Plan B [KNJxOC]

Chapter One: Uphill Battles

Her life had been far from easy. She never had anything tangible, nothing to call her own, and barely anyone to rely on. Leila had to fend for herself from the moment she was born.

Leilas mother was only fifteen when she had her and the only option she had was to give her baby girl up for adoption.

One hundred and forty thousand children are adopted by American families each year. Those were the actual stats, Leila looked them up. Those children go on to have great lives with great parents and everything they ever needed. Unfortunately, Leila wasn't one in a hundred and forty thousand.

She'd somehow gotten lost in the system and never had the good fortune of finding her forever family. That meant that Leila would be passed around from foster home to foster home her entire childhood. Some homes were better than others. Some had nice foster parents and others were only interested in a check. Some had nice fathers and brothers, others, not so much.

They weren't all bad though. At thirteen, she was lucky enough to live with the Garcia's for a whole year. They treated her as their own and she even found a sister in their daughter Lissette who was a year older than her. It was the only time she felt like she belonged somewhere. That was short lived though as Mr.Garcia died and Leila had to be moved again. She would've loved to stay with Lissette and her mother but it wasn't her choice. It never was.

She continued to be moved around until she aged out of the system and got thrown into the world with nothing more than a black trash bag and the clothes on her back. Luckily, she'd always managed to keep in contact with Lissette and moved in with her into a one bedroom apartment. Even though she slept on the couch and the apartment was the size of shoebox; it beat someone stealing her part time earnings or trying to sneak into her bed at night.

That first night at Lizzys she laid on the couch, staring up at the white ceiling. She was unsure of where her life was going to take her now but she was sure of one thing. It was her life and she would never allow the troubles of her past to dictate her future. Leila would make sure she'd give her damn self everything she never had.

"We're going to make it Leila." She whispered to herself. "They don't control us anymore. No one will ever take anything from us again. Not our money, not our security, not our choices. Not ever"

*Eight Years Later*

MARCH

"Lizzy!" Leila called from her kitchen as she poured hot wax into the last candle jar. After a couple seconds she called for her again and still no answer. "Lizzy, I need the jars from the garage! There's too much wax left over and it's going to harden!" Still no answer. "Why the hell do you call yourself my assistant if you don't assist worth a damn?" She mumbled to herself as she stepped over a mess of boxes in her small kitchen. This house was a huge step up from the small apartments she'd lived in but it wasn't very big. It was hers though and that's all that every mattered to Leila.