That morning Danny stretched his feet first. No ribbon.
He looked around his bedsheets. No plastic bugs.
He looked on the floor. (One time they shined it with Vaseline so Danny would slip when he took his first step.) The coast was clear.
It made Danny suspicious.
“Danny!” Mrs. Garner called from downstairs. “Breakfast is ready.”
“I’ll be right down!” He got dressed quickly. As always, his pants were too short, so an inch of his mismatched socks showed. Danny couldn’t stop growing. Every day he was sprouting like a beanstalk. Even his hair was getting long again, black locks curled at the ends around his ears. Freddy and Teddy liked to make fun of his hair. But when he asked for new clothes or a haircut, Mr. Garner asked, “Do you think money grows on trees?”
Danny tucked his hair behind his ears and looked at his reflection. His heart gave a squeeze as he shut his eyes and pictured Pili Monteverde’s smiling face. The image of her was beginning to grow fuzzy, like a fading photograph, but he could never forget her eyes or smile, because they were the same as his. If Pili were here, she’d put Freddy and Teddy in their place and they’d never bother him again. It was strange, how good memories could make him the saddest.
Maybe it was because he was missing his sister extra that day, or because he was rarely alone in the bedroom he shared with the twins, but Danny placed his fingers against the glass of the wall mirror. He pressed until there was a clear smudge of his fingerprints. For a moment, he imagined that the glass would give way under his touch. Maybe it would ripple. Maybe it would shine with a bright light. Maybe he’d feel a chill as he passed right through it and into another dimension far, far away. Wonderland. The Enchanted Forest. Anywhere.
“Danny!” Mr. Garner yelled. “Don’t make me come get you.”
He sighed long and hard. Nope, there was no magic in that mirror, just like every other mirror he’d ever tested in his life.
Then he filled up his backpack with what he called his survival kit for field trips: his permission slip, a small bottle of antibacterial gel, extra socks, a sweater, a notebook, a bag of pens, his homework in case Freddy tried to use it as a coaster again, his library card, the chocolate bars he kept hidden from the twins, his space-themed metal lunch box with all his most precious things inside, and the money he made from helping the neighbor pull weeds from her lawn.
He slung his backpack over one shoulder and raced down the steps. The kitchen smelled like bacon and sweet butter and the car grease that was always stuck under Mr. Garner’s fingernails. He was a mechanic every day of the week except for Sunday, when he spent the day shouting at the New York Rangers and drinking from brown glass bottles. There were bags and bags of them in the garage. At the end of the week, the recycling truck picked them up and they clinked and clanked so loudly that the whole neighborhood could hear it.
“Good morning,” Danny said to the room.
Mrs. Garner was already flipping pancakes onto Danny’s plate. Her eyes were tired and sagged like tea bags, but she still smiled warmly at him. She pressed her hand on his head and mussed up his soft curls. At least she appreciated him.
“What’s good about it?” Mr. Garner muttered.
“Yeah,” Freddy said, mimicking his dad’s voice. The twins even wore cream-and-orange baseball jerseys to match their dad. “What’s good about it?”
“Yeah,” Teddy repeated. “The Giants are losing again.”
Danny wasn’t sure which giants they were talking about. The only giants he knew were in the books he used to read. He thought about saying as much, but the last time he’d talked about books, Freddy had called him a loser.
Danny knew he wasn’t a loser. There was nothing wrong with reading books. But for some reason, Freddy and Teddy only liked him when Mrs. Contreras came to visit.
“Do you have your permission slip?” Mrs. Garner asked them.
The twins groaned and Danny nodded while stuffing his mouth full of pancakes before Freddy could take them from his plate.
“Where are they taking you again?” Mr. Garner asked. His thick gray eyebrows were knit close together like two caterpillars kissing.
“The library,” Teddy groaned. Danny could tell the twins apart easily now because Teddy had lost a tooth after fighting with another kid last month.
“What’s so great about this library?” Mr. Garner asked, not taking his eyes off his paper. He licked his thumb and turned the page.
“It’s the one in Manhattan,” Danny said. “The big one with the lions out front and special rooms.”
“I don’t see what’s so special there that you can’t find at a library here in Staten Island,” his foster father said.
Danny kept quiet. He knew not to contradict him or ever say anything disparaging about Staten Island. Besides, Danny wasn’t sure if Mr. Garner had ever stepped foot inside a library, so how would he know?
“Can I stay home, Pop?” Freddy asked.
“Yeah, Pop,” Teddy said. “It’s Friday. We can start the weekend early and throw the ball around.”
Freddy rolled his bright blue eyes to the back of his head. Teddy copied his every move. They had the same dusty-blond hair and mean pink pout. “Not Danny, though. He can’t even throw a ball.”
“I’m sure Danny can throw a ball,” Mrs. Garner said. Her voice was quiet, like a mouse trying to shout behind a plaster wall. She sat down to eat the last two pancakes and a single leftover slice of bacon.
Teddy reached out with his thick hand and grabbed the bacon. In one second, he shoved it into his mouth without saying please or thank you.
“What are you looking at?” Freddy asked Danny.
Danny tried not to jump as he felt a terrible pinch on his leg. If he looked under the table, he knew he’d see Freddy pinching him. Danny felt angry and kicked out without thinking.
“Pop!” Freddy shouted. He made a whimpering sound and held his leg with a dramatic flair, as if Danny had wounded him mortally. “Danny kicked me!”
“He pinched me first!” Danny shouted, but one look at Mr. Garner’s face and Danny knew it was a lost cause. His foster father never believed him.
Mr. Garner slammed his fist on the table. “What did I tell you about disrespecting my boys?”
“But—”
“No buts.” Mr. Garner kept talking. Freddy and Teddy smirked at Danny, taking pleasure in Danny’s misfortune. Mrs. Garner looked down at her plate and ate her pancakes. He wanted her to wake up. He wanted her to stand up for him, because in the whole house, she was the kindest one. The one who sewed patches on his holey backpack and the ripped seams on his shirts. “What did I tell you?”
“Henry,” Mrs. Garner said. But it was so quiet that Danny wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it or not.
“Well?” Mr. Garner asked.
Freddy and Teddy held their hands over their mouths to stop from giggling. Maybe they hadn’t pranked him first thing in the morning like most days. But they knew they’d get him in trouble eventually.
“If I so much as look at Freddy and Teddy the wrong way,” Danny said, like he was reciting from a script he knew all too well, “I’m going right back to the group home I came from.”