The Day The Earth Fell

Chapter 1

I sat in my room which I shared with nineteen other bodies. Nineteen other people breathing and intoxicating the same air on which I rely on to live. Nineteen other girls just like me, Quinn Beckett, who have been ditched, separated, or orphaned from all of their family.

It had only been 4 years since I moved into Mary Adam's Home Of God, and I have despised the majority of my time here. Unfortunately the decision of where I reside through my teenage years does not belong to me, but a much greater force, who seemly hates my guts.

My parents, shot dead on January the forth 2004, left me alone at the age of six to helplessly travel from orphanage to orphanage until I got adopted or kicked out. I have one year, 4 months and 12 days until I turn eighteen and can finally leave the tedious journey of living life as a orphan. It seemed so far away, and as I stared out of the window next to my bed, I pondered what it would be like finally living alone, finally being somewhat free from a structured life, finally making my own choices for once.

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In an orphanage it is rare to see a helpless little kid befriend another, mostly due to the fact that if you where not a cute little baby who would be adopted in a matter of months, you had missed the boat to be chosen, and were forced to move from place to place leaving everything you know behind every, single, time. Yet somehow I had befriended a helpless kid who had suck with me all through my time in my 'adoption failure' of a life. Janet Picklerman, whose parents had simply left her on the steps of a home, no note, no nothing.

Janet has Down Syndrome. Her face looks like Down Syndrome, that is all. Everybody thinks she is mentaly retarded, adopting mothers thought she was mentaly retarded, the adoption service again made the terrible assumption that Janet Picklerman was completely mentaly retarded, but, she is not.

Most that carry D.S are in fact mental troubled, but there are the few that's minds still function like you and I, and their face just looks different. My friend Janet happens to be one of them and her whole life has been forced to revolve around the fact that she inevitably looks retarded. That is why her parents left her, that is why she was not adopted, that is why she became depressed, that is why I befriended her.

Today, the third of April is Janet's seventeenth birthday and I bought her a present. It is only a little gift as I only have about two-hundred dollars to my name, I actually found it in a dump when I went for my morning run. It was a little old and rusty so I painted it with a light blue paint that I found in the basement; wrote her name on the back in the neatest handwriting that a I could force myself to compose and wrapped it in an old newspaper that one of the other nineteen girls had finished with.

"Happy Birthday!" I whispered to Janet as the clock chimed twelve.

Janet stirred in her bed her long brown hair flopping onto her face. She was a tall girl, maybe five foot nine or ten, and had the most beautiful hair that reached her waist if she leant back slightly. Jan always keeps up with the latest fashion trends by altering the clothes she already owned with the sewing machine, she is quite handing with that thing, for my tenth birthday she made my a whole bed set in my favourite colours.

"Go back to bed you loser!" She whispered back, twitching her eyes open slightly.

"C'mon Janny! I got you a present." I said, but to my despair she didn't move an inch. "I guess you don't want it then."

Janet then sat up slightly in her bed with her new found energy and looked me over, searching for her gift.

"Give it here you annoyance!" She giggled.

I handed her the gift, trying hard not to let the newspaper that surrounded the objects crinkle too much that it would wake the other girls. Janet Picklerman slowly ripped open then paper and stared at the old army radio that sat in her hands. She then got up and headed towards the communal bathrooms.