The House

Chapter Twenty Seven

"You ready?" I asked, my hand frozen mid air centimeters away from the front door. Brogan nodded taking a deep breath and turning back to the door. I knocked on the door, loud enough for it to echo through the house and get someone's attention but not too loud to terrify everyone. Almost a second later the door swung open and we were happily greeted by a cheerful young lady. She introduced herself as the head care worker and welcomed us in. We both followed her into the cosy office room. After a short awkward silence Brogan coughed and started to tell her who he was, "My name's Brogan, I lived here for the first 7 years of my life, I was wondering if you could help me..." He trailed off lost for words. Too many thoughts about his life and questions he had were running through his head.

"Oh! Just a second I'll see if I can find you." She told us, getting up and searching through the metal filling cabinet. "Ah here it is!" She exclaimed pulling a file out and slamming the drawer shut. It made a loud crash making me jump. Sitting back down she opened it up and pulled a picture out and held it up for Brogan to see, "Is this you, hmm?" She confirmed.

"Yeah, I wondered if you could tell me anything about my past, like where-"

She cut him off, "I'm sorry son but we're strictly not allowed to tell anyone, even ex care kids, any information about their past, it's private, I'm sorry but I can't help you." Brogan frowned disappointed.

"Right, well thanks for your help, we'll be off then." He said getting up and going to shake her hand. I quickly got up to and stood there awkwardly as the she shook his hand and went to show him out.

All the kids were line up on the stairs as we walked past, staring at us their eyes beaming. I quickly waved as one of the older ones shuffled down the stairs. "What's going on?" She asked, yawning. "Wait, Brogan is that you?" She gasped, unable to believe her eyes, "Oh it is, wow it must have been what ten years? Why are you back?" She questioned barely stopping to breath.

He looked at her. Memories began to flood back to him. "Amelia?" He asked hugging her tightly. "What happened? Why are you still here? You're sixteen-"

"Tomorrow, I'm sixteen tomorrow." She corrected me. "It's been like forever since I saw you. I still remember that day you left and got yourself adopted I must've cried myself for 6 hours that day. I used to sit over there everyday waiting and waiting for you to come back and then I got used to the fact that you'd gone for good and gave up waiting. You were my best friend, we used to do everything together, remember?" Their voices went on and on for ages. No one bothered to achknowledge me, they had no reason to they were just lost in their own little world discussing the past, present and future. I slowly slipped away into the background. No one noticed me because they were all distracted. I walked over to the nearest door. It seemed to be a dining room. I peered around. Something caught my eye in the corner of the room. I walked over to see what it was and I heard a muffled crying sound. "Hey, what's wrong?" I asked sitting down on the floor next to the child. I put my arm around her and tried to comfort her. "Why aren't you with the others having fun?"

"They don't want me, they don't like me none of them do." She whispered rocking backwards and forth gently.