What I Carry

Muiriel is close to aging out of foster care, where she has kept her freedom intact nearly all her life by carrying with her only the things she needs through twenty placements, and always moving, never staying still long enough to be caught in the trap of adoption. One more year, all she has to do is keep her unblemished record of 'perfect' behavior intact until her eighteenth birthday and she'll be free. But this last placement isn't like the others she's navigated. It's on an island, for one thing, away from the city she's lived in all her life. And the people she meets here don't tell her how to feel, that she should be 'grateful'. They don't tell her she is 'damaged'. Muiriel has always lived her life guided by the words of John Muir, who taught her that true freedom is secured by always moving. But in the stillness of one place where she may have found a best friend, an adult who truly listens to her, and a boy who seems to be falling for her. Muiriel is carrying the unfamiliar weight of attachments that make her nervous, and she isn't certain she can make it alone anymore. But can she find a way to secure her freedom without living a life alone?