I live with my mother, June, and it’s just us, and it isn’t perfect, but it’s ours, and I want to yell, You can’t have me, I belong to her! But her isn’t her anymore. My heart, it turns black. A cold, wet chill falls over my body. Everything, all the sounds in the hospital, the clicks and beeps and squeaky gurney wheels, get very echoey all of a sudden. “I’m drowning,” I say. The social worker doesn’t bat an eye, but Cake’s dad looks alarmed.
