Forever Apart (Johnny Cade) {The Outsiders}

One

"We are gathered here today to honor a woman who always put a smile on everyone's faces. She was positive, happy, and only saw the good in people."

They say everything happens for a reason. If something seems like it's not going your way, or there's a bump in the road, it's because it's preparing you, or there's a lesson that you'll understand in the near future. Maybe it's a signal, or an awakening. Whatever it is, it happen for a reason. And usually, when something bad happens and there's no hope, the clouds go away and the sun shines again. I figured that was the message or the lesson. "When there seems to be no hope left..there is much of it..look harder." Something my mom always said to me.

I couldn't have been more wrong. Life only went downhill from there.

My parents were not the best parents. They were always searching for the bottom of the bottle of alcohol in their hand. They never did find the bottom, nor the end of their stash. At such an early age, I witnessed too much of my parents and their drunken life. My mothers ex best friend took me in and I lived a healthy childhood on the other side of New York City. I had a brother a year older than me, but he didn't go with me. He was actually the one who called my aunt and told her to take me away. I never understood why and a sense of hatred was stored inside me.

Deborah gave me more happiness than my actual family, I called her mom right away. She gave me the best life she could. I was in school, I had friends, decent clothes, a roof over my head, and good food. Her health issues did progress though and one month after my seventeenth birthday, she died of a heart attack. I'll never forget the ten years we spent together. It was like living with your best friend.

"Although she never married, she did get her dream of having a daughter."

And there I was, in a beautiful black dress, flats, smeared mascara, and a damp tissue in my hand. I was surrounded by her church friends and a few families who's kids went to the same school as me, but no family. We only had each other when it came to that. On the holidays and birthdays, there was only two of us, but there was never a sense of loneliness, like the pastor said, she found the positive side to it.

I wiped under my eyes and blew my nose as I watched them lower the casket into the ground. My whole life, my reason for happiness was in that casket.

•••

"So, Margaret Winston.."

"Peggy Coleman." I corrected the well dressed man.

"Right." He sat down across from me. "But you are a Winston right?" I shamefully nodded my head. Nothing good came from that name. "It says that on your birth certificate?"

"Where am I going? Are you putting me into foster care?"

"I am under strict orders not to give you to your parents." He informed me, "but you still have one member of your family left and she left a phone number for him."

"Who?"

"Dallas Winston." My jaw basically hit the ground.