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I fish my phone out of my pocket and toss it onto the blankets. “No.”

We both look at each other. Felicity fiddles with their ear, the days-old stitches holding the split parts of their earlobe together. The scratches I left on their jaw and neck aren’t bandaged anymore, but they’re still red and angry, dark scabs cutting a line through their skin. I figure they’ll have to cover that up before dinner, too.

“Long story and shit luck.” They’re the one that breaks eye contact first, attention flitting back to the TV. Some guy with a seventies mustache is glaring at his typewriter. “If you tell anyone this, I’ll drop the podcast.”

“Bitch.”

But I don’t stop them, and that seems to be all the permission they need.

“Bad bio family,” they say. “Monsters. Would’ve died if I stayed, that sort of thing.” They talk like they’ve never spoken about this before—trying to find words for something altogether new. “When I was eight, my sister grabbed me in the middle of the night, brought us here, and tried to start over the best she could.

“Then she died.”

They pause like they’re expecting me to say something. I don’t. I’m not good at comforting.

“Things got weird after that,” they eventually continue. “Paperwork was fucked, I had no identifying documents, no way to prove who I was or wasn’t. I didn’t even say my sister was dead, because I figured if they made the connection, I’d have to go back home, and I’d”—they mime wrapping a noose around their throat and pulling it tight—”end up in a morgue by the end of the year. But I ended up in the system instead. Ta-da.”

“And the Keatings picked you?”

“Mentally ill foundlings make great charity cases. All the better to pray over, and they even keep me out of the spotlight because I’m a disgrace.”

I think for a moment.

If my bio parents find out I’m alive, they said.

“You motherfucker.” I hit their arm with the back of my hand. They yelp in surprise. “You should’ve told me this at the Smithsonian instead of the queer thing.”

“Oh my god,” they snort, “I’m not stupid. The next time I’ll see them will be in Hell.”

I glance up to see them with the cross necklace between their teeth again. On the TV, a lady is getting baptized.

“You actually believe in that stuff?” I ask.

“I’d like to.” The necklace falls out of their mouth and hits their chest. “I was actually kind of excited to be adopted by uber-religious freaks for a second. Believing sounded nice.”

“That’s dumb.”

“I’m serious. I wanted to. I really tried. I’m low-key, like, jealous of …”

They gesture at the TV, then the rest of the house.

“Imagine believing,” they say. “Actually believing that something gives a shit about you, that you’re a part of some big plan. It sounds nice.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I’ve never felt that way. Life is cruel, and brutish, and a grit-teeth slog. It’ll get better eventually if I play my cards right, but I can’t imagine all this suffering being for a greater purpose.

“If I believed in Heaven and Hell,” Felicity says, “I think it’d be easier.”

“Then do it.”

“Come on. You know it doesn’t work like that.” To be fair, I didn’t. I’ve never bothered to think about it. “So I’ve just got to keep raw-dogging existence, I guess.”

Turns out the movie really does suck. It’s about a journalist trying to disprove his wife’s religion and finding Jesus in the process. Extremely seventies even though it was made like a decade ago; extremely cringe; the usual. Parts of it are so embarrassing to witness that I start talking to avoid it.

“Turns out Mom doesn’t have the key card,” I mumble. “So now I have to figure out where it ended up.”

Felicity leans in a bit, then pauses, inspecting me. “Is that why you got hit?”

“Going through her stuff?”