Trouble Times Two

Chapter Nineteen

Christmas Eve

I lay down on my bed as I try to massage the massive headache in my head.

I had twenty assignments left of the forty assigned over the break and I had about a week and a half left to do it. It was more like a week because we were leaving on the second and I also needed to pack.

Jess was gone over the holidays to meet her mystery boyfriend at some sketchy motel in between Remoir and Alevana but would be back on the 1st of January to say goodbye and take care of the house.

I'd be gone for a whole semester, in a random apartment with Donovan and we wouldn't even be living with a host family because there weren't enough families to take everyone in and Mr, or should I say Dr. Howlett had decided that Donovan and I along with Arthur and Courtney were the two best groups to live alone.

At least we'd be in the same apartment complex.

I go to the balcony and look out onto the houses along the street.

It was peaceful, chilly and you can hear the wind howling if you listened carefully. It left a tingle on the parts of my skin that were bare.

The whole street was lit up with Christmas decorations and my measly balcony having fairy lights didn't compare, at all.

I take the fairy lights off and just put them inside.

I got really angry at this time of year because the holidays just reminded me of the ones I didn't have and how I was taken to wilderness.

I lie down on my bed and my mind, against my will, does a stupid flashback to Christmas Eve when I was in 7th grade.

Everyone in the house were being nice to me and they kept raving about how this would be the best Christmas I've ever had and how it would benefit them as well.

They were including me in activities and laughing with me and for once, I felt like my place in the family was being reestablished and I was almost happy for once.

That night, just before the clock struck midnight, a man and a woman came in to my room. It was more like a closet if I'm truthful.

"Hey girl! We're here to take you to your surprise gift, pack some clothes." The woman said and I was a naïve little girl, as we established.

I packed all my clothes, which wasn't many and went with them.

I got into the car and watched as everyone in the house came to the door.

It was too late when I realised.

Aunt Joni had this terrible snarl on her face and by the time I'd tried to open the door, they were locked and I was zoomed away.

We drove for hours and when I say hours, I mean a whole 20 hours.

I had no water breaks, no food while they chomped down on food and laughed the whole way.

I'll never forget their faces.

They were burned in the back of my mind, like a recurring nightmare that would never go away.

I hated wilderness the most out of all three institutions I'd been in for my behaviour and understandably so.

The only reason I got out is because I was a ward of the state, I was a foster child. Unlike other girls in there, whose biological parents gave them up and signed their rights away over them, Joni and Bart couldn't do that. I saved myself from a life there.

When I came back, I wasn't any better. I was worse. I was angry and any teasing my siblings tried to do, ended in them getting a punch to the face or a kick somewhere where it hurt. I had become violent.

The punishment they gave me at the house as nothing compared to the atrocities they made us do in wilderness.

They quickly realised that instead of 'making me better' they made me worse and they knew it couldn't go on any longer so they gave me
up and they're lucky I didn't take them to court.

Sue them for everything they had, for the unlawful ways they 'parented me.'

My dad would probably murder his sister if he saw the way she treated me. Aunt Tara came very close sometimes to just strangling her but for the sake of her children, who were looking after me now, and myself, she constrained herself.

I don't know what I'd do without her, what would any of us do without Aunt Tara or Uncle Carl who still sent me a silly little allowance every month even though I insisted I don't need it.

I hear a knock on my balcony door but ignore it.

My back is turned so I can pretend to be sleeping.

I take a little peek at my clock and it's an hour to midnight, who's bothering me at this time?

"Yeah she's there mom. I can see her. Look." I can hear Donovan and he's clearly speaking to Paisley.

I can hear a shuffle.

"She's sleeping Donovan." Paisley says and I can hear them leaving. Well one of them leaves.

"I know you're awake." Donovan says. "Your body is still like a board, unless you're superhuman, you need to breathe and people tend to move when they sleep."

He really knows how to piss people off.

He's right, of course, but I don't move.

My phone rings and I start to stir and I pick it up.

"You have a choice, Giana and you are going to accept either one of these choices. You either come round to ours tomorrow or you go to the Shepherd's house for Christmas." Maisie is very annoyed. I think she's concerned.

"I don't want to Maisie." My voice cracks and I pull my sheets over my head.

"I didn't realise you were upset, I'm sorry hon. I just don't want you to be alone." I know she's right about that.

"I don't want to see Donovan. I'd love to spend time with the Shepherd's though." I think that maybe I should have told Maisie what happened but didn't really happen. I don't want people knowing someone got under my skin.

Especially him.

"You're going to be on the exchange with him, you're going to have to see him eventually so maybe it would be best to rip the band-aid off sooner rather than later?" She raises a good point and I agree.

"What should I wear?" I ask her and I can hear sigh a breath of relief.

"They're a pyjama family love. You can wear whatever you like." We talk a little longer before I freshen up a little bit and go to their door and knock on it.

Damien opens it and takes me in to the living room.

"I'm so glad you decided to come." Paisley says and I nod.

Damien shows me somewhere to sit and Donovan comes downstairs and sits next to me.

I move away from him a little bit but not enough for anyone else to notice.

Everyone gets a blanket between two and Donovan and I have to share.

Everyone's buzzing about Christmas, about what they want to get, all that jazz.

I don't care, I'm miserable and I'm tired.