Orphan Train

with its dry glue,
     was beginning to detach from the pages. If they’d put it in the annual library sale,
     it would have gone for ten cents at most. Nobody, Molly figured, would miss it. Two
     other, newer copies were available. But the library had recently installed magnetic
     antitheft strips, and several months earlier four volunteers, ladies of a certain
     age who devoted themselves passionately to all things Spruce Harbor Library, had spent
     several weeks installing them on the inside covers of all eleven thousand books. So
     when Molly left the building that day through what she hadn’t even realized was a
     theft-detection gate, a loud, insistent beeping brought the head librarian, Susan
     LeBlanc, swooping over like a homing pigeon.
    Molly confessed immediately—or rather tried to say that she’d meant to sign it out.
     But Susan LeBlanc was having none of it. “For goodness’ sake, don’t insult me with
     a lie,” she said. “I’ve been watching you. I thought you were up to something.” And what a shame that her assumptions had proven correct!
     She’d have liked to be surprised in a good way, just this once.
    “Aw, shit. Really?” Jack sighs.
    Looking in the mirror, Molly runs her finger across the charms on the chain around
     her neck. She doesn’t wear it much anymore, but every time something happens and she
     knows she’ll be on the move again, she puts it on. She bought the chain at a discount
     store, Marden’s, in Ellsworth, and strung it with these three charms—a blue-and-green
     cloisonné fish, a pewter raven, and a tiny brown bear—that her father gave her on
     her eighth birthday. He was killed in a one-car rollover several weeks later, speeding
     down I-95 on an icy night, after which her mother, all of twenty-three, started a
     downward spiral she never recovered from. By Molly’s next birthday she was living
     with a new family, and her mother was in jail. The charms are all she has left of
     what used to be her life.
    Jack is a nice guy. But she’s been waiting for this. Eventually, like everyone else—social
     workers, teachers, foster parents—he’ll get fed up, feel betrayed, realize Molly’s
     more trouble than she’s worth. Much as she wants to care for him, and as good as she
     is at letting him believe that she does, she has never really let herself. It isn’t
     that she’s faking it, exactly, but part of her is always holding back. She has learned
     that she can control her emotions by thinking of her chest cavity as an enormous box
     with a chain lock. She opens the box and stuffs in any stray unmanageable feelings,
     any wayward sadness or regret, and clamps it shut.
    Ralph, too, has tried to see the goodness in her. He is predisposed to it; he sees
     it when it isn’t even there. And though part of Molly is grateful for his faith in
     her, she doesn’t fully trust it. It’s almost better with Dina, who doesn’t try to
     hide her suspicions. It’s easier to assume that people have it out for you than to
     be disappointed when they don’t come through.
    “ Jane Eyre ?” Jack says.
    “What does it matter?”
    “I would’ve bought it for you.”
    “Yeah, well.” Even after getting into trouble like this and probably getting sent
     away, she knows she’d never have asked Jack to buy the book. If there is one thing
     she hates most about being in the foster care system, it’s this dependence on people
     you barely know, your vulnerability to their whims. She has learned not to expect
     anything from anybody. Her birthdays are often forgotten; she is an afterthought at
     holidays. She has to make do with what she gets, and what she gets is rarely what
     she asked for.
    “You’re so fucking stubborn!” Jack says, as if divining her thoughts. “Look at the
     trouble you get yourself into.”
    There’s a hard knock on Molly’s door. She holds the phone to her chest and watches
     the doorknob turn. That’s another thing—no lock, no privacy.
    Dina pokes her head into the room, her pink-lipsticked mouth a thin line. “We need
     to have a conversation.”
    “All right. Let me get off the phone.”
    “Who are you talking to?”
    Molly hesitates. Does she have to answer? Oh, what the hell. “Jack.”
    Dina scowls. “Hurry up. We don’t have all night.”
    “I’ll be right there.” Molly waits, staring blankly at Dina until her head disappears
     around the door frame, and puts the phone back to her ear. “Time for the firing