By the time Jayden turned nine, he'd lived in four different homes.
He didn't bother counting after that.
Maple Ridge wasn't the worst, but it wasn't good either. The staff rotated like clock hands — new faces every few weeks, each one saying they "understood" until they didn't. The rules were printed on posters in every hallway: No fighting. No cursing. No stealing. Respect staff.
But in the dorms, the rules were different — the kind that didn't get written down.
Rule one: don't cry.
Rule two: don't snitch.
Rule three: don't show fear.
Jayden learned fast. He had to.
The first night, one of the older boys, Rico, stole his shoes while he slept. The next morning, Jayden found them floating in the toilet. He didn't tell staff. He waited until lights-out, then caught Rico alone in the hallway and swung. He got three days of room restriction for it, but his shoes stayed dry after that.
"Kid's got fire," one of the night staff said, half amused.
Jayden didn't know if it was a compliment or a warning.
School wasn't much better. The group home kids were easy targets — everyone knew who they were. They came in late, clothes wrinkled, hair uneven, eyes hard. Teachers treated them like temporary guests, too. Every week, someone new sat in Jayden's seat. Every week, someone else got transferred out.
When a classmate called him "throwaway," Jayden didn't think — he reacted. His fist landed before the word even finished leaving the other kid's mouth. Blood, yelling, the principal's office. Again.
They called it "anger issues."
Jayden called it self-defense.
After that fight, a counselor named Mr. Pierce started meeting with him. Older guy, gray hair, calm voice. He didn't talk like the others. He listened. Sometimes they just sat there in silence, and somehow that helped more than all the speeches about behavior and choices.
"You're not bad, Jayden," Mr. Pierce said one day. "You've just been taught to protect yourself in the only way you know how."
Jayden didn't answer. But for the first time, he didn't look away.
Still, the system kept moving him — every time a home closed, a bed filled up, a foster parent quit. Each new placement came with another garbage bag, another "you'll love it here," another fake smile.
By eleven, he could pack everything he owned in under five minutes. He could tell, by the tone of a social worker's voice, whether he was being moved again.
The only thing he couldn't pack was the ache that followed him everywhere.
At night, he'd sometimes dream about Layla — her tiny hands gripping his sleeve, the way she laughed when he made her pretend soup out of rainwater. He didn't know where she was now. He didn't even know if she remembered him.
When he asked a caseworker once, she said, "I'm sorry, Jayden, that information isn't available."
That was the moment he stopped asking.
By twelve, Jayden wasn't a scared little kid anymore. He'd grown taller, his voice rougher, his eyes colder. The staff called him "defensive." The other boys called him "Scrap."
One day, a new kid named Tony showed up — small, nervous, eyes wide like a trapped animal. Jayden saw himself in that look. When the others started teasing Tony, Jayden stepped in. "Leave him," he said, voice low but steady.
The teasing stopped.
That night, Tony sat on the edge of Jayden's bed and whispered, "Thanks."
Jayden just nodded. "Don't thank me. Just don't cry."
It was the first time in a long while he felt like he mattered — not to staff, not to the system, but to someone.
Still, the moves didn't stop.
New town. New group home. New rules. Same Jayden.
He started writing his name on the underside of his mattress everywhere he went. A quiet rebellion — proof he existed in places that would forget him as soon as he left.
The last line he scratched before turning thirteen read:
Still here. Not gone yet.
And that was enough to keep him alive through the next transfer.