The first time I realized I was a dollar sign and not a son, there was wrapping paper everywhere.

Red and gold paper glittered across the living room of a small, over-decorated house in a suburb just outside Los Angeles. The TV in the corner was playing one of those never-ending holiday specials from a channel in New York, tiny skaters looping figure eights around a Christmas tree I’d only ever seen on the screen. Fake snow flocked the plastic tree in front of our own window, even though outside it was just Southern California sunshine and dry grass.

I stood in the shadow between the kitchen and the living room, wearing the same faded hoodie I wore every day after school. The air smelled like cinnamon candles and reheated lasagna. A “Home for the Holidays” sign from Target hung crooked over the TV.

“Hey kids, guess what? That was… something,” Miss Gibson said brightly, clapping her hands like a TV host cueing the audience. “I’ve got presents!”

My foster brother Derek practically levitated off the couch. He was sixteen, tall, and always dressed like some TikTok sneaker influencer. My foster sister Erica, fifteen, tossed her hair and slid off the armchair, her iPhone still in her hand, screen glowing with Instagram notifications.

I stayed where I was, half-hidden. I’d learned a long time ago that if you didn’t expect anything, it hurt less.

Miss Gibson swept into the room in a cloud of perfume, a big glossy shopping bag on her arm. Her blond hair was twisted into a perfect bun. Her nails were that expensive neutral color that only rich YouTube moms and Real Housewives seemed to have.

This wasn’t her house. The county paid the mortgage.

But it was hers in all the ways that mattered to her.

The bag thumped onto the coffee table.

“This,” she sang, drawing out the word, “is for you.”

She handed a box to Erica. White. Rigid. Branded ribbon.

Erica’s eyes widened. “Oh my god, Mom, no, tell me now—tell me no—”

She ripped the lid off like a kid in a commercial.

“Oh my God, you got me a Gucci purse,” she squealed, the word stretching out into multiple syllables. “I’m literally going to die. Kayla is going to be so jealous.”

She pressed the bag to her chest like it was a living thing.

Behind her, the secondhand couch sagged.

Miss Gibson beamed. “You deserve it, baby.”

She turned. “And Derek, this is you. You didn’t have to,” she added to herself mock-sweetly, as if she was both giver and grateful receiver.

Derek tugged the tissue paper aside and froze.

“Oh my God. Are these—”

“Yep.” She winked. “They’re yours.”

He lifted the sneakers with reverence. The logo on the side was unmistakable, even to me: Dior. White leather, gray pattern, the kind of shoes you see in online ads you scroll past because you know that price tag could pay someone’s rent for a month.

“Oh my gosh, these are perfect,” he breathed. “They’re just my size. Bro, those are so fresh,” he added to nobody and everybody.

If my name ever crossed his mind, he didn’t show it.

“And this,” Miss Gibson said, milking the moment, “is for Erica.”

Erica lifted another box, smaller this time, black with white letters.

She didn’t even wait to open it before she squealed. “I love Chanel. Thank you so much, Mom.”

Perfume. Designer. A glass bottle she’d put on her shelf and photograph for Instagram later.

Miss Gibson’s smile became something triumphant, like she’d just won a contest only she knew the rules for.

“And last but not least…” She drew the words out, letting the tension build. “The final gift goes to—”

My heart stuttered.

She lifted a big, awkwardly wrapped box.

“Derek,” she finished, beaming. “This one is for Derek.”

“Oh honey,” she cooed as she passed it into his arms, “thank you, Mom,” he echoed, already tugging at the tape.

He peeled back the flaps and gasped.

“A PS5,” he said, voice cracking with joy. “Oh my gosh. I’m gonna set this up right now.”

“Hey, Andrew, you wanna come play with me?” he added over his shoulder, generous because his own cup was overflowing.

For a tiny, stupid second, hope fluttered in my chest. Maybe this was the part where she pulled out a small box. A book. Even socks. Something. Anything that said, I see you.

I stepped forward. “Yeah, I would—”

“No.” Miss Gibson’s voice sliced through the room. She didn’t even look at me. “I need him to help me clean up down here,” she said to Derek. Then, louder, “So why don’t you guys go put your gifts away, how about that?”

They didn’t argue.

“Okay, Mom,” Erica chimed.

“Yeah, okay. Thank you, thank you,” Derek said, balancing his PS5 and Dior and Gucci like trophies as they headed down the hallway.

“Hey,” he said to Erica. “Don’t wait to play the game without me,” his voice echoing as their bedroom doors shut.

Silence stretched between me and Miss Gibson.

The fake tree lights blinked.

Wrapping paper crinkled under my socked feet.

“Hey, Mom—” I started.

Her head whipped toward me.

“What did I tell you about calling me Mom?” she snapped. Her smile evaporated so fast it was like it had never been there. “You can call me Miss Gibson. Right?”

I swallowed. The word Mom shrank to a pebble in my mouth.

“I’m sorry, Miss… Miss Gibson,” I muttered, tugging my hoodie sleeves over my hands. “I just… I just—”

“Spit it out,” she said, already reaching for her phone on the coffee table as if she’d grown bored of me.

“Why didn’t… why didn’t you get me any presents?”

The way she looked at me then made me feel like I’d just asked for a kidney.

“Like I’ve said a million times before,” she sighed, rolling her eyes, “fostering you is a business for me, Andrew. This is not something I’m going to be doing long term. Buying a gift for you too means I’m losing money. Do you understand?”

The words landed with mechanical precision.

Business. Money. Losing.

They didn’t sting in the way you’d expect, like a slap.

They sank. Heavy. Final.

“Yeah,” I whispered. My throat burned. “I understand.”

“Good. I have to take this,” she said as her phone buzzed. “Can you just finish this without me?” She waved vaguely at the wrapping paper mess and stepped into the hallway, her voice switching to sweet. “Hi! Merry Christmas, how are you?”

I sank to my knees and started gathering trash.

Outside, someone’s sprinkler sputtered to life, no snow in sight.

Inside, the smell of Chanel clung to the air.

If you’d asked me that night what I wanted most in the world, I wouldn’t have said shoes. Or game consoles. Or designer bags.

I would have said: a mother who didn’t see me as a line item on an income statement.

My name is Andrew Taylor. I turned sixteen in a foster house in Southern California, in a neighborhood where every house looked like it came from the same blueprint: stucco, tidy lawn, two-car garage filled with things instead of cars.

By the time Miss Gibson signed my placement paperwork, I’d bounced through six different homes between age seven and fifteen. Los Angeles County Child Protective Services called it “temporary placements.” Social workers wrote “adjustment difficulties” in my file. Foster parents said things like, “He’s just a lot” when they closed their doors behind me.

Nobody ever said: We failed him first. All of us.

I never met my father.

My mother gave me up when I was a baby.

The only proof I had that she existed at all was a small, worn, silver pendant—an old-fashioned compass on a chain, the kind you might see in a vintage shop. The back had a tiny engraved word: Always.

A nurse had tucked it into my blanket at the county-run group home when I was two and a half, explaining to the overwhelmed intake worker that “it came with him.”

“It might be from his mom,” she’d said softly, resting a hand on my tiny shoulder. “We should keep it with him.”

I didn’t know any of that then, of course. I only knew that as I got older, I never took it off. It sat against my chest like a promise someone else had broken but I still wanted to believe in.

I’d asked about my mother once, when I was about eight. I’d been staying with a foster family in Lancaster, in a house that backed up to the desert, wind whistling through the chain-link fence at night. The foster dad had been watching football, a beer sweating on the coffee table.

“Do you know her name?” I asked.

“Who?” he said, eyes never leaving the screen.

“My mom,” I said.

He shrugged. “Ask your social worker, kid.”

So I did. The next visit, I stared at the woman in the sensible shoes and government-issue tablet and asked, “Do you know my mom’s name?”

She’d scrolled through my file, the stylus tapping against the glass like it was impatient too.

“Taylor, Andrew,” she murmured. “Birth mother: Taylor, Emily. No current address. Parental rights terminated when you were a year old.”

Terminated.

Like a contract.

Like a lease.

“Why?” I asked.

She was already moving on to the next box on her form, next checkbox, next life.

“Sometimes parents just aren’t able to provide safe care,” she said. “The important thing is you’re in a safe home now. How are things going with the Petersons?”

“Fine,” I lied.

Because that was what made life easier for everyone.

With Miss Gibson, I learned the business of being foster.

She lived in a one-story house in a city you’d recognize from drone shots on reality TV shows—strip malls, palm trees, sun-bleached billboards along the freeway. She had two kids of her own, Derek and Erica, both loud and bright and almost always a step ahead of whatever trouble they were in.

She also had a revolving door of “placements.”

Babies. Toddlers. Preteens. Teenagers like me.

The social workers saw the tidy kitchen, the posted emergency numbers on the fridge, the chore chart on the wall. They saw her attendance at county trainings, the way she said the right phrases: “trauma-informed,” “consistent routines,” “support network.”

What they didn’t see was the ledger she kept in her head.

How much the county paid per month for a standard placement.

How much extra she’d receive for “higher needs.”

How much food she could buy with EBT. How much she could skimp on clothes by taking us to clearance racks and thrift stores.

Her two kids got brands. The rest of us got Walmart.

Not that I cared about logos. I cared about what they represented: who was “worth” investing in. Who was temporary. Who was permanent.

At school, it all showed.

We went to a public high school in the Valley, the kind that had metal detectors installed after one too many fights, but still tried to push a “college-ready” message on banners in the hallways.

I didn’t talk much. I listened.

The day before Thanksgiving break, the Los Angeles air was crisp in the way it sometimes gets in November, a hint of cold sliding in under the usual heat. Kids filled the halls in hoodies and sneakers, some carrying turkeys in foil pans for the canned-food drive photo op.

Derek slapped a hand on my shoulder as we walked across the courtyard toward the exit.

“Dude, I cannot wait for you to spend Thanksgiving with us,” he said, cutting through a group of freshmen who scattered at the sight of his confident stride. “We have the best turkey. And just wait till you try the stuffing. Mom kills it every year.”

The word Mom landed oddly in my chest. I swallowed it.

“Yeah,” I said, forcing a smile. “It’ll be my first time really doing, like, an actual Thanksgiving.”

“You serious?” He stopped walking. “Like, you’ve never had a big dinner?”

“Not like the ones on TV,” I said. “Sometimes group homes do something, but… it’s not the same.”

“Bro, this year’s gonna be different,” he said, clapping my shoulder again. “We’ll all eat till we pass out, watch football, then play PS5. It’s gonna be epic.”

Before I could answer, a guy in a varsity jacket stepped in front of us, eyebrows lifting as he looked down at Derek’s feet.

“Yo,” he said, squinting. “Your shoes are dope. Are those Dior?”

Derek grinned. “Yeah, they are. Thanks, man. My mom just bought ’em for me.”

“Oh, I’m so jelly,” the guy said. “I wish I had designer shoes. These are so cool, right?” he added, turning to his friend.

His friend laughed. “Yeah. Fresh.”

Then his gaze slid to my sneakers.

What he saw: scuffed black canvas, brand name half-faded, soles starting to peel at the edges.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, heat pricking at my skin.

“What would you know about clothes?” he snorted. “You look like you shop at Walmart.”

A couple of people nearby snickered.

He squinted harder. “Oh wait a second. I think he actually did.”

My face burned. I wanted to disappear.

“Guys, knock it off,” Derek said quickly. “Okay? For real.”

“We were just being honest,” varsity boy said, laughing as he walked away.

“Yeah,” his friend echoed. “Honesty. Pass it on.”

They high-fived.

I looked at Derek.

He looked back, guilt flickering across his face.

“I’ll catch you later,” I muttered, and turned away.

The mall that weekend was one of those huge American temples to consumerism, all glass railings and escalators and scented air. Christmas music played on a loop even though it was still November. Santa posed with toddlers near a fake North Pole. A billboard for a streaming movie hovered over the food court, some big-city holiday romance I knew I’d never watch.

Derek and Erica dragged me to a designer store where the cheapest T-shirt cost more than everything in my closet combined.

“Come on,” Erica said, tugging at my sleeve as a sales associate in a suit eyed my clothes. “Just try something on. It’ll be fun.”

“I can’t afford anything here,” I whispered.

“Who cares?” Derek said. “Does it hurt to try?”

He grabbed a jacket from a display. Black, sleek, the brand stitched subtly on the sleeve. He shoved it into my hands.

“Put it on,” he said. “You’re gonna look fire.”

I hesitated. The fabric felt like it belonged to a different world than my Walmart hoodie.

“Try it,” Erica urged, already pulling out her phone. “I’ll take a pic. It’ll be like a mini photoshoot.”

I sighed and slipped it on.

For a second, when I turned toward the mirror, I didn’t recognize myself.

The guy looking back at me didn’t look like a foster kid who kept his belongings in a trash bag. He looked like someone who had a place. A style. A life that matched the polished marble under his feet.

“Dude,” Derek said, stepping back. “That looks so cool.”

“I told you,” Erica said. “Okay, turn around. I’m getting a picture. Look at the camera. Yes, like that.”

There was something intoxicating about being seen that way, like I belonged in the frame.

Then reality crashed back.

“I love it,” I said quietly. “But there’s no way I can buy it. Or anything in this store.”

“Hey,” Derek said suddenly. “It’s not a big deal. I have that gift card from Grandma. I wasn’t sure what to spend it on, but—”

He reached into his wallet.

“That gift card is for you, Derek,” Miss Gibson’s voice cut through the space like a knife. She appeared beside us, her shopping bags swinging. “Not for Andrew.”

“He looks so good in it, Mom,” Derek said. “We have to get it for him.”

“Andrew is on a strict budget,” she said sharply. “Do you understand?”

The sales associate pretended not to listen, but his eyes flicked between us, assessing.

“Mom, it’s not even that expensive,” Erica said. “It’s like a hundred bucks.”

“It’s not about the price,” Miss Gibson snapped. “It’s about the principle. We’re not here to play dress-up with someone else’s money.”

“It’s okay,” I said quickly, shrugging out of the jacket as if it burned. “I didn’t really want it anyway.”

“That’s not true,” Derek muttered.

“I’m gonna wait outside,” I said, handing the jacket back to the associate. “You guys keep shopping. It’s cool.”

I stepped out into the mall hallway, the noise rushing over me—holiday songs, kids whining, parents scolding, the blip of card readers and the rustle of shopping bags. I found an empty bench and sat.

I pulled my compass pendant out from under my shirt and traced the worn edges with my thumb.

For a second, I let myself imagine an entirely different day. One where my mom met me at the mall, handed me a jacket and said, “Just try it. Let’s make you look like the person you’re becoming, not the person they think you are.”

Then the doors swung open and someone walked past me carrying branded bags. The fantasy evaporated.

On Thanksgiving afternoon, the Gibson house smelled like roasted turkey and candied yams. On the TV, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade ended and NFL pre-game commentary started, commentators in suits talking about quarterbacks and stats.

The table in the dining room was set with the good stuff: chargers, cloth napkins, candles. A centerpiece with fake pumpkins and glittery leaves sat in the middle like a magazine spread.

“Andrew!” Miss Gibson called. “Dinner!”

I wiped my hands on a dish towel and stepped out of the kitchen. I’d been helping for hours—peeling potatoes, washing dishes, setting out extra chairs.

Derek and Erica were already seated at the table, plates piled high, Thanksgiving food mountains.

“Thank you for this food,” Miss Gibson said quickly, bowing her head. “Thank you for the blessings of family and… stability. Amen.”

“Amen,” Derek echoed.

“Amen,” Erica mumbled around a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

They started eating before I’d even sat down.

I edged toward an open chair at the end of the table.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Miss Gibson’s voice sharpened.

I froze. “Sitting down to eat?”

“Seconds are for family,” she said, as if I’d tried to steal dessert. “You get your plate after everyone else is done. You know that.”

“That’s not seconds,” I said. “I haven’t gone through the line at all.”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “Stop arguing.”

My stomach twisted. The smell of turkey that had made my mouth water while I was basting it now made me feel sick.

“You guys enjoy,” I said, backing away. “I’m… I’m not that hungry anymore.”

I took my empty plate into the kitchen and placed it in the sink.

“Don’t forget to do the dishes after everyone’s finished,” she called.

“I know,” I said.

In the backyard, the late-afternoon sun turned the sky over Los Angeles a soft, hazy orange. The neighbor’s flag hung limp, no breeze.

I slid the back door open and stepped outside. The laughter from inside muted as the door shut behind me.

I sat on the low brick wall and pulled my knees up to my chest.

The smell of turkey still reached me.

It didn’t smell like home.

I didn’t actually know what “home” smelled like.

“You’re missing the best part, you know,” Derek’s voice said softly a few minutes later.

I looked up.

He stood in the doorway, a plate in one hand, a fork in the other, the TV’s glow casting a rectangle of light behind him.

“You’ll get cold,” he said, stepping out, letting the door close. It was California, so “cold” was a relative term, but he was still in short sleeves.

“I’m fine,” I said.

He sat beside me, balancing his plate on his knee.

“She’s out of line,” he said quietly. “With the whole ‘family only’ thing. I mean… you’ve been here longer than half the kids that came through. You are family.”

My throat tightened.

“Not to her,” I said.

He picked at his cranberry sauce.

“Look,” he tried, “I’m really sorry about everything. The presents. The clothes. The… food situation. It sucks.”

“It’s not about that,” I said, staring at my sneakers.

“Then what is it?” he asked. “Because if you tell me, maybe I can—”

I laughed without humor. “What? Convince your mom to treat me like a person instead of income? Good luck.”

“She listens to me sometimes,” he said weakly.

“Not about this,” I said. “It’s not just about your mom, anyway.”

“What is it about?” he asked. “Talk to me, man. I’m your… I’m your friend, right?”

The word stuck in his mouth like he wasn’t sure if he’d earned it.

I turned my head and looked at him.

“How hard do you think it is,” I said, “to watch you and Erica with your mom every day? To see the way she looks at you? The way she hugs you? The way she buys you stuff and posts about you online like you’re the best thing that ever happened to her?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it again.

“I wish I could experience that,” I said. “Even just once. Just once, have someone look at me like I’m not a temporary paycheck. Like I’m… theirs.”

“I can’t imagine how hard that is,” he said quietly.

“I can’t say I don’t dislike you sometimes,” I admitted. “When you complain about your mom being strict. When you get annoyed that she wants to take pictures. But it’s not really about you. It just… really hurts.”

The words felt raw, pulled straight from a place I usually kept locked.

“My mom gave me up after I was born,” I said. “I’ve been bouncing around different homes ever since. Nobody’s ever… kept me. The only thing I have from her is this.”

I pulled the pendant out and opened my fist so he could see the small, scratched compass.

“No memories. No pictures. Just this.”

He stared at it like it was a relic.

“So when you ask if I care about presents or shoes?” I continued. “I don’t. Not really. All I care about is having a family. Because family is the greatest gift of all. And I don’t have that.”

He swallowed.

“Bro,” he said, his voice rough. “That’s… heavy.”

“Sorry,” I said, suddenly embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to dump on you.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I’m the one who should be sorry. For a lot.”

He stared at my pendant again, like he was memorizing it.

“Hey, dessert’s ready!” Miss Gibson yelled from inside, voice artificially bright. “Come on, you two. The pie is not going to eat itself.”

Derek hesitated.

“You uh… you coming?” he asked.

“Nah,” I said. “Go enjoy it with your family. I don’t want to ruin your Thanksgiving.”

“Andrew,” he said.

“It’s fine,” I said, sliding off the wall. “I’ve got dishes to do anyway.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

Then he went inside.

I heard laughter when the door shut.

I stared at my reflection in the glass for a second.

It looked like a stranger’s.

The thing about living with someone who treats fostering like a business is that you start counting days the way they do.

Days until the next check clears.

Days until your “review.”

Days until the placement ends.

Sometimes you know when you’re leaving. Sometimes you don’t.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, I sat in the living room, carefully taping a cardboard box shut. It was full of textbooks and clothes and the few things I owned that could be called mine, including a sketchbook I never let anyone see.

“Andrew,” a voice said quietly from the hallway.

I turned.

Derek and Erica stood there. Erica had her arms wrapped around herself like she was cold. Derek held something behind his back.

“Can you… come sit down for a sec?” Derek asked.

“I really have to finish this,” I said. “I don’t want to get in trouble if I’m not packed when Miss Thompson gets here.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Derek said. “This is more important. Please.”

The urgency in his voice made me set down the tape.

“What’s up?” I asked, dropping onto the couch.

They sat across from me, fidgeting like they’d stolen something.

“So…” Derek started.

“Just say it,” Erica hissed.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “We were talking. Me and Erica. And we decided to get you an early Christmas present.”

I stared. “What? Why?”

“Because we wanted to,” Erica said.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said. “Seriously. You already—”

“Just open it,” Derek said, thrusting a small rectangular box toward me.

My fingers trembled as I peeled back the paper.

Inside was a kit with a sleek logo on the front.

“Ancestry DNA?” I read aloud. “You guys got me a DNA test?”

“We thought it might be nice for you to… you know, learn more about yourself,” Derek said. “Your family history. Maybe you’ll find some distant cousins out there or something.”

“Or a grandma,” Erica added. “Or… someone.”

I swallowed hard.

“Wow,” I whispered. “This is… this is so cool. How does it work?”

“You just spit in the tube,” Derek said. “Fill it up to the line. Then we send it in.”

“Is this… allowed?” I asked, glancing toward the hallway like Miss Gibson might appear and snatch it away.

“She doesn’t have to know,” Erica said quickly.

“We’ll help you,” Derek added. “Okay?”

I nodded.

“Okay,” I said.

Holding that box, for the first time in a long time, I felt something like hope.

It took ten minutes to fill the tube. More, actually—nerves dry your mouth faster than you’d think.

Derek and Erica joked around to make it less weird, arguing about whose saliva was grosser.

When we sealed the envelope and addressed it, my hands shook.

“I’ll drop it in the mailbox after school,” Derek said. “It’ll be fine.”

“What if…” I started.

“What if what?” Erica asked.

“What if she doesn’t want to be found?” I asked softly.

Neither of them had an answer.

Two weeks later, on a gray Tuesday morning, the social worker showed up.

Her name was Miss Thompson. She wore her hair in a tight bun and carried a tablet and a tote bag with county logos on it.

“Hello, Miss Gibson,” she said on the porch. “Is Andrew ready?”

“I haven’t had a chance to tell him yet,” Miss Gibson said, not even pretending to be upset. “One sec. Why don’t you come in?”

She walked into the living room.

“Andrew,” she called, her voice dripping false sweetness. “Can you come out here, please?”

I stepped out of my room, heart already pounding. I’d seen the extra trash bags in the hallway. I knew the pattern.

Miss Thompson stood near the door, her face kind but tired.

“Miss Thompson?” I asked. “What… what are you doing here?”

“With Miss Gibson ends today,” she said, picking her words carefully. “We’re placing you in a new home.”

My ears rang.

“What?” Derek said, popping out from behind his bedroom door. “No. No, no, wait. We don’t want Andrew to leave.”

“Yeah,” Erica said, appearing beside him. “We love having him here.”

“It’s really not your choice,” Miss Gibson said crisply. “Okay? You guys don’t make placement decisions. The county does.”

“But—” Derek started.

“We have had this discussion many times,” she cut in. “Andrew was always temporary. There will be another kid here to replace him.”

The word replace was a punch.

“Now hurry it up,” she said. “Say your goodbyes so Miss Thompson can do her job. We don’t want to waste her time.”

Derek moved first, crossing the room to pull me into a hug so tight it knocked the air out of me.

“I’m gonna make sure to stay in touch, all right?” he said into my shoulder. “We’ll text. FaceTime. Whatever.”

Erica wrapped her arms around us both.

“You have my Instagram,” she whispered. “Don’t lose it.”

I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.

Then the hug broke. Trash bags waited by the door.

My life, condensed.

I thought that was the end of my story with the Gibsons.

I thought my story would keep repeating: new house, new rules, new walls, same emptiness.

I didn’t know that somewhere in that house, two teenagers were staring at a results email and refusing to accept that ending.

The DNA results came in on a random Thursday after school.

Derek was the one who saw the notification first. He was scrolling through his email while his geometry teacher droned on.

“Holy…” he whispered under his breath, his heart stuttering. He wasn’t supposed to have his phone out, but he slid it under his notebook and tapped.

The email subject line read: Your AncestryDNA Results Are Ready.

He shot a look at Erica across the room. She had her own phone face-down on her desk, but she felt his eyes and glanced up.

He tilted his screen just enough for her to see the subject line.

Her eyes widened.

By the time the final bell rang, they were halfway out of their seats.

They sprinted home.

“So… how does this work?” Erica asked, collapsing on the couch and pulling out her laptop.

“You log in,” Derek said, already typing. “Then it shows you your ethnicity estimates and your matches and stuff. Right?”

He pulled up the site, entered the login they’d created for me, and clicked.

A globe spun on the screen, then compiled.

“Whoa,” Erica breathed. “Look at all those colors.”

The ancestry breakdown meant less to them than the list below: DNA Matches.

Names. Usernames. Second cousins. Third cousins. Fourth cousins.

“Okay,” Derek said, scrolling slowly. “He’s got some fourth or fifth cousins who also took the test. That’s something.”

He clicked one at random, then another.

Most were just names. No profile pictures. Locations scattered across the United States.

“Nobody lists anything useful,” Erica complained. “These people don’t even know how to fill out a profile.”

“Wait,” Derek said suddenly. “This one says Los Angeles.”

He clicked.

A woman in her twenties stared back from the profile picture. Brown hair. Brown eyes. The same eyes as mine, if he’d thought to notice.

“Fourth cousin at best,” he muttered. “Not close enough. But if she knows anything about her family tree, maybe…”

“Let’s message her,” Erica said. “And everyone else.”

They started sending messages: Hi, we’re trying to help a friend find his family. Do you know anything about relatives who gave up a baby in Southern California sixteen years ago?

Most didn’t respond.

A handful answered with variations of sorry, no idea.

“Another dead end,” Derek sighed one night, hanging up after a phone call with a woman in Texas who thought maybe her cousin’s neighbor knew someone, but it fizzled.

“I’ve got nothing,” Erica said, closing her laptop. “Everyone we’ve talked to doesn’t know anything about Andrew’s mom.”

“Where do we go from here?” Derek asked, leaning back on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

“We could give up,” Erica said.

They looked at each other.

“Or,” Derek said, “we keep looking.”

“How?” Erica asked.

He stared at the compass pendant photo they’d taken before I left. Then at his phone. At the TikTok icon.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “What’s the one thing people on the internet love more than drama?”

“Cat videos,” Erica said.

He glared.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “Heartwarming stories. Reunions. Lost-and-found stuff.”

“And what’s the one thing we have?” he asked.

“A story,” she said. “And his face.”

“And his necklace,” Derek added. “The pendant. That’s important.”

He sat up.

“Get your phone,” he said. “We’re making a video.”

The video was simple.

Erica filmed while Derek spoke.

“Hey, TikTok,” he said, sitting on his bed, the light from the window hitting his face just right. “We need your help.”

He held up a printed picture of me, grinning awkwardly in a hoodie, my compass pendant visible around my neck.

“This is Andrew,” he said. “He’s sixteen. He’s an amazing guy. He grew up in foster care here in California and he’s never met his mom. The only thing he has from her is this necklace.”

He held up a close-up printout of the pendant.

“He was born at Summit Banks Hospital in L.A. That’s all we know. If you recognize this pendant or if you know anyone who gave up a baby around that time, please… please reach out. We’re trying to help him find his family. Even just one person who cares. Thank you.”

They kept it under a minute.

“Should we even post this?” Erica asked as she edited the captions. “We only have a few hundred followers.”

“I see stuff like this go viral all the time,” Derek said. “You never know who’s watching.”

He added hashtags: #FindHisFamily #FosterCare #LostAndFound.

He hit post.

Then they waited.

They didn’t have to wait long.

The first thousand views hit before dinner.

By bedtime, the video had 40,000 views and hundreds of comments.

“I know that hospital,” someone wrote. “I had my baby there too. I’ll share this.”

“My aunt worked at Summit Banks back then. Sending this to her,” another said.

“This broke my heart,” someone else commented. “I was in foster care too. I hope he finds his mom.”

By the next morning, their phones buzzed nonstop.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up!” Erica said, barging into Derek’s room, shoving her phone in his face. “We’re going viral!”

He squinted. “What?”

“Look!” she said. “We’ve got over a million views.”

He blinked at the numbers. 1.2M. 200k likes. Thousands of shares.

“No way,” he breathed.

Comment after comment poured in.

Some were from people who wanted to tell their own stories. Some from other foster kids. Some from moms who’d had to make impossible choices.

And one, buried halfway down from a user with no profile picture and a name that didn’t mean anything to them at first glance:

I think I know that pendant.

On the other side of Los Angeles, in a small apartment above a laundromat, a woman named Emily sat alone at a tiny kitchen table.

Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. Fine lines fanned from the corners of her eyes. A mug of coffee sat in front of her, growing cold.

She’d seen the video at 2 a.m., when insomnia pushed her into the glow of her phone.

She hadn’t meant to swipe to TikTok. It just… happened.

The algorithm served her funny videos first. Dogs. Kids. Recipes.

Then Derek’s face appeared.

His words slid over her in a blur—“amazing guy,” “grew up in foster care,” “Summit Banks Hospital”—and her heart started pounding so loudly she could barely hear the rest.

She leaned closer when he held up the printed photo of me.

Her breath caught.

He was sixteen.

He had her eyes.

When the pendant appeared on the screen, her hand flew to her chest instinctively, seeking something that wasn’t there.

The little compass had been the last thing she’d touched before she gave me up.

She’d fought the nurses to keep it with me.

“Please,” she’d begged. “Just… let him have it. So he knows I wanted him.”

Now it stared back at her from a teenage boy’s chest, across pixels and time.

She didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

By dawn, she’d created a TikTok account with a random username and typed four words that changed everything: I think I know that pendant.

When Derek messaged her, she barely remembered typing back.

Can we talk? he wrote.

She gave him her number.

They spoke for an hour.

By the end of the call, she was crying.

By the end of the week, she was standing on Miss Hoover’s porch with her heart in her throat.

Between those two moments, I moved again.

My new foster home was a one-story house in a quieter neighborhood, farther from the freeway. The woman who took me in, Miss Hoover, had short, curly hair and eyes that looked tired but kind.

She lived alone, except for an old dog that followed her everywhere and a rotating cast of foster kids.

The first night there, she handed me a pair of pajamas and showed me to a room with a twin bed and a dresser.

“If you need anything, knock on my door,” she said. “You’re safe here.”

Safe.

It was a low bar. But it mattered.

The first weekend, she took three of us—me, a ten-year-old named Peter, and an eight-year-old girl named Charlie—to Target to buy essentials.

“You each get a new set of clothes and some socks,” she said. “We can’t do designer, but we can do decent.”

At the checkout, she slid a small box across the conveyor belt with everything else.

“Socks?” I asked.

“Something like that,” she said.

On Christmas morning, Peter’s eyes lit up when he tore open an Oculus headset.

Charlie squealed when she saw the iPad.

When I opened my gift, it was… socks.

Thick, warm, soft. Better than anything I’d had before.

I forced a smile.

“Thanks,” I said. “These are great, Mrs. Hoover.”

“You sure?” she asked, studying my face.

“Yeah,” I said quickly. “I appreciate it.”

Her eyes softened. “Good.”

Then the doorbell rang.

“Can you get that?” she asked. “We’re gonna go set up the Oculus.”

I padded to the front door in my new socks.

I opened it to find Derek and Erica on the porch, cheeks pink from the cold, both holding a wrapped box together like it might float away.

“Hey,” I said, shock rooting me to the spot. “What are you two doing here?”

“It’s Christmas,” Derek said, grinning. “We brought you a gift. You didn’t think we’d forget you, did you?”

“Open it,” Erica urged, bouncing on her toes.

My hands shook as I peeled back the paper.

Inside was a framed photograph.

Of my pendant.

And behind it, through the glass, the reflection of a woman standing just off-camera.

“Where did you—” I started.

“Hi, Andrew,” a voice said behind me.

I turned.

A woman stood there in the doorway, framed by the twinkling lights of the neighbor’s house across the street.

She was in her late thirties, maybe early forties. Brown hair pulled back in a nervous ponytail. Hands twisting a worn canvas tote strap.

Her eyes were exactly like mine.

“It’s me,” she said softly. “I’m Emily. I’m… I’m your mom.”

My lungs forgot how to work for a second.

Up close, I could see she was shaking.

“You’re so big,” she said, a laugh and a sob tangled in her voice. “And handsome. I can’t believe it.”

I stood frozen, every foster home, every social worker, every night staring at the ceiling hitting me all at once.

“I am so sorry,” she said, words tumbling out. “For giving you up. For not finding you sooner. For… everything. I was in a really hard situation. Your father, he wasn’t a kind man. I couldn’t let you grow up in that house. I thought… if I left you at the hospital, you’d be adopted by someone better. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

Her hands trembled more.

“After I finally found the courage to leave him, years later, I tried to track you down,” she said. “But records were sealed. I hit dead ends. I told myself you were somewhere better, with people who loved you. And that maybe you wouldn’t want to see me.”

She took a shaky breath.

“When I saw that video… you were wearing the pendant,” she whispered. “The one thing I left with you. And I knew… I had to reach out. Even if you slammed the door in my face. Even if you hate me. You have every right to.”

She looked at the floor.

“This is probably a lot,” she said. “If you need time, I understand. I can come back another day. Or not at all. Just say the word and I’ll go.”

Silence pressed around us, thick and expectant.

Behind me, I felt Derek and Erica’s presence like a safety net.

Behind her, on the street, I heard a car door slam, a neighbor calling “Merry Christmas!” to someone out of sight.

All those years of wondering pressed against my ribs.

All the nights I’d stared at my pendant and whispered, “Why?”

She stood there, waiting for her sentence.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment,” I heard myself say, my voice breaking.

Her head snapped up.

“You… have?” she whispered.

I nodded, tears blurring my vision.

“This,” I said, holding up the framed pendant photograph with shaking hands. “This is all I’ve ever wanted.”

She stepped forward cautiously, as if I might disappear.

“Can I hug you?” she asked.

Something inside me—something wounded and wary and small—hesitated.

Then I nodded.

She folded me into the kind of hug I’d imagined a thousand times and never thought I’d feel. It wasn’t perfect. She smelled like grocery-store shampoo and cheap coffee and something else layered under that: a familiarity my body recognized before my brain did.

I buried my face in her shoulder and let sixteen years of ache slip out in ragged breaths.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured into my hair. “I’m so sorry. I love you. I always have. Always.”

My compass pendant pressed between us, a small, cold witness.

Later, when the tears had slowed and introductions had been made and Miss Hoover had given us space at the kitchen table with mugs of cocoa, Emily tried to apologize again.

“I didn’t bring any presents,” she said, wincing. “I was so nervous, I didn’t know if you’d even want to see me. I thought maybe gifts would feel… wrong.”

“A present would have been nice,” I said, attempting a joke. “I mean, Dior sneakers are apparently the standard now.”

Derek snorted.

“But,” I added quickly, my voice softening, “I don’t care about that. Seeing you… meeting you… that’s enough. More than enough.”

Her eyes filled again.

“You really mean that?” she asked.

I nodded. “Family is the greatest gift of all. Right? That’s what I told Derek on Thanksgiving.”

“You were right,” she said.

We sat there, three teenagers and a woman who’d made the hardest choice of her life in a hospital sixteen years earlier, warmed by cocoa and the distant sound of someone’s TV in another apartment playing holiday reruns.

Outside, in a city that chewed people up daily, something small and miraculous had happened.

A boy who’d been told, over and over, that he was temporary, that he was a business, that he was a budget line… had finally become someone’s forever again.

You’d think that would be the end.

Neat. Cinematic.

Boy finds mother. Holidays saved. Roll credits.

Real life isn’t that clean.

There were still forms to fill out. Background checks. Home studies. Evaluations. Emily had to prove to the same system that had once deemed her unfit that she was now safe, stable, capable.

She’d been working as a medical assistant at a clinic in East L.A., sharing an apartment with a roommate, saving money, going to therapy. She’d left my father years ago, gotten a restraining order, rebuilt her life from scratch.

I watched her answer questions from social workers with honesty that made my stomach twist.

“I was nineteen,” she said, voice steady. “I was scared. I was in love with the wrong man. I made a choice I thought would keep my son safe. I’ve regretted it every day since. But I did the best I could with what I had.”

Her therapist wrote a letter.

Her boss wrote a letter.

I wrote one too.

When the county finally signed off on a trial placement, I moved again.

This time, I packed my things into boxes instead of trash bags.

Miss Hoover hugged me at the door. “You’re going home,” she said, smiling sadly. “That’s all a foster parent ever really wants for a kid.”

“I’ll visit,” I promised.

“You better,” she said.

Emily waited by the car, hands shaking on the steering wheel.

We drove past strip malls and palm trees, past the sign that said WELCOME TO LOS ANGELES in fading letters, past the exit that led to Miss Gibson’s house.

We didn’t stop.

Her apartment was small. Two bedrooms. A couch that sagged a little. A kitchen table with mismatched chairs. My room had a twin bed, a dresser, a desk. A poster of the L.A. skyline she’d bought at Ross because she thought I might like it.

“I wasn’t sure what to get,” she said, wringing her hands. “We can decorate it together. However you want.”

“It’s perfect,” I said.

Because it wasn’t about the furniture.

It was about the toothbrush she’d set out next to hers in the bathroom. The extra towel on the rack. The name “Andrew” she’d written on the chore chart on the fridge.

The way she said, “Our place,” not “my place.”

The first night, I lay in my new bed, staring at the ceiling. The sounds were different here—traffic on the street below, someone’s TV through the wall, Emily’s soft footsteps as she moved around, too restless to sleep.

My compass pendant lay against my chest.

For the first time, the word Always didn’t feel like a lie.

Months passed.

Life didn’t suddenly become easy.

Emily and I had to learn each other’s rhythms. I had to unlearn instincts that had kept me safe in group homes but made no sense in a real home.

When she raised her voice once—scared because I hadn’t texted and I was an hour late from school—my body braced for impact that never came.

“I was worried,” she said, eyes shining. “Not angry. Worried.”

When she bought me a jacket—not designer, just something from a department store—but it fit and it was warm and she said, “I saw it and thought of you,” I cried in the dressing room.

When she came to my school for parent-teacher conferences and introduced herself as “Andrew’s mom,” I had to sit down afterward, my legs shaking.

The woman at the front office smiled. “Nice to meet you,” she said. “We’re glad you’re here.”

I’d been at that school for months.

It was the first time anyone had greeted the person who claimed me.

On my seventeenth birthday, we went back to Riverside Manor.

Not as foster kid and faux family.

As me and my mom.

Thomas met us at the door.

“Table for two?” he asked, eyes crinkling when he saw who was with me.

“Yeah,” I said. “For my birthday.”

“Happy birthday, Andrew,” he said. “Right this way.”

He led us to a table by the window.

The river glimmered under the city lights, reflecting the glow of the skyline.

Menus appeared. Water glasses. The familiar scents of garlic and butter.

“This place is beautiful,” Emily whispered. “Is this where—”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” she asked quickly. “We can. I don’t want to bring back bad memories.”

I looked around.

At the tables where other families sat. At a little girl in a sparkly dress giggling as her father pretended to steal her breadstick. At a couple in their twenties toasting with glasses of something sparkling. At a tired nurse still in scrubs, eating alone in the corner with a book propped against her plate.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Bad things happened here. But good ones can too.”

We ordered pasta and steak. We shared dessert—chocolate cake with a candle stuck in the middle.

Thomas brought it out himself.

“On the house,” he said.

As we ate, Emily told me about her family back in Ohio, about the brother she hadn’t spoken to in years, about the grandmother who’d sewn her dresses and smelled like Ivory soap.

I told her about the kids I’d met in group homes, about the boy who’d taught me how to draw with a dull pencil, about the girl who’d run away three times and always come back, because there was nowhere else to go.

“So many kids,” Emily murmured. “So many stories.”

“Yeah,” I said.

She looked at me.

“Maybe someday we can help more of them,” she said. “Not just you. If you’d want that. Be a home for someone who doesn’t have one.”

The idea scared me and comforted me at the same time.

“Maybe,” I said.

Back in the foster system, in that same county office where my file once lived on a shelf, there was another set of forms now.

For a girl named Mia.

She was thirteen.

She’d been labeled “higher needs.”

The social worker slid the folder across the desk to a woman with polished nails and a carefully practiced smile.

“She falls into the higher-needs classification,” the social worker said. “You’ll receive extra monthly support. There are certain rules you’ll have to abide by during her stay here, of course.”

“That’s all I needed to hear,” the woman said, lips curling into something that looked like a smile but wasn’t.

She signed the papers.

Somewhere, a caseworker checked a box on a tablet.

Placement complete.

The system rolled on.

Kids moved.

Checks cleared.

Some foster parents treated children like a business.

Some opened their doors and hearts and gave everything they had.

Some mothers gave their babies up to protect them.

Some came back.

In a small apartment above a laundromat, a seventeen-year-old boy lay on his bed, sketchbook open, pencil moving across paper. On the page in front of him, lines shaped a small, powerful image: a compass, its needle pointing not north, but toward a tiny house with light spilling from its windows.

“Whatcha drawing?” a voice asked from the doorway.

My mom leaned against the frame, holding two mugs.

“Nothing,” I said, flushing a little. “Just… stuff.”

She crossed the room, set the mugs on my desk, and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Homework?” she asked.

“Almost done,” I said.

She nodded, then reached out to straighten the necklace around my neck.

“Have you ever thought,” she said softly, “that maybe that compass did its job after all?”

I looked at it.

At her.

At the room that was mine.

At the future that, for the first time, felt like something I had a say in.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think it did.”

In a country where kids get lost in systems and families fall apart in hospital rooms and lawyers’ offices and courtrooms, where some people count children as deductions and others count them as destiny, I had somehow, against the odds, found my way back to a word I never thought I’d be able to say without flinching.

Home.