1 It’s December at the Lakeview Sunrise Group Home for Boys and Girls From the caged window next to our dormitory bunk bed we can see the concrete courtyard covered with fresh snow But no one is thinking about Christmas or presents sledding or huge turkeys in the oven No one is even thinking about gathering mounds of snow into snowmen and no one is thinking about igloos and forts
Not here anyway Lakeview Sunrise Group Home for Boys and Girls is really just a long and lovely way of saying orphanage And this orphanage is as filthy and overcrowded as anything Little Orphan Annie or Oliver Twist ever knew It’s nowhere near any lake or stream unless you count the puddle of sewage overflow that visits the corner of Fifth Street and Roosevelt Avenue each spring And you couldn’t spot a sunrise from here unless you were standing on top of the boarded-up Hurkemeyer Department Store two blocks over It’s the only way you can see over the other run-down gray and brown buildings We should know We live here We are Hansen and Gracie We are twins And we hate it here
We haven’t been here forever That is we’ve had other homes before We don’t remember being born obviously because no one does We do remember several foster homes here in the city out in the country But they blur together so sometimes Gracie believes the family with the big yellow dog was the one who had tuna casserole every Friday when in fact Hansen insists the big yellow dog was in the house with two dads Gracie says none of the homes had two moms and that’s where we couldn’t agree It was all so long ago We’ve been in the orphanage no matter what it reads on the sign outside we usually call it the orphanage for almost ten years Here’s the thing about being raised by the state if foster home after foster home says there’s something strange about you eventually the state stops trying to find you a home They stop trying to find you a family
