Chapter 2 Chapter 2

HAVEN POV

My jaw clenched after reading his letter, and I tucked my hands beneath my thighs, trapping them between my legs and the seat of my chair, so no one could see how much they shook.

I blinked back the tears that shimmered in my eyes, trying to remind myself that it was nothing personal. It was nothing against me. He didn’t even know me, or anything about me.

He was just a kid, just a young boy, who obviously cared a lot about making sure he did well in school. He was just trying to be honest, trying to set the tone for what our communication would be. Or, I guess,

wouldn’t be

, in the future.

His delivery may have been a little harsh, a little blunt, but then again, he was only 12. He didn’t know me. He couldn’t possibly have known how his words would affect me, how deep they would cut.

I shouldn’t have let his words bother me. He didn’t know I was an orphan. He didn’t know someone left me at the fire station when I was a baby, wrapped in a deep purple blanket decorated with the phases of the moon, and my name, Haven Kenway, embroidered on one corner.

He didn’t know the social workers searched for any records of anyone with the last name Kenway having given birth in any nearby town, and that they found nothing. He didn’t know I had spent my life being moved from home to home to home. He didn’t know I was with my ninth family in the same number of years.

Again, it shouldn’t have bothered me. Because I was finally in a home where I felt comfortable and safe, where I actually felt the beginning of a connection to the people who were fostering me.

When I was a baby, they moved me early. I was what they called “high needs.” I constantly needed to be held, and hated to be left alone in any room, ever. I guess it was exhausting for my first family, because they moved me before I was even a year old.

The next family lasted longer, almost until I was two, before they decided I was too old, and they only wanted to foster babies. And after I turned two, it had been one home every year. Until it wasn’t.

My foster parents, Jack and Shirley Franklin, didn’t have any other kids in their home. Well, not anymore, at least. Their children were all grown up and moved out, so they wanted to open up their home to a child in need. A child like me.

I’d been keeping my fingers crossed that this placement would last longer than the rest. It had already been almost a year since I moved there, when I was eight.

Jack and Shirley had treated me with nothing but kindness. They bought me what I needed when I needed it, and even got me surprise gifts when there wasn’t any reason for them. They showed up for every school event, and Shirley picked me up from school in her air-conditioned car every day.

They even enrolled me in dance lessons, something I had been wanting to try since I was four years old and caught a snippet of someone dancing ballet on TV. Jack and Shirley even told me I could call them Mom and Dad, too, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that yet.

My hands were finally back to normal and not trembling from my emotions, so I removed them from beneath my legs, and scanned the letter one more time, checking the address on the envelope so I could write the correct address on mine.

He said he didn’t want to continue to write to each other, but, just like him, my teacher was giving us a grade for this pen pal assignment. So I, of course, had to write him back.

I took a deep breath, calming my emotions and forcing the tears down. I was Haven Kenway, and I would not let some stupid, twelve-year-old boy get to me.

I grabbed my favorite pencil — one of the good ones, the kind with the type of eraser that didn’t leave annoying streaks on the paper — and I sharpened it with my handheld sharpener until it was as pointy as possible. My pencils always had to be sharp. I couldn’t stand dull pencils. I then took out a piece of my nice, crisp, white paper with perfect blue lines, and wrote back to my pen pal who didn’t want me.