“Claire,” I added.
He nodded once. One precise motion.
“Noah.”
That was it. No dramatic handshake. No instant best-friend montage.
But something clicked into place anyway, like a door shutting softly against a draft.
From that moment on, we were in each other’s lives.
Growing up together in that place meant we saw every version of each other.
We saw the angry versions—the ones that came out after yet another kid got chosen by a “nice couple” with a minivan and matching jackets, while the rest of us lined up to smile like we weren’t calculating what it meant to be left behind again.
We saw the quiet versions—the ones that sank into themselves after phone calls that never came or birthdays that passed with no more celebration than a sheet cake cut into uneven squares.
We saw the versions of ourselves that learned not to hope too loudly when visitors toured the facility, because hope could make you sloppy. Hope could make you try.
And trying was dangerous when the outcome was so rarely in your favor.
Noah didn’t talk much about what he wanted.
Neither did I.
Wanting was a kind of hunger. Hunger made you restless.
But we had rituals.
Every time a kid left with a suitcase—or, more often, with a trash bag knotted at the top—we’d stand side by side and do our stupid little exchange like it was a comedy routine.
“If you get adopted,” Noah would say, his tone deliberately casual, “I get your headphones.”
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