My name is Lena Whitaker, and for most of my life, I belonged nowhere. By the time I was 8 years old, I had already lived in more foster homes than I could remember clearly. Some blurred together in my mind: different kitchens, different rules, different faces leaning down to tell me what not to touch.
I learned early that permanence was a myth adults liked to sell children, right up there with “everything happens for a reason.”
If you’re moved often enough, you stop unpacking. You learn how to keep your most important things in one bag. You learn not to cry when a social worker smiles too brightly and says, “This one will be different.” You learn not to ask questions, because answers don’t stick around anyway.
By the time I was placed at Havenridge Children’s Home, I had already decided on one personal rule that mattered more than any posted on the walls. Don’t get attached. The staff called Havenridge a “long-term placement facility,” which was just a nicer way of saying it was where kids went when no one else wanted them.
Older kids. Complicated kids. Kids with too much history.
I was eight. Angry. Quiet.
Already tired. That’s where I met Elliot. He was nine, thin as a reed, with dark hair that refused to lie flat and eyes that missed very little.
He used a wheelchair, which made adults speak about him in strange tones: too careful, too loud, or not to him at all. The other kids weren’t mean, exactly. They just didn’t know what to do with him.
They waved from across the room and then ran off to play games he couldn’t join. They talked over his head. They acted like kindness was something you tossed at him from a distance.
One afternoon during free time, I dropped onto the floor near the big front window with my library book. Elliot was parked beside it, watching the yard like it was a television show only he could see. “If you’re going to guard the window,” I said without looking up, “you have to share the view.”
He turned toward me slowly, one eyebrow lifting.
“You’re new,” he said. “More like returned,” I replied. “I’m Lena.”
He nodded once.
“Elliot.”
That was it. That was the beginning. Growing up in the same orphanage means you see every version of someone.
We saw each other angry and broken, quiet and hopeful, exhausted and pretending not to care when prospective adoptive parents toured the halls. We learned quickly who those couples were looking for: small kids, easy kids, kids who smiled on command. Not the girl with “multiple failed placements” stamped across her file.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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