By the time you reach the abandoned warehouse on the edge of town, your arms are trembling.
You call it home because no one else wants it.
The roof leaks in two places. One corner smells like rust and mildew. You sleep on flattened cardboard behind a stack of shipping pallets and keep your treasures in a dented locker with no door: three paperbacks with missing covers, a chipped mug, a picture you once tore from a magazine of a Christmas tree bigger than your entire sleeping space, and a yellow ribbon you found in the gutter and decided looked lucky.
Now the warehouse also holds three babies.
You set the basket down on your blanket and stare at them.
Up close, they seem even more impossible. Each one has a tiny silver bracelet around one wrist. Engraved initials. A.S. on the first. B.S. on the second. C.S. on the third. They smell like powder and expensive laundry soap. One has a faint scratch near his temple. Another’s fists keep opening and closing like he is trying to grab a dream.
You are seven, hungry, soaked to the skin, and absolutely unqualified for what happens next.
Yet somehow, what you feel is not panic.
It is recognition.
They need someone.
