If you’ve never tried to get a six-year-old ready for school while living in a family shelter, let me paint you a picture. It’s like trying to run a small airport where all the passengers are emotional, the security checkpoint is shame, and you’re doing it all with one sock missing and a prayer that today won’t be the day everything falls apart.She held up one pink sock with a sparkly unicorn and one white sock that used to be white about three weeks and a hundred laundromat cycles ago. I stared at those mismatched socks like they were evidence in a crime I couldn’t quite name.

Ezoic
“It’s a bold fashion choice,” I said, forcing brightness into my voice. “Very ‘I make my own rules.’”

Laya smiled, and for exactly half a second, I forgot where we were.

Then the heavy metal door of St. Brigid’s Family Shelter swung open behind us, letting out a rush of overheated air that smelled like industrial disinfectant and institutional oatmeal, and reality slapped me back into place.