Finding Katie: The Diary of Anonymous, A Teenager in Foster Care by Beatrice Sparks

Author:Beatrice Sparks
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Foster home, Child abuse
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-04-29T05:00:00+00:00

A rickety bus picked up Dick, Melba Lacy, Frog, and me. Dick and Frog sat in the back row and were loud and crude. They pretended they didn’t know Melba Lacy and me! We pretended we didn’t know them!

The school, which is a long way away, is as dilapidated as the bus. They both smell of mold and other awful stinky things. The kids were all dressed in cheesy clothes, including me, and I guess I stunk, too. It was humiliating and I wanted like anything to disappear into thin air but…no way.

Melba Lacy is quite a bit younger than I am, but still she acted like she was my new mother. She took me into the principal’s office and introduced me, then scurried off to her class telling me she would meet me at the bus stop after school, in case our paths didn’t cross before that.

The principal, Mrs. Pulsifer, hardly looked up at me she was so busy shuffling papers, finally she found the packet the people who had taken me from the Salvation Army had put together from my lies.

Without even looking up, Mrs. Pulsifer asked me if I was doing better with my “memory retention,” then she explained “retention” as though I was a four-year-old. I wanted to spit in her face. Not really! But I felt so boxed in and at the same time shut out that my mind was whirling around like a blender.

Seeing how confused I was, Mrs. Pulsifer sat me at a little desk in the corner of her room and gave me a page of questions to answer. They were third-grade questions and I wanted to jump up and run away, but to where…?

I reminded myself of selfless Melba Lacy and slowly the stress started running out of my pores like water dripping from a hose. Soon, I hoped, I’d find out more about her past. But not mine! I didn’t want anyone to know about mine!

I finished Mrs. Pulsifer’s question sheet in about two minutes, and she gave me a cold slice of a smile and handed me a sheet with fourth-grade questions.

I zipped that off and the next two, probably low fifth and sixth grade. Then I got worried. I couldn’t let Mrs. Pulsifer, or anyone else, know that I’d always gone to the best schools money could buy, and had, as far back as I could remember, tutors and specialists in every subject.

At the seventh-grade level I began to make a number of mistakes on purpose, and chew on my pencil like Melba Lacy did when she was trying to do her lessons at home.

Mrs. Pulsifer asked me if I remembered my grade and I stammered and said, “No.” The lies were eating me up inside but I couldn’t conceive of any possible way to change the situation I’d created for myself.

“Would you like to try seventh grade?” Mrs. Pulsifer asked.

“Could I try eighth or ninth?” I asked, hardly daring to breathe.

“Hmmm…maybe eighth,” Mrs. Pulsifer said as though she were talking to herself.

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