Coming Home: The Finders Series

CHAPTER 2: THE FAMILY

After the police discovered us and took us to child welfare, the most we could tell them was our names. We could not remember anything about where we were from or how we came to be on the road alone in the middle of nowhere. That was when we got adopted by the Donaldson family. There was Bob and Lil, and they had a son and daughter named Mike and Susan. Bob was an average size man with a dark complexion that he got from working outside all the time. He was a carpenter and had his own remodeling business. He was a strong man but never really showed his strength as a bodybuilder does.

Lil, on the other hand, was a small woman. She had worked as a waitress in her youth and had even worked as a nurse's aide, but now she took care of the house and the family. She had long salt and pepper hair that she generally wore in a braid hanging down to the small of her back. I used to love brushing her hair and trying different styles, but we always ended up in a braid.

Mike was just a year older than I was, and it was common for the two of us to be in some sort of trouble. I don't think a day went by that we were not getting yelled at for some kind of mischief. He was about the same height as I was, but his hair was a chestnut brown and his eyes were a wonderful sea green. He loved having his hair long, a lot longer than mine. When he smiled, mom used to say that you can see the devil dancing in his eyes. It was not until I was much older that I understood what she meant by that. Unfortunately, that meant a lot of time wasted trying to get him to smile so I could see the devil dancing just one time.

Susan was more of a tomboy growing up. She loves to play baseball and football, and she was an excellent runner. We all thought she should go join girls' track, but she never did. She was two years younger than Kim was, and those two were always trying to hang out with us. We would try to ditch them every chance we got, and sometimes it worked.

Mike and Susan both thought that it was neat, all the stuff we could do. Susan especially liked it when we were out in the woods, and Kim would call the animals to us. Susan loved the animals and would always beg Kim to call them around so she could pet them. They were always asking us if there was more we could do, but we really didn't know – that was until Johnny Phelps, the neighborhood bully, started picking on Susan.

See, Johnny was the leader of the neighborhood gang, and they did everything he told them to. Well, this one day, Tony, who is one of Johnny's buds, was picking on this little girl. Susan saw it and made Tony stop. Tony got mad and went to hit Susan, but she ducked his punch and hit Tony in the mouth. This angered him because a girl had bested him. He went to tell Johnny some sort of lie to get his help with Susan.

Johnny was a good 8 inches taller and 60 pounds heavier than Susan. When he started hitting her, she was hurt badly. Well, I saw it, and that was the first time I got angry. Johnny went from standing over Susan and pounding on her to flying through the air and landing on his back. I had not punched him or even touched him. I only thought about pushing him, and he went flying. I was marching right up to the rest of the crowd when the other kids started screaming.  I did not realize that my eyes were glowing. All I knew was that I wanted to hurt Jonny bad. As Johnny got up off the ground, I could tell he was mad, but I think I was madder. What happened next scared everyone, including Susan. A fireball appeared a few feet in front of me and went flying toward Johnny. He jumped to the side and landed in some bushes just in time to miss it. I did not know how I had done it. All I knew was that I was the one who made that fireball.  Now I was scared.

Susan and I started running, and we did not stop until we were back home. Several parents came to the door over the next few days. They were angry and wanted to know what kind of freaks mom and dad were raising. Mom managed to smooth things over by asking, "How can you rationally believe that someone could create fireballs in mid-air and then have them go sailing toward anybody?" Susan and I kept quiet about that one, but I did share the story with Kim. Kim was always up late, and we would talk even though her room was down the hall from mine.  No one ever heard us, so we never got in trouble.

About a week later, Kim, Susan, Mike, and I were in the woods, and I was trying to re-create the fireball, but nothing I did was working. I was afraid that Kim and Mike would think we had made the whole thing up. Susan was the first to mention my eyes glowing. That was the first time I found out that my eyes glowed. I tried to get them to glow again, but not knowing what made it happen the first time meant that I was not successful this time.  Mike became a little more standoffish with me after hearing all this. I guess he was starting to think a bit like the other kids. There were a few more times when I got angry, one of them, I was angry at Mike himself.

"Holy crap!" He said. "Your eyes really do glow! How are you doing it?"

"I don't know! I just know that your attitude of late has me 'angry as all get out right now!' I just want to knock the crap out of you!"

"That must be it! Think about it, you were mad at Johnny, and your eyes were glowing then too. You have to control your anger, or you won't have any friends left at this rate!"

I did think about it, and what he said made sense, at least about my eyes glowing and the connection to my anger. Kim tried getting angry one time, and her eyes started glowing too.  Great!  One more thing that made us different from everyone else.

There was one time when I was able to use my powers, and no one was scared of me. Mike and I were in high school, but the girls were not there yet. The school had a talent show and they were asking kids to sign up if they wanted to perform. I got an idea, and I signed up!

"Are you crazy? You want to be a magician at this talent show! What are you thinking?" Was Mike's response when he saw that I had signed up.

"What are they going to think when I'm signed up as a magician and I levitate on stage, or I tell them what card they picked, or I do any of the things I can do? Will they be scared? Or amazed?"

Mike thought about this for a minute and realize that it would be the one time I could be myself, and no one would hate me for it. He help me make boxes for some "tricks" and even helped me practice so I looked the part rather convincingly. Mom and dad knew what I was up to, but they didn't object. In fact, they bought the first set of tickets for themselves and the girls to come to the show. Mike was my "assistant" so he got in without a ticket. Besides, it made him a little more popular now that he was a magicians assistant, especially with the girls. I had asked Kim to call some doves over so I could use them in the act. I was going to produce them in different ways, and then, while an audience member was holding the cage, the birds would all disappear. Kim said this was a level of cruelty, and she would not do it. So I had to drop that part of the act. It was still a great act that I had put together.

The only thing that really put a damper on the excitement of this show and all was the dreams. Kim and I started having dreams about things, but they didn't make any sense. They were broken images of things that had happened when we were little, but we did not recognize the events or the people in them. We told mom and dad about them, but they could not even help us make sense of these dreams. We ended up just chalking it up to something we ate before bedtime or something like that. If I knew then what I know now, things might've turned out better for all of us, all the way around. That's the problem with not knowing who you are. You never know where you're supposed to be going.

Things went well for us the rest of the time in high school as Kim and I kept our "talents" a secret so that we could have friends. All this time, the dreams and memories kept us feeling like we really didn't belong there. More and more Kim and I were going off alone to just sit and talk about who we were and where we were supposed to be. The Donaldson's were feeling less and less like a family to us, which hurt us in a way because they were the only family we had known.

Mom and dad wanted all of us to go to college, but I decided to take time off from school and wait for Kim so we could go together. When she graduated from high school, she said she was tired of school and wanted to take some time off as well. We decided that we would go to college when she was 20. That way, I could find a job and help with the expenses of college, and she could get her rest from school. We explained this to mom and dad, and they reluctantly agreed. Sadly, college never came for Kim or me. Something would happen they would remove that from the plans forever.