WIP

Today is going to be a horrible day, I can feel it. I have felt this way since My seventh foster family took me in about two months ago. I woke to the sound of baby birds chirping outside my window, and a sliver of sunlight that was fluttering through the light pink curtains. I pull back my fluffy faux fur comforter, slip into my slippers, and shuffle to my shower room. I brush my teeth and sigh.

 

When I look into a mirror I don't see who I want to see.

I see the pretty, popular girl everyone seems to think I am. I did not want to be this way; I used to be a tomboy. I ran around with the neighborhood lads. But ever since my parents died I stopped running around and acting like a boy, I grew my hair out. I tried to fit the mold every foster family wanted me to fit.

 

When I was put in foster care, I said I would do anything to get out of it. I didn’t want to be someone passed around, and I didn’t want to be pitied. People didn't listen. So in my mind, I told myself I would never like my foster family, so when I was stuck with a family that only cared about aesthetics. They want to look good for the public and have a good reputation. They hated me at first because I looked so different from their Kids, racially. Then they realized that if they kept me they would be more popular. The only consolation is that they do not know me anyway.

I have a heart-shaped face and flowy long brown hair with brighter highlights. I have coffee-colored skin that is speckled with darker brown freckles. My foster family has fair and perfect skin

 

My teeth are bright white, perfectly straight. my eyesight is infallible. All of the people in my foster family wear glasses. I do cheer and volleyball, but I was pushed into that by my foster mother when I told her I wanted to do track, and she got so mad yelling that any respectable woman would not do track. She also says “when you run you show how out of shape you are” which is her way of calling me fat. She changed me into this..this…thing the gorgeous stereotypical cheerleader. The type that is everyone's type.

“Brianna, you are going to be late!” my foster father yells from downstairs. " Alright, I am coming,” I yell back. I finish brushing my teeth and spit into the sink. Sometimes, I feel like a dog, constantly having to obey someone's orders.

As I walk down the stairs I see pictures and an ache fills my stomach and throbs its way into my heart. All the “family” pictures are of my foster parents and their real kids. I stop for a second and look at the one I look at the most. The background is green grass and a huge oak tree in the middle, with a tire swing hanging. One of their kids is sitting on the tire swing, Ayana the youngest. She is gazing in adoration into the eyes of her older brother who has an arm around her. They are both in their Sunday best, Ayana In a white lace dress with a pink ribbon around her waist. Kayato wears a blue suit coat, white suspenders, and a pink bow tie. His expression is pure happiness as he gazes back into Ayana’s eyes. My foster parents are in the background. Kylie is standing behind Ayana. She is wearing an adult version of the dress that Ayana is wearing, with her arm around Ayana's shoulders. Kaynn, my foster dad is wearing the same thang as Kayato, with his arms around my mom kissing her cheek, a look of pure joy on her face. He had love in his eyes. They had perfect family photos, every time I walk by I feel the bottomless pit of grief that opens up every time I think of my parents. My mom always wanted pictures like the ones in the magazines.

I drag my finger along the top of the golden frame. There was no dust, it figures. Kylie runs a pretty tight household. the smell of waffles greets me. Kaynn has made a stack of them. I walk over to the coat room and get my backpack. I go over to the island and pick up a waffle, I slap a little butter on it and take a bite.

The flavors explode in my mouth. It has been so long since I have had a waffle, my foster mom forbids it for me, but Kaynn makes them for Ayanna. But I eat them when Kylie isn't watching. She believes that I will get fat if I eat them. It makes me mad because she does not care whatsoever about what Ayana eats. “Just what do you think you are doing?” Kylie says standing at the entrance, in a crisply pressed suit with her hands placed on her hips. The expression on her face could have curdled milk.

“Eating” I reply and the second the words are out of my mouth, Kylie’s eyes narrow “You are fat enough. you know what carbs and butter do to your body, don't you? How could you! If you want to be skinny you can't keep eating like that!” She stands there waiting for me to apologize or something. Instead, I grab my water bottle and run out the door. As I step on the bus I hear Kylie yell “don't forget only eat what I packed!” I sigh, pop my earbuds in, and “partners in crime” starts.

I breathe out and close my eyes. I hate busses; they make me motion sick. I am trying to push down the prickling that had started, now is not a time to cry. I hate buses, they make me motion sick, and so do cars. Suddenly I hear the horrible screech of the tires on asphalt and smell burnt rubber. The bus lurches forward and then stops. I can feel my head as it flies and smacks the metal frame of the bus seat. My sight has gone black then I see a white room, I close my eyes and breathe deeply. In and out, in and out, then I do It again for the pain in my head is too much to bear. With each breath, the headache gradually lessens.

“It’s alright,” I heard my mom say, I tried to open my eyes and see her kind and compassionate face, and her brown hair. Unable to suppress the tears any longer I start to cry.

“This isn't real, you died and left me!” I cry harder. She wraps me in a warm hug and I smell her perfume. She buys the one that smells like spring and summer, like flowers after a bit of fresh spring rain and freshly mowed grass in the summer blended to make perfect harmony. I also smell it with a little bit of my dad's sandalwood cologne, the one he always wore.

“It’s fine, you’re alright,” she says as she had always said before when something went wrong, or the exact opposite way of what she wanted it.

Her voice fades and becomes the sound of a waterfall. I hear childish laughter and try to lift my head and look around, instead I find myself in the last memory I had with my parents. The absolute last memory I have been trying to forget since it happened.

We were at our favorite campsite, the one that had a pool and a gentle waterfall, it was surrounded by luscious green trees covered in moss and lichen. The pool was crystal clear, you could see exactly where the sand turned into pebbles. Under the waterfall I see my eight-year-old self in the pool, my dad is on my left and we are having a splashing war. My mom is somewhere making lunch for us all. I try to stop the memory for I already know how this memory ends. Unsuccessful the sides of my vision turn red and the whole memory shakes as the red spirals toward the center of my vision until everything is a shade of red.

I heard a scream and knew without a doubt that that was my mom, this was the moment my world was ripped from beneath my feet. There is a rustling in the underbrush, my dad looks around with fear plain on his face, and there is a tremendous roar that shakes the trees. A big brown bear charges out of the forest. The bear has a patch of skin missing from its arm. He? She? it? Attacks my dad, beyond this I don't know how I survived, or why the bear didn’t attack me. I see my eight-year-old self pass out. I feel confused because I should have passed out. Instead, I can see the part after past me blacked out.

There is confusion as my dad tries to fight off the bear while also trying to make sure that I am alright. As I watch I feel a sense of despair because I am unable to help. The bear pins my dad and positions his slobbering jaws at his throat. Out from where the bear came a boy around my age steps into the square of sunlight, he raises his fingers to his mouth and whistles. As he does this the bear takes a step away from my dad and colors surround it, it is like looking into a kaleidoscope. There was even more confusion, I don't understand anything that is happening.

When the colors recede, there was a female where the bear was, the girl and the boy looked like twins, both had the same blonde hair, green eyes, and athletic builds. The boy had scars that crossed the bridge of his nose, and the girl had a scar that ran from the inside of her elbow to the top of her shoulder.

The boy starts pacing as his eyes never leave my dad's face.

“I don't have it,” my father says weakly “I gave it up.” with this, he started crying, he looked so utterly vulnerable as his hair drooped into his eyes. He looks defeated and alone.

The boy sighs and continues pacing. “If this goes on much longer we will need her,” the boy says in a surprising baritone. he points at me. “No please anyone but her, anyone!” I don't understand the despair in his voice. “You had your chance, you gave it up for love. You thought you could run away instead of telling the elders.”

The female cuts in. “You know the number one rule and you broke it for what? A boring human female?” the girl says as she jeers at him. She leans down and runs her hand through my father's brown hair. I can't help but notice how he flinches at her touch. “Interesting I see…” the female says as the vision cuts out and is replaced with a skull-pounding headache.

My vision is dark. When I wake up I notice that it is dark outside. All around me, there are fragments of the bus and the occasional body. Fear worms its way up from my feet until my heart is pounding. I try to stand but my legs are pinned beneath the side of the bus. I lay my head down in the freezing mud and close my eyes. my head hurts so bad. It is then that I am acutely aware of the sound of someone who was lightly crying the hiccuping sobs had me asking “Where are you? Who are you?” as I blacked out again.

When I wake up all I see is white, as I look around more I see glass covering one wall of the room. Fear like the one in the woods grabs me and no amount of deep breathing will get rid of it. It is then that it hits me, I'm in an observatory room, so that means I’m in a lab somewhere. I look down and my vision turns fuzzy, but through the haze, I see there are leather straps that are holding down my arms, one around my waist and two around my ankles

“oh, she's awake” A patronizing voice greets me and I look up. And nearly gasped out as the pain from my headache had me almost black out again. As my gaze sharpens I can just barely make out a figure from my peripheral vision. The figure was a male, he had a toned body and you could see his muscles through his blue shirt. Then the fear takes an even stronger hold wrapping its icy fingers around my heart. It was the same boy that I had seen in my vision, the one in the woods.

“What am I doing here?” I demand with an effort. My tongue feels like concrete, and I am suddenly aware of how thirsty I am, my head still aches. I began to be aware of a warm trickle down the side of my face. I

The figure chuckles.

“Did you not see what we just showed you? See, we had hoped you would have gotten it.”

He makes no sense. In my mind, I made up that all these people were crazy and I decided to play along.

“So what did you show me?”

“The memory of your parents, of course. Your father is not dead. Oh and that we are not the bad guys.” he sits on the edge of my bed and I can't help but notice how long his legs are. The shock that hits me is too much for me to handle.

“I'm sorry? You are officially crazy! You expect me to believe that my father is alive after all these years!” I say. I feel the hope welling in my chest, no matter how hard I try to stamp it down. Alongside it, I feel the tears rising from my heart. I scoff as I turn my head away from him, and try to stop the tears. He grabs my chin and forces me to look at him. “We are not crazy. And we need you!” there is an urgency in his voice that I have not ever heard before. The plausible explanation would be that they are crazy. Besides I would rather die than do what they want me to do. “Okay then. So be it” he says kind of sadly. After a moment of confusion, I realize that I said that thought aloud. “You will change your mind, I guarantee it,” he says as he walks out of the room.

I close my eyes and try to sort my thoughts. Why would they want me? This also is not the first time they said something like that. In the vision, they said something similar. And if my father was not dead where was he? The question kept pouring through my head like a flood, breaking through the floodgates. Once started almost impossible to stop.

They destroyed every other thing in my head until all I had were questions. My headache returned and I winced in pain and closed my eyes. About twenty minutes later I heard the door creak open and then slam shut. I try to control my rapid breathing, scared of what would happen. As I try to calm myself down, I hear him sit down on the end of the bead. “She's perfect” I hear him murmur. A wave of calm hit me as I recognized my father's voice, then a wave of panic, for I didn't know if this was a trick.

“Just like we said. Not a scratch” another voice says, this time I don't recognize. The person who had the voice was a female, she had a slight Hispanic accent. “Do you think they will actually use her?” my father asks with concern in his voice. “I don't know, love. Either way its not up to you. You forfeited her the second Victoria had her.” the woman says my mother's name with so much disgust it is almost tangible. I want to hit her, how dare she say my mother's name like that? She had guts. I pretend to stir and move my arms against my restraints. I open my eyes slowly and theatrically. When they are fully open I look up and my heart stops. Staring back at me is my father's round freckled face, his green eyes staring into mine.

“Hello, darling.”