Andrew Minyard was led through the dim, echoing halls of the orphanage — a place he’d come to know as intimately as the lines on his own palms — to meet the next set of foster parents. The linoleum floors stretched before him like a yellowed map of disappointment, the walls closing in with their peeling paint and faded institutional green, as if the very building had given up on hope long ago.

Which one were they — the thirteenth? The fourteenth? It didn’t matter. Numbers blurred together in his memory, each set of faces a new variation on the same theme: forced smiles, nervous glances, the unspoken question hovering in the air like dust motes in a sunbeam — What’s wrong with this boy?

He would make sure they returned him to the orphanage themselves, or he would run away. That was the pattern, etched into his bones. Andrew had mastered the art of self‑sabotage with the precision of a clockmaker — every gesture calibrated, every word chosen to push them away before they could hurt him first. He’d learned that lesson early: attachment was a trap, love a fragile glass ornament waiting to shatter under the weight of neglect.

Andrew would never stay there. He didn’t believe that these “parents” would be any better than the dozens of others he had seen — the ones who’d flinched at his silence, recoiled from his stillness, misunderstood the storm brewing behind his eyes. They’d all wanted the child they’d imagined, not the one who actually stood before them: a boy with shadows in his gaze and scars on his soul that no one bothered to ask about.

He was already 12 — old enough to understand the cruel arithmetic of the system, young enough to still feel the ache of longing beneath the armour he’d built. His personnel file was thick, swelling with notes about unstable behaviour and cruelty, outbursts of anger and a tendency to violence — words scrawled by adults who’d never tried to see him, only the problem he represented. Each notation was another nail in the coffin of his worth, another reason for families to hesitate, then decline.

Why did these idiots agree to take him in at all? The thought burned bitter in his mind. Didn’t they see that Andrew was nothing but trouble? A headache. A liability. Surely they just wanted to collect benefits for him, or perhaps they saw him as some kind of project — a broken thing to be mended, a challenge to their patience and virtue. But Andrew wouldn’t let himself be hurt anymore. He’d wrapped himself in layers of ice, convinced that coldness was the only way to survive.

They were waiting in the small visiting room — a man in a too‑bright polo shirt, a woman with a forced smile that didn’t reach her eyes. The table between them held a plate of store‑bought cookies, a peace offering that felt more like a test.

Andrew stood in the doorway, his posture rigid, his expression a mask he’d perfected over years of practice. He met their hopeful stares with a gaze as flat and unyielding as a winter lake.

“You will regret deciding to adopt me,” he said, the words falling from his lips in a cold, emotionless voice that carried the weight of every broken promise he’d ever known. His empty eyes remained impenetrable — windows to a place they would never understand, a fortress built brick by bitter brick to keep the world out.