Chapter 1:
The News
My mother’s words kept repeating in my head. I couldn’t think straight. Tears began to fall down my face. I didn’t want to believe it. I ran up to my room and slammed the door. I cried and cried and cried. It wasn’t true, I wouldn’t fall for it. It was crazy talk. There was no way we could afford it. If they couldn’t afford to finish our kitchen then how could they afford another needy teenager? It was worse enough that they decided to foster a child, but adopt one, really?
I heard a knock on the door. I yelled for whoever it was to go away. Zach walked in, he looked upset. I hadn’t even thought about how he must have felt. He came over and sat on my bed. He wrapped his arm around me. We just sat there for what felt like an eternity.
He leaned away and said “Emma, I know this is going to be hard, it is going to be hard for everyone in your family, including me, but we will be happy in the end, I promise.”
“This is going to be the most life-changing thing I will ever go through, and I am not a huge fan of change,” I replied, still sobbing.
“It’s going to be tough but we will get through it,” I saw a tear roll down his face.
He hugged me again, and then left.
I sat in my room for a while, not doing much, but I just sat on my bed thinking. I wasn’t sleeping I wasn’t listening to music or watching TV, I was just sitting there. Before I knew it my mother was calling me for dinner. I walked down the stairs to find only my parents sitting at the table.
“Where is Zach?” I asked.
“He is sleeping over Chase’s house, sit down,” my mother replied.
I sat down, I could feel my cheeks burning, I couldn’t help but to be a bit nervous, what could they need to talk to me about, did they know my secret? Everything I had said or done wrong was whirling through my head. After what felt like a million years my mother spoke up.
“Emma, we are worried about you, why did you run away when we told you Zach was staying, we thought you would be happy.”
“Well it’s not that I don’t want him to stay, but it’s just such a life altering thing. I didn’t know what to say or how to respond, I couldn’t think of anything to say. How do you think I was supposed to react?”
“I’m didn’t know how you would respond but I surely didn’t think you would jump up and bolt up to your room!”
“I am sorry, that was very inappropriate of me, it was very rude, I promise not to do it again, as long as you don’t adopt another 14 year old. It was just too much for me to take in. I truly thought him staying here was temporary. It just astonished me and I didn’t exactly want him to see me have a tantrum.”
“I understand, well I don’t because I have never gone through this but I now realize this is a bigger deal to you than it is to me. If you aren’t comfortable with him staying then say the word and we can give him back to foster care.”
“NO! I don’t want to do that. He seems really happy here. It’s not that I don’t want him to stay, but it is going to take some getting used to. I wasn’t bothering to get to know him at all because I thought he would be leaving in the next year or two, but now I will start to become closer to him, now knowing that he is my “brother”.”
“Well, that sounds good to me. Would you like to invite Rachel over, I feel like she hasn’t been over in ages.” My mother said with the sound of cheeriness in her voice.
“Sure,” I said and I walked up the stairs to call Rachel.
When I got upstairs to my room I plopped on my bed and grabbed my phone. I called Rachel’s number. She picked up and we made plans for her to pick me up with her older brother and his friends and we could go to the mall. I still had to get a few people a Christmas present. While we were there we saw Zach and his friends. Luckily seeing that we were with a group of brawly seniors, they didn’t bother us. We went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch then we split up with her brother and went on our way. We did our shopping, then while waiting for Rachel’s brother, Sam, we ran into Zach and his gaggle of friends again…
