The Halfseas: Three Missing

Chapter Three

LEO

Being the troublesome person I was I knew that I probably was going to have at least couple of detentions on the trip, but getting it on the first day was just surprising. Sure I had punched Conner in the face, but the guy was being a real jerk. I would consider myself a tough kid, but my one soft spot is conversations about parents, so when Conner came up to me and asked me what kind of parents I had, "sending me to school with ripped up shorts and a stained t-shirt", he was just asking for a punch in the face.

I know that saying that makes me sound like a wimp, but you would understand if you were in my situation. In the 11 years that I've been alive, I've had three sets of foster parents and one set of real parents. It didn't start out that way; until I was three I had a pair of loving and kind parents. Then, on a trip to the beach, they both ended up drowning. I was put into foster care, and I've been in it ever since.  Even though my current foster parents are the best I've ever had, they still barely spend a penny a year on me. Their instant solution to saving even more cash off of me was to send me away to BTS, since then they wouldn't have to pay for my food and stuff like that for at least half of the school year.

I let my thoughts drift back to the detention classroom. Though the rest of the school seemed shiny and brand-new, the room I was now in was dirty and grimy with pieces of gum plastered all over and sharpie stains on the desks and walls. The room reminded me of the gum wall I saw when I was living in Seattle with my second pair of foster parents. The parts of the room that weren't covered in gum were even more disgusting; crusted with mud and dust, and the only way you could see out of the room was a tiny window which was covered in thick cobwebs. The room looked as though it hadn't been cleaned in at least twenty years.

The teacher who had brought me in had left me in there thirty minutes early, and I was starting to get really of bored when a slightly skinny girl with wavy brown hair, blue eyes, and a bathing suit walked in along with a bearded man. He made sure she was inside, locked the door, and then left, not saying a single word.

"Leo, is that you?" The girl asked me, suddenly.

"Yep, that's me," I answered her, surprised that she knew who I was.

"So you still can't go a day without getting in trouble," She asked me.

"I guess so," I answered, laughing a little, "How do you know me anyway?"

"We used to go to school together in 4th grade, remember?" She reminded me, "We had Mrs. Ternep, and you kept calling her Mrs. Turnip and getting in trouble for it."

"Oh yeah," I said, suddenly remembering. The year that I had been I the fourth-grade year was been one of my favorite years since I had become an orphan. I was with my second set of foster parents back then and during fourth grade they had just let me do whatever pleased me, as long as I got an after-school job. I had a lot of fun with Mrs. Ternep too, even though she made me skip at half of the recesses.

"I'm Lily by the way," The girl told, "Anyway, what did you do to get in detention this time? Are you calling teachers names again?"

"No, I punched a kid in the face," I said, slightly embarrassed.

"Jeez Leo," Lily snapped, surprising me, "I thought you were a nice kid in fourth grade, but I think you've changed. Punching people in the face, what kind of jerk does that?"

"Well, he deserved it," I said to her.

"Just like you deserve detention," She snapped back.

"You don't get it. He was teasing me about my parents."