed whenever she was tired.

"How about eight o'clock? You can sleep in the bedroom opposite mine. Jessica will make up the beds for you both."

Jessica looked surprised. Actually she looked appalled.

"Come now, Jessica," Miss Fairchild said, "you can't sleep in my bed forever. Of course, if you are scared during the night, Norah, you're welcome to come into my bed. You're in a new environment."

"Mummy—" Jessica started.

"Enough!"Miss Fairchild's reaction was so swift that even Norah was startled. She gripped Jessica's arm just above the elbow, tightly enough to lift Jessica's heels. Her face became white as chalk. "It's not just the two of us anymore, Jessica. The sooner you understand that, the better." Miss Fairchild's fingernails were digging into Jessica's skin. Their faces were almost touching. "And enough of this ‘Mummy' nonsense. From now on you're to call me Miss Fairchild."

When Miss Fairchild let go, there were marks on Jessica's arms and she was blinking back tears.

"Right," Miss Fairchild said, her smile returning. Her eyes, Norah noticed now, weren't like Barbie's. Rather than being startled-looking, this woman's eyes were sharp. "I'll get you some fresh sheets and towels."

With that she disappeared, leaving Norah and Jessica blinking in her wake. It wasn't the outburst that unsettled Norah; she'd seen plenty worse. The speed of her recovery, though, complete with a fresh maniacal smile—that was new. Norah didn't like new.

"You'd better not go into her room," Jessica said softly, not looking at Norah.

"I won't," Norah said.

She wasn't trying to make peace. It was simply that the idea of visiting that woman's bed in the middle of the night was infinitely scarier than any nightmare Norah might be trying to escape.

At her first foster home, Norah had received a fist in the stomach before she'd even made it in the door. She'd just climbed out of the social worker's car and was standing on the nature strip when the boy approached from behind. She was six, the boy was thirteen.

She didn't see it coming. One minute she was standing there, the next she was doubled over, struggling for breath. Her caseworker, who'd been fetching her garbage bag from the trunk, scolded the boy, demanding to know why he'd done it.

"Because she's new," he said. His tone said duh.

Norah hadn't understood at the time, but she soon did. She even came to appreciate it. A swift punch was akin to an orientation. It taught you who was in charge, who to look out for, and where you stood.

Before long, Norah had learned to brace for the first punch. Not long after that, she learned to throw it.

It vexed Norah that the rest of the world didn't operate this way. It would have been useful, for example, if Miss Fairchild had given her a swift punch that first day. At least then she would've known what was coming.

At bedtime, Jessica used the bathroom first, then Norah. Jessica explained this to Norah as if it were very important. When Norah was finished, she returned to find the room in darkness.

She stopped in the doorway. The bedroom had a sloping ceiling and a dormer window and the blind was drawn. Once the door was closed, it would be hard to see anything at all. Norah had never liked darkness. She had a dim memory of having been blindfolded once. The details were hazy, but she remembered laughter (someone else's) and terror (her own). Years later, even though she understood she wasn't in danger, her body didn't seem to care. It still heard the laughter and felt the terror.

"I put your clothes away," Jessica said. She was already in one of the wrought-iron twin beds; Norah could see the S-shaped mound under the covers. "I think you'll find the system makes sense. Undies in the top drawer, then tops and jumpers, then pants. Dresses are in the wardrobe."

"Thanks," Norah said. If the exacting way Jessica lined up her things on her dresser was any measure of the way she did thingsc—everything at right angles and organized by like (hair care, dental care, etc.)—Norah assumed she would have done a reasonable job of it.

"Are you going to come in?" Jessica asked.

Norah didn't move. Her heels dug into the floorboards, as if someone was preparing to push her inside.

She was still standing that way when Miss Fairchild appeared a moment later. She was still wearing the floral dress from earlier, but the lipstick and eye shadow had been washed off and her face looked like a blank, creamy moon. "Is everything all right, Norah?"

"I don't like the dark."

"Well, why didn't you say so?" She seemed delighted to be able to help, marching downstairs and returning a minute or two later with a lamp. "Will this do?"

Norah took the lamp. There was a white wooden bedside table next to her bed, and an outlet was visible beside it. "Yes, thanks."

"Is there anything else you need?"

"Nope," Norah said. She crossed the room, plugged in the lamp and climbed into her bed, pulling the blankets around her. To her surprise, Miss Fairchild followed her, sitting on the edge of her bed. When she bent to plant a kiss on Norah's forehead, Norah held her breath.

After she'd left the room, Norah wiped furiously at the spot Miss Fairchild's lips had touched.

"That was a mistake," Jessica said.

Norah rolled over in bed. "What was?"

"Telling her what you were afraid of," Jessica said. "One day, that will come back to bite you."