Over, Gone, and Lost

P A R T 2

She sat there replaying her life like a movie in her head for about three hours. She sat on the bench she often sat at. She remembered the first time she was moved from the orphanage, she wasn't being adopted, they just didn't have enough room anymore and needed her to go to foster care.

She was about seven at the time. From seven to eighteen, Caroline was in sixteen different foster homes. Some big, some small, some abusive, some not abusive. None of them ever good and none of them ever loving. The longest she was ever in a foster home was when she was thirteen. She lived with the Mires for twelve months. She wasn't abused by them but she later found out that that was because they were too busy selling drugs from their garage to pay her any mind.

She didn't have a lot of friends in school because she was always shy, there was no specific reasoning for it but she just was. She read her books and did her homework. In high school, Caroline was in line to be valedictorian thanks to her grades but when Melissa Reynolds threatened her to step down from it she stopped handing in her homework and skipped a few classes to lower her grades and attendance.

She was never a people person, she never wanted attention and she never wanted anyone to know her life story. She just wanted to get through one day where no one was ever mean to her or where she didn't feel completely and utterly alone.

She was so close to having a life like that when she met Augustine. He treated her well, they were good friends for two years and she was beginning to open up to him just as he had always done to her. She knew his life story and slowly but surely he began to know hers too. The only issue is that Augustine's life, like Carolines, was nothing close to perfect. When Agustine was sixteen, he lost his future in football when he tore his ACL and shattered his knee. He began to drink, do drugs, skip school, get in fights, and so much more.

Caroline tried to be there for him, tried to show him that he had something to live for, a future. But Augustine was stubborn so one night on his way home from yet another party, he decided to drive drunk. Not just drunk but plastered. When he wrapped himself around a pole Caroline's heart broke. About a week after his death the report of his autopsy was publicized and she found out he had the highest alcohol levels the city had ever seen anyone have. She knew at that moment that he did it on purpose.

As wrecked as she was, she felt she had to live for him, she felt that she couldn't follow in his footsteps, at least not yet. She had to try to live and be happy. When she graduated high school she told herself she did it for him. When she got accepted to the community college for nursing close to her home she told herself it was for him. When she graduated from there and got a job at the local nursing home, she told herself it was for him.

But she never told herself anything she ever did was for herself. Maybe that's where she went wrong, she thought to herself as she watched a few cars pass by on the bridge. Maybe she went wrong when she never told anyone about the numerous men that molested and raped her growing up in foster homes. Maybe she went wrong by not trying to reinvent herself when she turned eighteen like some of the other foster kids she met. Maybe...

Maybe didn't matter now. She was done. She had enough. Caroline Smith accepted her fate with a deep breath. She let the last bit of fresh ocean water enter her lungs before she got up and stood up on the ledge of the bridge. 

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676 words