NOTHER FOSTER HOME she did not want to be in. How many now? Five? Six? Ten? She supposed it didn’t really matter.

She listened to the screams coming from the downstairs of the duplex she had called home for the last three weeks. The man and woman downstairs yelling at each other were her foster parents. Which was more than a joke, she thought. It was criminal. They were criminal. They had a string of foster kids through their home and made them pickpocket people and deal drugs.

She had refused the pickpocketing and the drug dealing. So tonight would be her last night here. She had already packed her backpack with her few belongings. There were two other foster kids living in the one bedroom with her. They were both younger and she was loath to leave them here.

She sat them on the bed and said, “I’m going to get you guys help. I’m going to let Social Services know what’s going on here. Okay? They’re going to come and get you out of this place.”

“Can’t you take us with you, Julie?” asked the girl tearfully.

“I wish I could, but I can’t. But I’m going to get you out of here, I promise.”

The boy said, “They won’t believe you.”

“Yes they will. I’ve got proof.”

She gave them each a hug, opened the window, climbed out, wriggled down the drainpipe to the flat roof of the attached carport, worked her way down a support pole, reached the ground, and ran off into the darkness.

She had one thought in mind.

I’m going home.

Home was a duplex even smaller than the one she had just left. She took the subway, then a bus, and then she walked. Along the way she pulled out an envelope, walked up the steps of a large brick government building, and pushed the envelope through the mail slot in the door. It was addressed to the woman who was handling the foster care placement for her and the two other kids back at the duplex. She was a nice lady, she meant well, but she was completely swamped with children no one seemed to want. In the envelope was a photo card with pictures capturing the couple in the middle of abusing their foster kids, engaging in clearly illegal activity, and sitting stoned out on the couch with crack pipes and piles of pills in full view. If that didn’t do the trick, she thought, nothing would.

She reached the house an hour later. She didn’t go in the front door. She did what she always had done when getting home this late. She used a key she kept in her shoe to go in via the back door. She tried to turn on a light, but nothing happened. This did not surprise her. It merely meant that the electricity had been turned off because the utility bill had not been paid. She felt along the walls and used the moonlight coming in through the windows to see well enough to reach her bedroom on the second floor.

Her room was unchanged. It was a dump, but it was her dump. A guitar, sheets of music, books, clothes, magazines were piled everywhere. There was a mattress on the floor that served as her bed, but it wasn’t easily visible under all the other stuff. She rationalized that her parents had not cleaned up her room because they knew she would be back.

They had problems. Many of them.

They would be regarded by most people as pathetic, drugged-out losers.

But they were her parents. They loved her.

And she loved them.

She wanted to take care of them.

At age fourteen, she was often the mom and dad, and her parents were often the kids. They were her responsibility, not the other way around. But that was okay.

They should be asleep by now, she knew. Hopefully not stoned.

Actually things were looking up. Her father was working on a loading dock and had been gainfully employed there for a whole two months. Her mother labored as a waitress in a diner where a two-dollar tip was the exception rather than the norm. It was true that her mom and dad were recovering addicts, but they got up every day and went to work. It was just that the drug problems and the stints in jail had led the city to sometimes deem them unfit to have custody of her.

Hence the banishment to the foster care system.

But not for her. Not anymore. Now she was home.

She fingered the piece of paper in her jacket pocket. It was a note from her mom. It had been sent to her school and left at the office. Her parents had plans to move away from the area and start over afresh. And they, of course, wanted their only child to go with them. Julie hadn’t been this excited in a long time.

She went to their bedroom across the hall to check on them, but it was empty. Their bed was like hers, simply a mattress on the floor. But the room wasn’t messy. Her mother had tidied up. Clothes were put away, albeit in baskets. They had no dressers or armoires. She sat on the bed and removed a photo of the three of them that was hanging on the wall. She couldn’t see it that well in the dark, but she knew exactly who was in it.

Her mother was tall and thin, her father shorter and even skinnier. They looked unhealthy and they were. Years of drug abuse had left permanent scars, chronic problems, lives that would be significantly shortened. Yet they had always been kind to her. Never abused her. Looked out for her when they could. Fed her, kept her warm and safe, again when they could. They never brought problems back to the house. The abuses they had committed were done away from here. She appreciated that. And every time she had gone into foster care they had worked hard to get her back.

She put the photo back on the wall and pulled out the note from her mom that had been sent to her school. She read it again. The instructions were clear. She was excited. This might be the start of something great. Just the three of them in a new life away from here. The only thing that bothered her was the contingency plan her mom had put in the note, if for some reason they didn’t hook up with their daughter. There had also been cash along with the note. The money was for the contingency plan. Well, there was no reason that her parents wouldn’t be able to meet up with her. She assumed that they would be leaving in the morning.

She started to the door to return to her room and pack up her belongings that she hadn’t taken to the foster care home.

And then she stopped.

There were noises, which didn’t completely surprise her, since her parents sometimes kept odd hours. They must just be getting home.

The next sound she heard erased all other thoughts she had.

It was a man’s voice. Not her father’s.

It was raised. Angry. It was asking her father what he knew. How much he had been told.

She heard her father whimpering, as though he were hurt.

Then Julie heard her mother’s frantic voice. Asking the person to leave them alone.

Julie crept down the stairs, her body shaking.

She had no cell phone or else she would have called the police. There was no landline phone in the house. Her parents couldn’t afford it.

When she heard the gunshot she froze and then started running down the stairs. When she reached the lower level she saw her father slumped back against the wall in the darkness. A man held a gun pointed at him. There was a dark patch on her father’s chest growing bigger. His face was ashen. He fell to the floor, his arms whipsawing around and knocking over a lamp.

The man with the gun turned and saw her. He pointed the pistol at her.

“No!” her mother shrieked. “She doesn’t know anything.”

Though barely a hundred pounds, she hit the man in the back of the legs and he collapsed to the floor in pain, his gun spinning out of reach.

“Run, honey, run!” screamed her mother.

“Mom!” She called back. “Mom, what is—”

Her mother screamed again, “Run! Now!”

She turned and ran back up the stairs even as the man spun around and landed a crushing blow to the top of her mother’s head.

She reached her room, grabbed her backpack, sprinted to the window, and grabbed hold of a trellis of metal over which someone long ago had planted ivy. She climbed down so quickly that she lost her grip and fell the last six feet. She got up, slung her backpack across her shoulders, and ran off.

A few seconds later a second shot came from the house.

When the gunman ran outside, the teenager was already out of sight.

But he stopped, listened. The sounds of footfalls reached him. He set out west, moving deliberately.