I’m Claire, twenty-eight years old, and I know the foster system not as a concept or a headline, but as a smell, a sound, a rhythm of living that never quite leaves your bones. By the time I was eight, I had lived in more homes than I could remember clearly. Some were loud, some were quiet, some tried too hard to be kind, others barely tried at all. You learn early, in that kind of life, how not to get attached. You memorize rules quickly. You keep your bag half-packed without realizing it.

Adults like to call kids like me “resilient,” because it makes the story easier to swallow. But resilience, most of the time, is just learning how to expect nothing so you’re not crushed when nothing arrives. It’s learning to smile politely when someone says, “This time will be different,” while already knowing how it ends. I learned how to read moods faster than books, how to disappear into corners, how to become agreeable without becoming known. Then one year, in one group home that smelled like disinfectant and burnt toast, I met Noah. He was nine, a year older than me, sitting by the window in a wheelchair that seemed to make everyone uncomfortable.