Promised Land

[2] Are People Really This Weird, Or Am I The Odd One Out?

The amaryllis hasn't died yet. Ranboo doesn't know what to call it other than a miracle of God that he hasn't managed to kill it by accident, but it shows no sign of withering whatsoever.

It's been a month. David, Allison and Sarah had all been adopted by good families, but a small girl named Charlie was brought to the orphanage by their absent social worker from the state. He never stays too long when he brings kids, unless Sister Anne is around and he tries to flirt with her.

It never works. But it's amusing to watch, at least.

Summer has officially started. Even though classes don't end, the Sisters give them longer breaks after studying and learning. Gardener Lou finds the old plastic pool and fills it up with water on hot days, and the younger kids gleefully splash around in it and enjoy snacks of watermelon and strawberries and blueberries from the garden.

Ranboo doesn't join them. He spends most of his free time by himself.

It's hard to relate to the kids-- he's a teenager-almost-adult, the second-oldest is Christian, who is eight, but still has a cute baby face that could trick any family into thinking he's an angel when he's far from it.

Charlie is one of the kids he can relate to the most. She's smaller than the other girls, despite being the new oldest kid at nine years old, and her ginger hair is tied off in nice braids that the nuns do. She doesn't wear shoes, doesn't talk, and stays away from the other kids, her face buried in a book or something else to keep her occupied.

The nuns didn't say anything about Charlie when she was introduced to the kids. But Sister Anne did drop it a few times to Ranboo that poor dear, lost all her family, no one else to go to, and he can put the puzzle pieces together on his own.

Still, Ranboo is on lifeguard duty with the kids one bright sunny day, as the Sisters have to deal with another family coming to adopt, and Charlie sits with him under the patio umbrella with a coloring book.

She's scribbled out the faces of the family on one page with black crayon. The little girl in-between the family has orange colored hair.

...Yeah, he didn't want to unpack all of that, so he turned back to the small kiddie pool, keeping his eye out, making sure no one drowns while also keeping a few eyes down on his own book. It's about some dystopian world, but the nuns saw it was catholic and let him borrow it from the library, so it's a little more entertaining than the saint books he's been getting pushed towards.

It's still awfully boring, compared to other books. He was on page seventy-two of The Hunger Games at the library, and his mind keeps wandering back to it. What will happen to Katniss? What is up with the world they're in?

"Ranboo!" Christian cries out, and his head shoots up at the sound of his name. Charlie flinches, too, but she doesn't move. "Elizabeth stole the water gun!"

"Whatever happened to sharing is caring , Christian?" Elizabeth bites back. The pool toys are old and probably have collected a little bit of mold, but that doesn't stop the kids from shooting each other with water. He's amazed that the nuns let the kids play with something like a water gun when other toys in the playroom are not related to weapons. "You've had it for like, ten minutes already, it's my turn!"

"You stole it!"

"No I didn't!" Elizabeth aims the water gun and shoots it at Christian's face. He screams.

Ranboo isn't getting paid enough to deal with the younger kids-- scratch that, he doesn't get paid at all. He buries the library book under a pile of towels to keep it from getting wet and walks over to the kiddie pool to deal with the unnecessary drama.