Read Where I Belong for Free Online

rare these days. Very rare. It’s been years since I’ve seen one.”
    We sit quietly for a moment. The woods are so still, I can hear the creek running over stones. A squirrel chirrs in the tree above us. The crows fly away, dark shapes in the green light of the forest. A deer bounds across a clear space near us, white tail up.
    â€œAre you hungry?” I ask. “I brought enough food to share with you—just in case I finally met you.”
    He nods and I spread out Mrs. Clancy’s food.
    We eat together, the Green Man and I. A few sparrows appear and peck at crumbs. The Green Man tosses a chunk of bread toward a squirrel, who wastes no time grabbing it and retreating to a branch to eat it.
    â€œGreedy little bugger,” he says. Wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, he turns his attention to me. “What’s your name, boy?”
    â€œBrendan Doyle,” I tell him. Even though he didn’t ask, I add, “I live with Mrs. Clancy. She’s my foster so-called mother.”
    His sky blue eyes study me. “Where are your real parents?”
    I tell him the truth, even though it hurts me to say it. “My mother left me at the hospital after I was born. Nobody knows who she was or where she went. Same with my father. Nobody knows who he was either.”
    I pause and clear my throat. I look down at the ground. I keep my voice steady. “Neither one of them wanted me. And neither did anyone else.”
    He starts to say something, but I clear my throat again and tell him things I’ve never told anyone. “So the hospital sent me to Social Services. They put me with a family specially trained to care for infants, but when I was two, they moved me to another family. I stayed with them until I was five. Then the mother had triplets, and the agency had to find a new foster parent.”
    What I don’t tell him are the things I used to think about my mother—she had amnesia after I was born and forgot who she was, she forgot she had a baby, she might remember someday and come looking for me.
    I certainly don’t tell him what the social worker said, what she thought I didn’t hear, that my mother used drugs and I was a crack baby.
    The Green Man’s voice breaks into my thoughts. “So that’s when Mrs. Clancy entered the picture?”
    â€œNo,” I say, “the Baileys were before her. They had a bunch of kids, some their own, others fosters like me. I didn’t get along with them and I didn’t try to fit in and I ran away once or twice. I didn’t go far, but after the third time, they decided I was too much trouble and they didn’t want me anymore.”
    I don’t tell him the two older boys beat me up every day, that I wet my bed, that Mrs. Bailey made me wash the sheets and made sure all the other kids knew I was a baby-wet-the-bed. I didn’t tell him the other foster kids told everybody at school and they made fun of me and called me names.
    â€œSo Social Services put you with Mrs. Clancy.”
    â€œYes. I’ve been with her for two years.”
    â€œAnd what do you think of her?” The Green Man regards me with sad eyes. “Are you happy with her? Does she treat you well?”
    No one has ever asked me this. I chew my bottom lip and think about my answer. “She feeds me and all that, but she has a whole different way of seeing things and she thinks her way is the only way and I’m never going to amount to much because I don’t see the same thing she sees. She’s trying to make me see things her way and I don’t want to so she thinks I’m stupid or something and gets mad at me. Sometimes I think she hates me.”
    Most people would have said something like
No, no, she doesn’t hate you, she’s just trying to help you
, but the Green Man doesn’t say anything. He sits there watching me, waiting for me to go on.
    I want him to understand what I mean, so I