Shadow Girl (18 page)

He’s gone. And even though I’m a foster kid, somehow
– because I can eat and sleep and go to school and live in a warm house with people who don’t drink or fight like we do, who work or go to school like people are supposed to – he’s convinced himself that that’s enough for me, that it’s better than the life I had with him
.

Maybe it’s because he never had enough of those things himself. And other needs don’t count. Especially if you’re poor. Especially if you’re an alcoholic
.

An alcoholic
.

Jules had never been able to admit that to herself before. But she’d always known.

Because he’s an alcoholic, all his money and time and all of himself go into that. There’s no room for anything else. Anyone else. Loving him doesn’t seem to matter
.

If I hurt myself, jump off a bridge, stand in front of a truck, or swallow some garbage, I’d fall off the face of the earth. No one cares enough to notice me doing it. Forget
about why. And, in the end, there isn’t anyone who cares enough to be sad once I’m gone
.

Her thoughts went round and round in a dark hard groove. Eventually, she’d get stuck in it and never get out.

No
.

On Monday, Jules went back to the Six Points Plaza, walked into Zellers, and headed to the toy department. She made room for herself at the book display and started to read.

It wasn’t long before Mrs. Adamson came over to speak to her and back into her life.

T
he name Sophie means “wisdom.” Jules looked it up.

Wisdom came into her life in the form of a woman with X-ray vision, a superhero, with superpowers nobody ever talked about.

Jules spent Christmas with the Adamsons. Soon she began visiting regularly, staying overnight and even for entire weekends. Being in their home was awkward and strange at first. But being with the Adamsons wasn’t like staying at the Chapmans’. The minute she walked through their door, Jules knew that.

One night in the middle of January, Sophie – she’d told Jules to call her and Frank by their first names – asked Jules to come over for dinner. When she arrived, Sophie told her that Katie, Jeff, and John were at their grandma’s.

What’s wrong? What have I done?

Jules could barely eat during dinner.

“I guess you’re wondering what’s up?” Frank said when they were on dessert.

Jules was too nervous to answer him.

“We’ve talked about it with the kids, and … we’d love it if … we know it’s not an easy decision.…” Sophie stammered.

“Sophie,” Frank said softly. “Shall I?”

Sophie shook her head with a dermined “no.”

“I don’t know what foster care’s like, Jules,” Sophie said. “But I lost my mom when I was seven. Never had a father to speak of. I was put in a home in England, where I was born, then shipped off to Canada when I was eight. I was adopted and sent to a farm. I know what it’s like …” Sophie looked as if she was struggling not to cry “… when parents are gone, to be sent away when you’re just a child. But most of all, I know what it’s like to feel as if nobody wants you.” She stopped.

Jules was shaken by the look on Sophie’s face.

“That’s why, Jules,” Frank said, “we wanted to ask you – to make sure it’s what you want – if Sophie and I could become your foster parents?”

There it is. There it is
.

“It’ll take time to process the paperwork. But the most important thing is, we need to know you
want
to be here, with us,” Frank said.

Sophie was smiling now. “If the kids had their way, you’d be here tomorrow.”

“I can’t think of any other twelve-year-old girl in the whole of Toronto we’d rather have as part of our family.” Those last words came so easily to Frank.

“Will you think about it?” Sophie asked.

Jules was secretly glad the Adamsons wanted her to take her time making a decision. The life she’d imagined for herself with her father was over, smashed into a million pieces, but she wanted Suzanne to keep looking for him. She needed to find him, to know why he didn’t want her.

There was another reason, though, and it was connected to the first.

Maybe the Adamsons will get rid of me, too. People don’t ignore a child completely or throw them away if that child is really good or worth anything
.

Jules never said those exact words to Sophie, but in one way or another, Jules tried to make her understand that there had to be something wrong with her.

Jules’s true self had been disappearing, bleeding out of her for so long that she didn’t know who she was anymore.

“I wish there was a mirror,” Sophie said one day, “like the one in
Snow White
. And you could ask it, ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?’ And it would tell you who was fair all right – but on the inside. And I’d hold that mirror up to you, and there it would be, the radiant soul of Jules Doherty. For you to see with your own eyes.”

And then they both laughed. Jules thought maybe Sophie said it as a joke, but Sophie said things like that to her own kids all the time.

Jules never forgot.

T
he Adamson house wasn’t far from where Jules and her dad used to live. Sometimes she’d go and look at the back of her old place, from the park. Another family lived there now.

She thought about how she’d always been cold and hungry when she and her dad lived there. Over the years, most places they’d lived in had been cold and ugly.

Jules knew that being poor made life cold and ugly. It made people that way, too – but not always. The Adamsons were poor and their house might look ugly to some, but nothing else about them was like that. Nothing.

When she was with them, Jules felt happy. Over time, she could say that to herself without feeling like she was betraying her father.

A permanent bed was set up for her in Katie’s room, when she moved in at Easter. She never understood why Katie had become attached to her so quickly, following her around everywhere. And why Katie, a child herself, was always worried about Jules.

Jules played with Katie and the twins to her heart’s content. As Gypsies, knights, kings and queens, secret agents, superheroes, army generals, spies, villains, magicians, wizards and sorcerers, explorers, dragon slayers, and astronauts, they went on wild adventures in the park nearby or around the house on rainy days – “forever-together,” as Katie said. They treated Jules as the oldest, the one to look up to.

Unbelievable
.

And, even then, Jules couldn’t prevent some of the feelings that rose up.

It hurts to see how easy they breathe, in and out, without jagged thoughts. I’ll never be like them. There are cuts and holes in me
.

The hard part was expressing some of her thoughts and feelings to Sophie and Frank. It was difficult to unravel them.

Talking about my old life – about having to leave my dad, my home, what I went through at the Chapmans’ – is all stuck in hurt. But keeping it inside will never do me any good. Holding on to the bad is like holding on to an infection. It ends up hurting more
.

Talking about her father was the hardest thing of all.

Sophie and Frank might think what everybody else does – that he’s scum. Alcoholic scum. I hate the word “alcoholic.” Hate all that it is. Hate my father. Love him
.

S
uzanne is there, in the kitchen
.

Sophie and Frank are, too
.

Why are they all here – on a school day?

But high school’s great. I’m doing okay
.

Those are the thoughts I had. Nothing more.

I should have known. Should have felt a difference inside, in the air I breathe. But I didn’t. I didn’t
.

Suzanne stood up right away. “Tracie called us from Vancouver, Jules. I’m so sorry, but your father …”

Even then I didn’t feel it, didn’t believe it. It wasn’t possible even to say the word. My father couldn’t be dead
.

Tracie told Suzanne they’d gone to Vancouver so that Jules’s dad could find what was left of his family.

Family
.

The next few months went out of memory. If Sophie hadn’t held Jules to the ground, grief would have spun her off the earth.

There was no reason, after that, not to love her. Not to love them all.

“Jewels, jewels, jewels, jewels,” Katie chants as she climbs up and down, over and around me just before we go to bed. She always spells my name that way, even though I tell her it isn’t right
.

She falls asleep with as many of her dolls as she can fit onto her pillow, one human head among the strange and fantastical ones. It makes me smile just to watch her
.

I keep my own doll safe. I’ll care for Maggie always and – one day – give her to my own child. I’ll tell her what she means to me and why I love her so
.

As I lie here in our room, waiting for sleep, I can almost feel my body grow, cell by cell, stretching into the night air. There’s room for me to do that here, enough love to let me come back to the person I was, to fill out into the person I want to be
.

I told Sophie about my nightmare
.

When there’s no light in our lives, Sophie said, we hunger for it – any living thing is the same. It’s what we need, like air to breathe, water to drink
.

I am like any living thing
.

I am not a shadow being
.

I am not a shadow girl
.