"How long are you going to be gone?" Josie asks me as I'm preparing to leave on Wednesday.

"Not long," I promise her as I'm sliding on my shoes. It's nine in the morning and I have about three hours before Davis gets home. I have to be in and out of the house in three hours so I have to leave quickly. "But if this works, Davis won't be a problem for anybody ever again, I promise."

"What are you going to do? I know that you said that you weren't going to tell me but I feel like it's something dangerous," She tells me, looking very worried for me.

"It's not dangerous," I assure her and although I'm only 87% sure that it isn't, I don't want her to worry. I know that I have to do something about Davis and even though I would love to get justice for what he did to me, Josie and probably many other girls throughout the years that he's been a foster parent, I don't want to put Josie through that. She'd have to go through a trial and despite the fact that they would have protections in place for her, it would still be hard on her.

Not to mention the fact that I would have to go through a trial too, confessing for an entire courtroom about what happened to me so many years ago. I don't want to go through that, especially after I've spent these years out of foster home getting over that part of my life. I don't want to go back. I also don't want Casey to know what I went through at that house because I had put so much effort into making sure that he never had to know what happened to me there.

But this plan should work. It has to work because if it doesn't, we have to go to Bethany and tell her everything and then she has to go to the police and file the report and it's going to snowball.

"Be careful," Josie says again just before I leave the apartment and I head for the subway station that takes me to the foster home. Davis had a drug problem in his younger years but when he met Cynthia, she wanted to be a foster parent and so in order for them to do that, Davis had to get clean. He went through rehab and all of that good stuff and once the state decided that he was sober and decent, they allowed them to foster children.

I know all of this because I had grown up with them and Cynthia likes to talk. I also know that if Davis gets busted with drugs in the house, he will go to jail for a very long time due to the record that he has from his youth.

So I'm assuming, and counting on, that when the cops find about $500 worth of cocaine in Davis's bedroom, the police won't appreciate that very much.

I feel nervous having the drugs in my bag, especially because of how much it is. It's not physically a large amount but cocaine, being illegal and whatnot, is pretty expensive so it's just a lot of money worth of drugs. And I've never done drugs at all so I'm not used to just having drugs on me. As I'm walking down the street after getting off of the subway, I pass a man walking his dog and I'm suddenly convinced that the dog can smell the drugs and he's going to tackle me like some cop dog or something.

But luckily, I get passed the dog without a problem and I safely get to the foster house. Everybody is gone, the foster parents are at work and the kids are at school-- I can do this. They lock their doors but I know that they keep a spare key in a fake plastic rock by the front door.

I grab the key and I head inside. I do so carefully just in case somebody is in the house, maybe a kid that stayed home from school or something but I don't hear anybody. I stay still for a long moment just to listen for any movement but I'm still only getting silence, so I shut the front door behind me and head up the stairs of the house.

I have a lot of terrible memories in this house but I have a lot of great ones too. Casey took his first steps in this living room, he said his first words, left for his first day of school from this house. I raised my brother in this house, with the help of Cynthia of course, but after I was old enough to take care of him, I did as much as I could for him. Even if Cynthia was free and offered to do it, I would insist on doing everything myself.

I wanted to be the one to take care of him, I wanted to be there for him always. I wanted to make sure that he never felt abandoned like I did. He will always know that he is cherished and loved like I never felt when I was his age.

I navigate the messy hallway to Davis and Cynthia's bedroom. I'm not sure where people normally hide cocaine but I just go with the place where I think that people normally hide things that they know that they shouldn't have. The sock drawer.

I stuff the baggie of the white drug into the back of his sock drawer to make it look like somebody is trying to hide it and I'm starting to head back downstairs when I hear a noise coming from outside. It's a loud 'vroom' sound that only comes from Davis's truck. Shit.

I can see out the living room window that Davis has pulled up in the driveway and I watch with terror as he's starting to walk into the house. I definitely can't go back downstairs so I retreat back down the hallway. I'm trying to keep myself calm but I don't know where to go. There's an awning over the front of the house so if I can just get to a window that looks over the front of the house, I can get out.

I just have to stay calm and I have to stay quiet. I didn't lock the front door when I came in because I was just going to lock it when I left so as he walks into the house, he'll realize that it's unlocked and know that something is off. My heart is beating quickly in my chest and my breaths are becoming shallow but if I move quietly, I should be okay.

"Hello?" Davis calls through the house in his booming voice. "Cynthia?"

I go into the first bedroom on the right and once I'm hiding in there, I realize that I'd just stumbled into my old bedroom. That brings back a lot of terrible, suppressed memories. I immediately look at the bed, I see all of the notches carved into the wood frame of the bed. A notch for every time he came knocking.

There are a lot of notches.

The frame is covered in them, I remember almost running out of room. I hear the stairs creaking as he makes his way up to the second floor so right now isn't the time to go through my traumatic childhood. I have to get out of here.

I have to unlock the window and then I try as quietly as possible to open it. My hands are trembling but I just remind myself that even if he does find me, I have my pepper spray. I'm still terrified because I know that he's a lot stronger than me so if he gets to me before I can get my pepper spray out... I don't know what he'll do.

As I'm lifting my leg to get outside though, I hear Davis's voice getting closer and closer to the door.

"I don't know, Cynthia. The door was just open. Did any of the kids come home from school today?" He asks and there's no response so I guess he's talking to Cynthia on the phone. The bedroom door is closed but I can hear him knocking and opening the other doors to see if anybody is home. Shit shit shit.

I abandon the window and quickly crawl under the bed. I scooch myself as close to the back wall as possible. I try to grab my pepper spray but before I can get my bag unzipped, he knocks on this door and the swings the door open.

"Is anybody in here?" He calls into the room but even though there's no response, he walks into the room so far that I can see his shoes standing near my feet. I'm lying on the hardwood floor on my stomach with my boobs smashed against the floor and it's wildly uncomfortable but I have to stay perfectly still. He walks closer to the window and his boots are then right by my face. I'm not even breathing anymore.

"The window is open," He says, probably still on the phone with his wife. "I know that it's summer, Cynthia, but the door was unlocked and now the window is open. Somebody broke in here. I'm not acting crazy, are you fucking stupid?"

I guess he assumes that whoever broke in (me) already escaped through the window because as he continues to berate his wife, I watch as his work boots stomp back to the door and he shuts it as he leaves the room. I can breathe again.

Slowly and quietly, I scoot back out from underneath the bed and hurry to the window again. I can't hear Davis anymore but I would have heard the stairs creaking if he went back downstairs so I have to move fast. I leave the window open as I slowly climb out of the window and onto the awning over top of the front porch. There are a lot of windows in this house so if he just looks out one of them right now, he'll see me on the roof so I am quick to scramble to the drain pipe.

I don't even have time to think so I edge myself onto the beam that holds the awning up that's also attached to the drain pipe and I latch onto it so that I can shimmy my way back onto solid ground.

What I didn't account for was the drain pipe dislocating from the solid beam. So when the drain pipe starts falling from the metal beam as I'm only halfway down from the roof, I instinctively grab onto the drain pipe but that backfires because I just end up falling to the ground with the dislocated pipe with a loud thud and a crash from the pipe rips apart from the rest of the pipe.

From in the house, I can hear Davis getting louder so he definitely heard the crash. I have a burning pain in my right bicep but I can't worry about that right now so I scramble to my feet and sprint over to the neighbor's yard where they have a privacy fence. It's my only shot at safety so I take a running jump and I'm able to grasp the top of the fence and maybe it's the adrenaline that gets me over the edge but I'm able to lift myself over the wooden fence and I fall with a goopy thud onto the other side.

Maybe they have a garden here that needed watering today or something because what I land in isn't dry grass but it's wet mud. I hear Davis coming outside the house to examine the fallen drain pipe now so the mud is the least of my worries at the moment.

"Who's out there?" I hear Davis call from his yard. Obviously, nobody would ever just pop out and be like 'oh, that was me, my bad' so I don't know what he's trying to accomplish but I just stay against the fence and I remain silent, holding my now-bleeding arm. It must have caught the pipe when I was falling from the roof.

I have to sit in the mud, working on catching my breath so that I'm silent and not dry heaving, until Davis circles the house three times. I can't see through or over the fence so even when I stop hearing him, I don't know if he's actually gone or not.

I can't just sit in this muddy backyard all day though so maybe after about an hour of sitting in the mud against the wooden fence, I stand up and I walk along the fence and around to the other side of the yard where the gate is. It's on the other side of the yard, away from Davis's house, so he hopefully won't see me leaving.

I know that I should probably run but I'd been sitting still for so long in the mud that my legs are cold and a bit numb so I just walk slowly and cautiously, going through backyards and alleys to get to the train station just in case Davis is out with his car driving around to try and find whoever it is that was in the house.

I get to the station safely and once I'm actually on the train, I feel like I take my first breath since I heard Davis's truck pull into the driveway.

I know that being covered in mud, I'm getting a lot of weird looks from the other people on the train but I just ignore them and I get my breath even. My arm hurts like a bitch but I think that the bleeding has mostly stopped. I just want to get back home now in one piece. I want to take a shower, put some ice or something on my arm, take some pain meds, and then take a nap.

However, when I'm on the train, my phone starts ringing. My first assumption is that it's Davis but I know that he doesn't have my phone number. He'll probably make the assumption that it was me in the house though, I just need to hope that he doesn't find the drugs before I can tip the cops onto him.

When I look at the caller ID, I see that it's my apartment landline that's calling me so that means that it's Josie.

I push the green button and put the phone up to my face but I'm careful not to actually put it on my ear because I don't want the phone to get mud on it. "Hello?" I answer.

"There's somebody at the door," Josie is telling me, sounding very panicked. "They're knocking and won't go away."

"It's not Davis, I just saw him," I assure her. Although I'd been stuck in the muddy yard for about an hour, I did see his truck still in the driveway of the house and if he was going to go anywhere, he'd take his truck. "You don't have to answer but you can just look through the peephole and see who it is."

"Okay," She breathes out, sounding a bit more relaxed now. "I'm going to look now... Oh. It's your friend."

"Micah?"

"Yeah, him," She confirms. "What do I do?"

"You can let him in if you want, I'm on my way home now," I tell her. "But you don't have to if you don't want to."

"I'll let him in," Josie decides. "You'll be home soon?"

"Yeah, just a few more stops and I'll be there," I confirm, feeling incredibly tired after the afternoon I've had. After Josie hangs up, I feel the urge to call Casey just to make sure that he's safe. I know that he is, I know that Davis can't get to him but I still just want to make sure. To hear for myself that he's safe. But I know that I have a more important call to make right now.

I dial the social worker's number and listen to the rings.

"Bethany King's office, what can I do for you?" The receptionist answers the phone.

"Hi, my name is Eleanor. I need to talk to Bethany right now, it's urgent."

"Sure, I'll see if she's available. Please hold," The lady politely tells me. There's a short pause before the phone picks up again.

This time, it's Bethany herself. "Eleanor, how's Josie doing?" She asks me first.

"She's fine. That's why I'm calling, she told me why she ran away from Davis and Cynthia," I say to her. "She said that she saw Davis doing drugs and he was getting violent. I've never seen him high but I know that he had a drug problem when he was younger."

"Drugs?" She echoes in surprise. "Davis has been clean for 25 years."

"Or maybe he hasn't, he's just good at hiding it," I suggest lightly. "Anyway, I can keep Josie, right? You can't make her go back there, she's absolutely terrified. Especially now since she told on him."

"I'm still looking for a foster home for her but yes, for now you can keep her while we look into these claims," Bethany confirms. "It's unorthodox but we just have no open space for her right now."

"I don't mind, she's a nice girl," I insist. We talk a little bit more about how getting custody of Casey will work and then we end our conversation once the train gets to my stop so that I can get off of it and head home.

Once I get there, I feel like I should try to look better for Micah. Yesterday, I had made sure that my makeup was done, that my boobs looked good, that my hair was okay. But today, I just can't get myself to care. I'm covered in mud and blood so I highly doubt that I can turn any of that into something good.

So I just resign to my fate and I go into the apartment. Micah is sitting alone on the couch, Josie isn't anywhere to be seen.

"Holy shit," Micah says when he sees me coming through the door.

"Hello to you too," I mutter. "I wasn't expecting you today. And I didn't forget, we really didn't have anything planned."

"I forgot my wallet yesterday. What the hell happened to you?" he asks me.

"Where's Josie?"

"She went back into her room when I got here," he explains, standing up to look at my arm. The cut is on the outside of my bicep and it's very visible since I'm wearing a tank top. "Do you have a first-aid kit?"

I nod and then we go into the small bathroom. I shut the door so that Josie won't be able to see me like this. She was worried about me so she doesn't need to see me all bloody and messed up.

"Can you tell me anything about what happened to you?" he asks me as he starts cleaning up the muddy wound.

"Not really," I admit to him. "Are you a doctor now?"

"Yes," he confirms with a nod. "We're going to have to amputate."

I crack a tired smile at his joke. "Did you find your wallet?"

"Yeah, it was under the couch. I think that it fell out of my pocket when we were... uh, on the couch," he tries to find a polite way to say dry humping like animals. I appreciate that. "Are you sure that you're okay?"

"I'm alright," I assure him. "A little shaken up but mostly just tired."

"Are you a ninja?" He asks me, looking at me in complete seriousness.

"Not a very good one," I tell him. But then again, I guess I'm an alright ninja since I did get away. But I feel like if I was a good ninja, I would have gotten away with a lot more ease and grace.

"If I guess right, will you tell me?"

"I don't think that you'll guess right," I inform him, wincing a bit as he cleans the long cut. "But hey, maybe if you get me to fall in love with you, I'll tell you all of my secrets."

That makes him smile a little bit and he looks into my eyes. With how small the bathroom is, we're standing pretty close together as he tells me, "That's the plan."