In this home for unwanted children, no one cared who she was. They pretended to care. Like Ma, they were fakers. Other kids had said hello while the social worker was watching, but now they ignored her, playing video-games in a cluttered room with moldy corners. No one saw her creep past, her hair blacker than the rainy night outside. No one saw the scissors hidden in her baggy pocket.

In the kitchen, her new foster mother gave her a warm smile, like a TV character. Soon the foster mother went back to cooking, and she slipped outside through the flimsy door, quiet as a shadow.

Rain hissed on leaves. The wood of the back porch was soft with rot, sagging as if battered. It could not hide how broken it was, but that made her comfortable.

When she felt as peaceful as she ever had, she angled the scissors across her wrist and began to cut. Blood welled like ink.

A rusty creak disrupted her privacy. The porch door cracked open, and she felt someone peering through the crack. One of the other kids must be spying on the new girl. They probably wanted to make fun of her baggy clothes, or her glasses, or the way she hunched and didn't meet anyone's eyes. Maybe they were curious as to why her skin was darker than theirs. Maybe they would scream at her, or hit her, and try to make her talk.

She got ready to stab someone in the face.

The door opened further, allowing a child-sized wheelchair to power through. The sandy-haired boy in the wheelchair looked sunken in the wrong places, his arms as fragile as twigs.

"Hi," he said in a friendly tone, as the door clattered shut behind him. "I'm your suicide watch."

Her social worker had mentioned that a disabled child lived in this group home, and that he was a genius. More like a smart-ass. She circled around his wheelchair, blocking the door, preventing him from getting back inside the house. His squeaky voice would never manage to raise an alarm. Even if he had a cell phone, he looked too weak to lift one.

She sawed her wrist with a scissors blade. Let him watch her die.

"They say you can't talk." The boy maneuvered his wheelchair to face her. "But you can. You're just afraid of what you'll say. If you start speaking, you're afraid you'll scream."

He must be reeling her in with false sympathy, ready to slam her with a harsh joke the instant she let her guard down. She knew exactly what sort of messed up children ended up in foster care.

She raised the bloody scissors. This boy needed to go away.

A notebook lay on his lap. With weak hands, he painstakingly tore out a sheet. "My name is Thomas." He folded the sheet, this way and that. "The resident genius, as you've guessed. You're less blind than most people. There's nothing wrong with you at all, other than your speech phobia, which is no big deal. You'd be surprised at how many seemingly ordinary people suffer from phobias and deeply buried psychoses. A good ninety-five percent of the population. And you have far better reasons for yours than most people do."

Her cut wrist throbbed. Blood spattered the dirty porch floor, but she studied the Thomas kid. No one was ever genuinely sympathetic.

"Your mother punished you every time you spoke." Thomas fluffed the paper, sculpting it. "For your entire life, up until they dragged your Ma to prison, you couldn't speak without suffering a punishment. That's why your throat closes up whenever you try."

She smelled the dirty gag stuffed in her mouth, as if she was hungry, as if she'd just begged Ma for something to eat.

The comprehension made her gasp. Ma hated complaints. Maybe her silence really was because of Ma, and not because she was born defective and pathetic. Ma had always seemed to hate her. Not just her, but also Glitzy, the tiny baby, her sister.

Dead now. Glitzy had wailed and cried all the time, drowning out the flies that buzzed around their trailer. She must have been very hungry. Ma had shaken Glitzy until she went silent forever.

I hate her, hate her. I hate her. The pain of her torn wrist was nothing compared to her searing fury. She wanted to stab Ma in the gut. Stab her until she screamed, and then keep stabbing until she went silent. Stab her eyes out. Stab her throat.

Surely no one else seethed with such ungodly rage. If other people felt this way, they would never be able to laugh, or smile. They would not have kind eyes, like this little boy. So she was defective after all. Ma was right about her.

"Your Ma never bothered to get to know you." Thomas made more creases in the paper. "She was wrong about everything. You've earned your ungodly rage."

The way he phrased things . . . Cherise wanted to ask how he guessed her exact thoughts. She opened her mouth, heart thudding, but her throat thickened until she could no longer smell the rain, or the lush forest around the house. She couldn't make a sound.

"You associate speaking with pain." Thomas studied her with unabashed interest. He looked child-like, yet his gaze was anything but innocent. His eyes looked as if he had watched a thousand people die. "It's so ingrained," he went on, "even knowing the cause won't help you much. But time will. You don't have to be mute forever."

Cherise tried to ask how he could be so certain. Words stuck in her throat, aching. She would never speak.

"We're having a conversation right now."

Thomas seemed to hear her thoughts as clearly as the song of crickets and the hiss of rain. He seemed to see her, Cherise Chavez, without embellishments or labels. Not a victim. Not a target. Not a lonely girl, or a tragic news story, but only the truth.

Do you hear my thoughts? she wondered.

"Yes." He answered exactly as if she'd spoken aloud. "I'm a mind reader."

Rainwater dripped down from the gutters, like the blood dripping from her wrist, a stark and despairing sound. Maybe Thomas felt compelled to help suicidal teenagers, like a disabled super-hero. Cherise couldn't think of any other reason why a powerful psychic would want to spend time with her. Why waste time on a fourteen-year-old girl who lacked friends or a future? She was obviously incapable of rehabilitation.

"I never waste time." Thomas faced her with a pained expression. "Time is precious to me. Mostly, I work on staving off my own early death." He gestured at his frail body. "Everyone has problems, especially in a place like this. I have plenty of my own. So I don't help people, but I made an exception for you, because you're worth it."

Cherise had never been so sincerely complimented. "Why?" She paused at the sound of own voice, quavering like an old lady's. Her voice!

She felt no fear of speaking in front of Thomas. None at all. There was no danger of misunderstanding. He would know what she meant, no matter how she messed up the words, no matter whether or not she used her voice.

How can I be worth it? she asked in her mind.

Thomas made more folds in the paper. "Cherise, I absorb memories." He looked ashamed. "I've glimpsed the environment you survived in, and I'm certain that it would have killed me, or sent me to a loony bin. Very few people could grow up in that household and still see beauty in the world. You're one in a billion. You have a resilience that I want to . . . well . . . be around."

Cherise had the impression that he meant every word. His honesty made her smile a little. The expression felt brittle, as if her face was made of clay.

He faced her squarely. "Let's get something straight. I'm not trying to force a friendship. I mean, we're both lonely—there's no point in treading around that issue—but I came out here because I'd rather not see your particular mind vanish." He indicated her wounded wrist. "No one else has to know about that. I brought a bandage—" he patted the pocket of his wheelchair—"and I'd ensure that it doesn't get infected. I've absorbed plenty of medical knowledge." He held her gaze. "If you refuse, then I'll stop bothering you. I promise. I just figured I'd ask."

The more Cherise studied Thomas, the more she realized how ancient he looked, despite his childish face and body. A gaze like that belonged on a grizzled war veteran.

"You see me." Thomas sounded grateful. "Your perceptiveness is a lot like mind reading. You have insights into everyone else, but no one understands you." He crisped the folds in his paper, then offered it to her—transformed into a perfect origami lion. "This is yours. Squeeze his mane, here and here, and he'll roar."

Cherise tried it. The lion roared silently.

"There's a lion inside you," Thomas said. "When you rip your mother's grip off your throat, everyone will listen."

*** This short story is also the prologue for my novel CITY OF SLAVES, currently exclusive to Wattpad readers. New chapters every Mon & Thu. ***