PROLOGUE
SERAPHINE
Seventeen years ago
I knew when I woke up this morning that today was going to be different.
Normally I wake up because Laura is shaking the bed below me, tossing and turning, like she’s fighting for sleep even though we should be waking up soon. She never sleeps. It’s the bed shaking that usually gets me up in time before Miss Davenport comes into the room and flicks on the lights. It’s how I’m always the first one out of bed, ready to go, smiling up at her and hoping she’ll notice.
She never seems to. It doesn’t matter how hard I try to be good, to show her I want to please her, Miss Davenport ignores me. I’ve been back and forth out of this orphanage for a long time, and I think every time I come back, she hates me a little more.
But this morning, Laura never woke me up. I was sleeping all the way until the lights flicked on, and I scrambled like the crabs I used to see on the shores near Goa. I almost fell off the bunk bed.
Of course, Miss Davenport didn’t like that. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me, even though I wasn’t the only one just waking up. Still, once I got to the ground, I looked at Laura’s bed beneath me, and she was still sleeping.
“Laura,” I said, pushing on her arm. For a second I thought she could be dead, but she just mumbled and turned over. “Wake up,” I hissed at her.
“Jamillah,” Miss Davenport scolded me. “Leave Laura be. She’s on new medication.”
Almost everyone here is on some kind of pills. Everyone except me. I’m not sure why. I keep hearing the women here at the orphanage talking about us in terms of “bad” and “good” and “abuse” and “trauma.” Sometimes it feels like every other girl gets special treatment. I just get shuffled around. Maybe it’s because I don’t seem to cry like the others do, even though horrible things are done to me every time I leave this place.
I’m only nine years old, but sometimes I think I might be within these walls for the rest of my life, never having a family, never having a place to belong.
“Okay, everyone, get ready for the day,” Miss Davenport said. Then she looked at me. “Jamillah, do me a favor and watch over Laura this morning until she wakes up.”
But breakfast! I wanted to say those words, my stomach growling as it was. But I knew that I was needed and it felt good, almost better than the dry toast with peanut butter we always have.
I nodded at Miss Davenport. “Okay. I will.”
Everyone gave me a pitiful glance for having to keep an eye on Laura. I knew it wasn’t fair that I wasn’t getting breakfast, but I also knew that there aren’t a lot of women working here lately, and if I didn’t do it, no one would.
So while everyone got ready and went off to the mess hall to eat, I sat on the edge of Laura’s bed and waited for her to wake up.
She finally did and looked at me through sleepy eyes. “What time is it?” Laura is thirteen and probably my closest friend here.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Miss Davenport told me to make sure you woke up.”
She rubbed her forehead. “I haven’t slept like that in, like, forever. What kind of pills did they give me?” She looked at me. “You missed breakfast.”
“It’s fine.”
“Jamillah.” Miss Davenport suddenly appeared in the doorway. “Thank you for doing that.”
I exchanged a glance with Laura, surprised. She’d never thanked me before.
“It’s okay,” I told her.
Miss Davenport raised her chin and looked me over. I wished I were a mind reader, because I had no idea what she was thinking. “Laura, get dressed. Jamillah, you too. Something nicer.”
I looked down at my clothes: leggings and a baggy T-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it that had once belonged to another girl. I loved this shirt. One of the few memories I have of my parents is that my mother loved Mickey Mouse too.
“I don’t know if I have anything nicer,” I told her. We don’t have uniforms here; everyone just gets clothes that are donated.
“I’m sure you can find something. Put it on and then go and wait outside my office. Laura, go get dressed and wash up. You can see the nurse in a bit.”
Oh no. Her office? What did I do?
As she left the room, I looked at Laura for answers, expecting to see pity on her face again. “Did I do something wrong?” I asked her.
But she looked impressed.
“What?” I asked.
“Put on something nicer? Go and wait outside her office?” she said, getting dressed. “I don’t think you’re in trouble. I think you might be getting adopted.”
I stared at her for a long time.
We don’t joke about that here.
It’s sacred.
You can’t even think about it or you’ll jinx it.
So I didn’t. I got dressed in the nicest thing I had, which was a striped dress over my leggings, then slipped on my ballerina flats that were a size too small, enough so that you could see the top of my toes making these bumps in them. I slept in braids because Miss Davenport said my hair was too messy for them to handle, so I spat in my hands and smoothed them over my head.
“Good luck,” Laura said to me as I left.
And that’s where I am now, sitting on the chair outside the door to Miss Davenport’s office, swinging my legs in front of me, wondering what’s going on behind that closed door.
Could Laura be right? Could this really be an adoption?
For me?
I don’t dare think about it, so I start biting my nails, even though my last foster mom whacked me across the knuckles with a belt if I did it. At least I know I’m not going into another foster home; they never care about what you wear. One of the older girls told me that they don’t even want you—they just do it because somehow you being in their house makes them more money.
It seems like hours before the door opens, and Miss Davenport looks at me, giving me a small smile. She doesn’t smile often.
“Jamillah?” she says in a nice voice. “We have some people here who would love to meet you.”
My eyes go big.
Could this be true?
I get up and go over to her. For some reason I hold my breath as I step into the room, like I’m afraid to breathe.
There are two people sitting in the chairs across from her desk. Both of them look so different from the usual foster parents. The man has glasses and gray hair at the sides of his head and has a kind smile. The woman is wearing a lovely pink dress, with pearls at her neck and blonde hair pulled back. She’s beautiful.
“Jamillah,” Miss Davenport says, “this is Ludovic and Eloise Dumont. They’re from France. They would like to adopt you.”
My heart suddenly feels too big for my chest.
I’m so happy, so shocked, I immediately burst into tears.
Everything happens so fast, I barely have time to breathe. The whole week feels like I’m in a movie on fast-forward.
One minute I’m in Miss Davenport’s office, meeting my adopted parents for the first time, the next thing I know I’m saying goodbye to Laura and the rest of the girls. I feel so sorry for them that they can’t be adopted, too, that I almost give up my place and tell them to pick someone else instead.
But I don’t. Because I’ve dreamed about this, more than anything. A home, a family. I want to take the girls with me, but I want this too much for myself.