Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

One had a picture of a woman wearing flight goggles, with an old fashioned airplane in the background behind her. All of the stamps looked old – perhaps as old as I was. I turned on the computer and checked a database of stamp issue dates and found that I was right. They had been printed thirteen years ago.
    Someone had taken quite a bit of effort to make it seem like my present had been packaged, addressed, and stamped over a decade earlier. That, however, was ridiculous. How would the sender have known where I’d be living? During the last thirteen years, I’d gone through dozens of sets of foster parents. Besides, my experience has been that the number of stamps it takes to send a package increases without warning or pattern. (The postage people are, I’m convinced, quite sadistic in that regard.) There was no way someone could have known, thirteen years, ago, how much postage it would cost to send a package in my day.
    I shook my head, standing up and tossing the M key from the computer keyboard into the trash. I’d stopped trying to stick the keys back on – they always fell off again anyway. I got the fire extinguisher from the hall closet, then walked back into the kitchen, which was not quite thoroughly billowing with smoke. I put the box and extinguisher on the table, then picked up a broom, holding my breath as I calmly knocked the tattered remnants of the drapes into the sink. I turned on the water, then finally used the extinguisher to blast the burning wallpaper and cabinets, also putting out the stove.
    The smoke alarm didn’t go off, of course. You see, I’d broken that previously. All I’d needed to do was rest my hand against its case for a second, and it had fallen apart.
    I didn’t open a window but did have the presence of mind to get a pair of pliers and twist the stove’s gas valve off. Then I glanced at the curtains, a smoldering ashen lump in the sink.
    Well, that’s it, I thought, a bit frustrated. Joan and Roy will never continue to put up with me after this.
    Perhaps you think I should have felt ashamed. But what was I supposed to do? Like I said – I couldn’t just hide in my room all the time. Was I to avoid living just because life was a little different for me than it was for regular people? No. I had learned to deal with my strange curse. I figured that others would simply have to do so as well.
    I heard a car in the driveway. Finally realizing that the kitchen was still rank with smoke, I opened the window and began using a towel to fan it out. My foster mother – Joan – rushed into the kitchen a moment later. She stood, horrified, looking at the fire damage.
    I tossed aside the towel and left without a word, going up to my room.
    “That boy is a disaster!”
    Joan’s voice drifted up through the open window into my room. My foster parents were in the study down on the first floor, their favorite place for “quiet” conferences about me. Fortunately, one of the first things that I’d broken in the house had been the study’s window rollers, locking the windows permanently open so that I could listen in.
    “Now, Joan,” said a consoling voice. It belonged to Roy, my foster father.
    “I can’t take it!” Joan sputtered. “He destroys everything he touches!”
    There was that word again. Destroy. I felt my hair bristle in annoyance. I don’t destroy things, I thought. I break them. They’re still there when I’m finished, they just don’t work right anymore.
    “He means well,” Roy said. “He’s a kindhearted boy.”
    “First the washing machine,” Joan ranted. “Then the lawn mower. Then the upstairs bath. Now the kitchen. All in less than a year!”
    “He’s had a hard life,” Roy said. “He just tries too hard – how would feel, being passed from family to family, never having a home…?”
    “Well, can you blame people for getting rid of him?” Joan said. “I –“
    She was interrupted by a knock on the front door. There was a moment of silence, and I imagined what was going on between my foster parents. Joan was probably giving Roy “the look.” Usually, it was the husband who gave “the look,” insisting that I be sent away. Roy had always been the soft one here, however. I heard his footsteps as he went to answer the door.
    “Come in,” Roy said, his voice faint, since he now stood in the entryway. I remained lying on my bed. It was still early evening – the sun hadn’t even set yet.
    “Mrs. Sheldon,” a new voice said