I still assumed they would let me down. The only person I could rely on was myself.
When I was fourteen, Gay brought home USA Today from her doctor’s office. It featured an essay contest called “How the Harry Potter Books Changed My Life.” She thought I should enter. I had joked that Harry would have fit right in at The Children’s Home because Hogwarts wasn’t that different—weird kids and all.
After Gay read my first-draft essay, she said, “You’re going to win.”
“What makes you say that?” I said snidely to cover my hunger for her to be right.
“Because it is brilliant, that’s why!”
I didn’t let on that I had marked the announcement day on my calendar and even checked the newspaper in the school library to find out who had won. I couldn’t find any mention of it, but that evening the call came telling me that I was one of the ten winners out of more than ten thousand entries. The prize was a trip to New York and breakfast with J. K. Rowling.
From then on I pounced on any opportunity to enter contests. My school counselor had a stack of entry forms from corporations, local clubs, veteran’s groups, newspapers, the library, even the nearby mall. It was amazing to be heard and validated for the first time in my life. People were interested in my story, and I loved the flurry of congratulations and encouragement from my parents and teachers. “Why don’t I ever win?” one of my friends whined.
“Did you apply?”
“No,” she said, laughing.
When I was a junior in high school, we were watching old family videotapes one evening. Phil popped in one taken at my adoption day four years earlier. “I was really a brat that day!” I said after watching it.
“It could have been worse,” Phil said. “You could have said no!”
A few days later Gay pointed out that the New York Times Magazine was running an essay contest for high school students.
The inspiration came instantaneously. “I know just what to write!” Winning that contest became a pivotal event in my life. It led to writing my memoir Three Little Words and many other exciting opportunities. Growing up, I was rarely praised. Foster children are expected to stay out of the way and not make waves. Many kids—like my brother—were so desperate for someone to notice them that they acted out for negative attention. Having my book published finally gave me the approval I’d been seeking for years as a girl, and it reinforced my passion to improve the foster care system and help others like me. In many ways it evened the keel of my ship. I was emerging from the churning seas of my childhood and felt confident for the first time.
I was now a normal teen with friends and a boyfriend, and I was looking forward to college. I had been accepted to Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, on a full-tuition scholarship. Eckerd has a resort-style campus on a peninsula poking out into the Gulf of Mexico that attracted students from all over the world. Going to college felt like a natural next step, but I had no idea that there were many lessons in store for me both inside and outside the classroom.
I never would have imagined that the dorm would feel homey to me. The smells of the industrial cleaning supplies—from the sharp mint in the bathroom to the lemony floor-polishing wax—were redolent of The Children’s Home, where I had lived for several years before I was adopted. In foster care, I had learned to be very protective of my reputation, but here I was shocked at how easily I became swept up in the antics of my peers.
The first official day of college I met my professor mentor, who would guide me for the first year, and I began Marketing Cool, the cross-disciplinary course that would last for the introductory three-week orientation term. Our class was held on an outdoor patio, and we were all sipping water out of recycled bottles.
“First let’s examine how our emotions and unconscious are the gatekeepers for attention.” We had been asked to bring glossy magazines. “Can anyone find an outrageous photo?” the professor asked.
We started riffling pages. I held up one for Jimmy Choo shoes. “The girl’s in the opened car trunk, and the guy is leaning on a huge shovel like he’s getting ready to bury her.”
“Why use death or violent images toward women to sell expensive shoes?” the professor asked.
The discussion ricocheted around the class. So this was college! I thought jubilantly. We were taking only one class during this orientation period, but we were also engaged in community-service projects, which took us out of the little bubble of our campus to homeless shelters, mentoring programs, and environmental cleanup sites. We replanted sea grass, painted a Habitat for Humanity house, and recycled. There were lectures on campus, trips to local theater groups, even sailing classes. I enjoyed getting to know my new friends better. Sid, who had grown up on a military base in Germany, had an African-American army officer mother and a German father, and he spoke four languages. My roommate Iris’s parents were both architects. Scarlett was the classic California girl with long legs and straight blond hair, who also played the cello. Their backgrounds and accomplishments were vastly different from my Crystal River classmates, not to mention the kids with whom I had grown up in foster care.
Most of my high school friends either didn’t aspire to college or could only afford to take courses at the community college and eventually enroll in a state university while working to pay for their tuition. I thought it ironic that I would be one of the few in my graduating class to be going to a four-year private college. The odds were even worse for foster children. Since most of my foster friends were never adopted, they had few prospects. Many kids who turn eighteen and age out of the foster care system become homeless; others become teen parents, turn to drugs, are incarcerated—or worse. Without the crucial advantage of a stable family or support system, succeeding in college is often impossible.
One caution my parents had given me before going to Eckerd College was that I had a lot of local friends and ties in St. Petersburg. Gay and Phil wanted to be sure I immersed myself in college life and spent my time forming new relationships and experiences on, rather than off, campus. Gay even gave me a long lecture about dating a variety of guys.
In high school my friend Nikki and I loved going to concerts that featured regional bands, so we often traveled to St. Petersburg, which has a thriving arts and music scene. Nikki started hanging around a group called Fat Aggression and flirting with Ian Smith, the bass player.
During one set, Nikki said breathlessly, “Don’t you think he’s awesome?”
“He’s really cool,” I said to be nice. “Who’s the guy on guitar?”
“What’s it with you and guitars?” Nikki laughed because my boyfriend, Gavin, played lead guitar and sung in another band. “That’s Ian’s brother, Erick.”
I caught Erick looking toward us, but he glanced away as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t. After the show, Nikki and I were invited back to the Smith brothers’ home.
Once we arrived, I sank into the corner of a living room sofa that was missing the middle cushion. A guy who I recognized as the band’s lead singer said, “Don’t believe whatever Nikki has told you about us.”
“Yeah, we’re not fat and we’re not aggressive,” the drummer chimed in.
When I didn’t laugh, the drummer asked, “Are you feeling okay?”
“Just a headache.”
“Must have been my fault,” the drummer said, though it took me a few seconds to get the joke. “Want one of these?” He held up an Olde English beer.
“I’m driving.”
“Hey, Erick, your girl wants an OJ,” the singer said.
Your girl?
Erick arrived with a glass promptly.
“When he saw you coming in with Nikki, he went and combed his hair and shaved,” the singer said, laughing. “I mean, sometimes he does one, sometimes the other, but never both at the same time.”
I took a sip of the juice, then gagged.
“How many years has that OJ been in the fridge?” the singer asked.
“Sorry,?
?? Erick mumbled. “I’ll find you something else.”
Feeling sick, I hurried to find the bathroom. A few splashes of cool water helped revive me. I looked into the smeary bathroom mirror. My hair, unruly at the best of times, now tumbled around my face. I fished a barrette out of my pocket and pinned it back.
Sighing, I returned to the party, wondering how soon I could pry Nikki away. Erick was waiting for me. “I think the OJ’s sell-by date was pre-Civil War.”
I cracked a smile.
“Can I get you a soda? I have a secret stash in my room.”
He brought me a Coke. “I didn’t know if you preferred diet.” He spoke as though he had rehearsed the line. “Not that you need diet. I mean, you know diet has a lot of chemicals.” He blushed and turned away slightly. An old-fashioned word crossed my mind: bashful. Still, something seemed to pull his glance back to me. I stared into his gentle hazel eyes and felt a connection to a sweet, secret soul.
In the car Nikki said, “Erick’s insanely crazy about you.”
“He just met me!”
“Don’t worry, he wouldn’t blow you off all the time like Gavin does.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said, and unexpectedly started to cry.
I had fallen hard for Gavin Parnell when we met at one of his shows. After that, he asked me to most events, so I assumed there weren’t other girls. We maintained a long-distance relationship for almost a year. He was on the road often with his band, but I was completely smitten. A few weeks after I met Erick, Nikki and I were excited about a Battle of the Bands that was taking place in Tampa. When we arrived, I headed to the stage where Gavin was playing. Fawning girls surrounded him. I waited for him to notice me.
“Hey, where’ve you been?” He pulled me toward him and gave me a light kiss on the forehead.
That small gesture should have made my place in his life clear to the interlopers, but one of them—a girl with black hair that looked like it had been painted with shoe polish and an outfit that was more lingerie than street clothes—curved her high-heeled boots around his calf. “We’re going to Ybor tonight, right?” she cooed. Ybor City is an historic neighborhood in Tampa that was once the hub of the cigar industry, but now is filled with trendy nightclubs. Some permitted entrance if you were eighteen and gave you a wristband or stamp on the back of your hand, but many wouldn’t admit anyone under twenty-one. Even though Gavin looked like a young college kid, he was almost seven years older than me, so age limits on clubs hadn’t been an issue for him in years.
Gavin looked at her and then back at me. “We’re supposed to talk to a guy about some club dates,” he told me.
“Really? You’re doing business tonight?”
He extricated himself from the other girl and steered me to a quiet spot. “By any chance do you have a fake ID?”
“Of course not,” I said, shocked that he would ask the question.
“How about we go surfing on Sunday?”
“You know I don’t surf!”
“What do you want to do? Drag me around a mall or see a PG movie?”
I backed away from him. “Besides, I’m not available next week. I have a speech in Santa Barbara.”
“You’d better update your hair and makeup for California,” he said as a painful put-down. And after that, he never called me again.
After I returned from California, Nikki wanted me to go with her to St. Pete to see Ian and hang out with their bandmates again. I was still moping over Gavin.
“Come to the beach with us,” Nikki begged.
“I burn to a crisp in fifteen minutes.”
“You can stay back with Erick and then we’ll grill later,” she suggested.
I agreed because at least their house was shady and cool. Erick made me a sandwich and put on some CDs. One of them was Hoobastank.
“I love that song!” I said when “The Reason” came on.
Erick sat beside me and was so silent I became aware of his soft breaths. At the second chorus, he whispered, “Me too.” Erick’s arm had been leaning on the sofa behind me. It slowly slipped around my shoulders, and he pulled me closer. “There are reasons,” he murmured before his lips brushed against mine.
Erick pulled back to see my expression, then kissed me again, longer. At that moment I realized there was a reason for everything. Gavin was history.
That evening I drove back humming along to a CD that Erick had loaned me. For the rest of that summer before college, Erick and I saw each other every week and spent hours on the phone chatting. But I wasn’t sure if I liked him as much as he liked me. Finally, just before I moved into the dorm, I had the talk many couples have before one of them goes away to college. I told Erick that he should feel free to see other people.
“May I still call you?”
“Sure. We don’t have to be strangers, but we’re not going to be together, either.”
“Okay, I guess.” He had the good sense to know that if he wanted to see me, he had to let me go.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to pull away from Erick, who was actually a rather good influence on me. Being in college, I was so eager to fit in, and I was overwhelmed with my new sense of freedom and adventure. My usually cautious, introverted personality was replaced by a social butterfly that I sometimes didn’t recognize.
As it turned out, many of my new college friends went to Ybor to party as well. I had wanted to see what these places were like ever since I had been with Gavin. I remembered feeling left out because I wasn’t old enough to go to clubs where he played or if I could get in, I felt out of place as his friends ordered drinks when I couldn’t.
One Friday night a group of us carpooled to a club that admitted eighteen and over. When we got to the second floor of the trendy refurbished warehouse, Scarlett and I ordered Cokes, and her boyfriend Carter asked for a beer. He was carded, and then was served.
“Let me see that.” I reached for his ID. “Is that . . . ah . . . new?”
“A senior who lives off campus makes them,” he said.
Scarlett and I glanced at each other, and I knew she wanted one too. Maybe if I had had one when I dated Gavin, things would have been different. I wasn’t about to alienate myself from friends or feel left out again. So I ordered one.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten one of the first lessons I had learned at The Children’s Home: On a small campus it is impossible to remain anonymous. Even worse, it is more like living in a fishbowl, with the curve of the glass magnifying your comings and goings. Someone knows if you did not sleep in your bed, and someone else knows where you slept. Someone will see you at a bar or club. Someone saw you smoking a joint and with whom. Yet once I had settled into college life, I felt secure and invincible.
I was walking across campus when the assistant dean waved me over. I hurried to where she stood under a covered walkway. I had just applied to be a resident adviser the following year, and because she was in charge of the program, I assumed she was going tell me something about the process.
“Ms. Rhodes-Courter,” she said in a clipped voice. “Please turn in your fake ID.” She stared and gave an impatient grunt.
I leaned against a pillar, and in a mix of panic and shock I did what she asked. “I only used it to get into dance clubs,” I said in a tremulous voice.
“Ashley,” she said more gently, “as far as the school is concerned, this is an internal matter.”
“I guess I won’t qualify to be an RA.”
“On the contrary. You can impart the consequences of this sort of foolishness to your freshmen.”
“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” I muttered to myself as I hurried back to my dorm. Drinking was an unimportant part of my life. I didn’t like the taste, didn’t crave it, and instead of helping me relax and enjoy myself more, it usually made me feel sleepy or sick. I had risked my reputation for something I didn’t even care about just to feel a part of the crowd. I thought I had dodged a bullet, but I had to then face another round of consequences—this time on th
e home front.
Mother’s Day was more important to me than it was to Gay, who scoffed at “Hallmark Holidays.” I loved honoring her as my true mother and planned to go home that weekend to be with her.
I was already on the road when she called me. “Do you know anyone named D. A. Warner?” Gay’s voice seethed through the phone.
I clutched the steering wheel. Had the dean alerted my parents? “What do you mean?”
“This person sent me some, ah . . . disturbing links to pictures of you on the Internet.”
My hands began to sweat. “Hey, you’re breaking up. I’ll be there in about an hour.”
I dialed Sid. “Are you near a computer?” I asked in a panic.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure. Someone sent my mother social media links, and she’s furious.”
“Okay.” There was a very long pause.
“What did you find?” My voice was verging on hysteria.
“There’s one that looks like it was taken in a tattoo parlor. You got some ink I don’t know about?”
“No! I only went to that place because Scarlett was getting her belly button pierced.” I was choking on my angry tears.
“Hey, calm down, it’s not the end of the world.”
“Maybe not your world. My family has already seen this crap, and I’m freaked.”
Gay was sitting at her desk, her face reflecting the glow from the computer display, when I got home. I came over to her like a child summoned by the principal. She handed me a printout of the e-mail.
“Who do you think sent this?”
I read it to myself: You think your daughter is so amazing; it’s time you saw what she’s really like. Below it were links to several online pages.
“Anyone have it in for you?” Phil asked.
As Gay clicked through the photos, Phil draped his arm across my shoulder to show his support. “These photos could be easily misinterpreted, and some are pretty bad, Ash,” he said.
“But not that bad,” Gay said, surprising me.