Without the Truth

Chapter 4

There were three children at dinner that night. Aviana sat at one end of the table. I sat to her right, and across from me sat someone I never would have expected to join us. It was the girl who had been at my apartment just yesterday. She had introduced herself as Olive but hadn't spoken since. I didn't ask questions. I figured it would be better to keep to myself until I knew more about what was going on. The other two included a little Asian girl who couldn't be more than six, wearing a simple pink shirt and dirty jeans, and a boy around the age of nine or ten with shaggy brown hair in an old pair of sweatpants and a too big t-shirt.

As I began to take a bite of the mashed potatoes Aviana had made, the man from earlier entered the small dining room and took the chair opposite Aviana. "Nova, this is my twin brother, Adriel." He nodded in my direction before digging into his meal.

His dark hair fell into his eyes as he ate quickly and disappeared back into his room. When the rest of us finished eating, I helped Aviana clear the table and offered to dry the dishes. She had done so much for me, it was the least I could do. The younger boy and girl left. Aviana explained that they usually just came for dinner, and sometimes lunch on weekends. They didn't have much food at home and when they did, it was either expired or almost inedible. School lunches were the only things they ate until she had offered them home-cooked meals whenever they needed.

Olive had disappeared almost as quickly as Adriel had. As soon as the bedroom door shut behind her, Aviana turned to me. "I'm sorry about them. Adriel doesn't exactly like new people. He isn't normally like this I promise." She paused as if wondering if it was okay to tell me what she was about to. "Olive has just had a rough life and I'm doing everything I can to make it better, but she's just so closed off. She won't talk to anyone about her past, not even Adriel, and when someone brings it up, she flinches and contracts almost like she's physically in pain."

We sat down in the living room as she began Olive's story. "We don't know everything about what happened, just bits and pieces that we've put together. Her mom was a teenager in a small town, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old at the time Olive was born. Olive was born prematurely and put into foster care. For a few years, she went from one foster care home to another. She wasn't an easy baby. Or toddler for that matter. Her tantrums were terrible and once she started crying, there was nothing you could do to stop it except wait for her to get tired and fall asleep.

"We met her when she was four. Adriel and I were seventeen and we had been placed in the same foster home as her, but we had never planned on staying there long. Just long enough to gather ourselves again before running away and starting our new life as soon as we turned 18, but there was a problem. In the few short weeks we were there, Adriel made a friend. He was never very social, but when it came to Olive, he loved it. Despite the thirteen year age difference, the two of them became best friends. He love playing dress up with her, braiding her hair, or even just coloring pictures. Every night, he would read her a chapter of 'Charlotte's Web.' He was the only one who could get her to stop crying.

"We thought about bringing her with us, but we knew we couldn't. There was no way we could take her with us and still start a new life." She rubbed her thumbs together in her lap. "After that, everything went downhill for her. Her behavior became more erratic and they couldn't control her. She had to be physically restrained when throwing a fit so that she wouldn't hurt anyone, including herself.

"Despite all that though, she was crazy smart. Adriel never finished reading her 'Charlotte's Web,' so she she decided to teach herself to read. She wrote us letters every week as soon as she could write. By the time she was five, she was reading 'The Secret Garden' and all kinds of classics before moving on to 'The Iliad.' Even though her life had barely gotten started, she understood the world better than most adults."