{ELEMENTISTS OF WILLOW FOREST BOOK V} The Journey Across Water

Don't Care about Care

11: Don't Care about Care

And so began the great care home rundown.

"What," Olivia interrupted, "You've been to more than one?"

"Just a few." Sasha replied slowly and uncomfortably. "Well, maybe a few more. A few more than a few more, if you get what I mean. Actually, quite a few more than..."

"HOW MANY?" The child of Hephzibah demanded.

"Um... Eight?" Sasha answered. "And a half? Plus another two quarters or so?"

Olivia shook her head disbelievingly. "Nine care homes. You've been to nine, I've been to one, and I'm approximately two years older than you. Anyway, weren't you about eight by now? That's nine care homes in four years."

Sasha shrugged. "Actually, it's not that out of the ordinary for here. This is Willow Forest. We are all Elementists. Heaps of us have abnormal background stories. Anyway, there have been a lot more relation-less Elementists wandering around since you..."

"DON'T." Olivia warned. "If you mention it, just once, you won't have a tongue to mention anything else with."

"Fine. Since..." -Sasha coughed twice- "There's been a lot of Elementists wandering around without any relatives that will take them in, so it's not really that strange that we've all been to heaps of care homes."

"No. You just happen to hold the grand record for the most." Olivia retorted.

Sasha ignored her, as Olivia so often ignored her, and gave her a glare worthy of, well, Olivia. "So, I had to sit in some stupid room in a police station, while everyone googled me or searched for me on Facebook and decided where to dump me or whatever. Then, they bundled me into a car and drove me to this small brick shack on the edge of some town hours away.

I looked at it, wondering how on earth I could make it my new home, and what I'd got myself into. It didn't look great. And, although it was still a fairly big building, I wasn't sure if I'd get the biggest room. I started working out a strategy of swapping to make sure I did.

"Don't get too cosy, kid." The policeman in the front of the car said. "This is only for a night. Then we're taking you to your new, permanent location."

I didn't like the sound of 'new, permanent location'. It made me sound like an object, and not a person. Still, it was good that I wasn't going to be staying where I was for much longer. It was a dump, with little kids' toys and sandpits out the front. I wasn't a little kid. I was a whole eight years old. A place for little kids would not be satisfactory, and it wasn't looking any more satisfactory on the inside, either. Instantly, I had a group of snot-covered toddlers clambering over me. I had to eat courgette, drink milk, and sleep on a blow-up bed in the same room as a gooney five-year-old. It wasn't easy getting to the 'bed', either, because all her stupid crayons and dolls were littering the floor. Stupid idiot. And, when I'd finally got to the bed, and decided that I might just be able to survive the one night, some-one called 'Lights out' and left me stranded in darkness with a five-year-old in a room full of Barbies.

Seven o'clock. It was seven o'clock. The dumb fat idiots thought I was still on the five o'clock tea, six o'clock bath, seven o'clock bed schedule. For stupiditititity's sake, I'd been living for three months with Les Serpents' Rouges! I'd been living with about five hours of sleep every day, on and off, in short spells whenever they weren't shooting Dark Wolves!