Rage

Chapter Two

                   

Most sixteen-year-olds can't remember more than ten years into their past, and if they did then all they could remember would seem like a mesh of images and bits and pieces of playing with their favourite toy or visiting a theme park for the first time. However, for Rachel, anything before her sixth birthday was replaced with a black hole. Any fractions of memories from that period of her life appeared to be wiped clean from her brain. She had no recollection of life before her very first foster home. 

From when she had just recently turned six until only a couple of months later, Rachel stayed with Felix and Phoebe Miller and their two biological children Kathrine and Eddie. Phoebe had convinced her busy husband that fostering a troubled child could help their family grow as a whole. Although Felix didn't understand what some random kid could fix that their own flesh and blood children couldn't, he reluctantly obliged.

The Millers got more than they had bargained for when after countless interviews, a six-year-old brunette with intense anger issues was driving home with them, staring out the window the whole car ride home. Once at the Millers three-room townhouse, Kathrine tried to coax a conversation out of the new little girl, but all she got was a disagreement about which of her toys was the prettiest and a unicorn figurine getting hurled at her head.

After a couple months of having Rachel around, the Millers collectively realized that they didn't need a constantly angry girl around to solve their family problems, and sent her back. She was then moved to wait in a girls' home for a year or so until her next foster family. Although she wasn't fond of the Millers or any other foster family she'd stayed with throughout her few years of moving between households, Rachel didn't view "Lil' Lassie's Girls' Home" as any prize either. The women in charge of the house forced her to share a bunk with a buck-toothed tween girl named Alice who particularly aggravated her with her continuous snoring and the fact that she pronounced her name as "Rashel". 

After being on bathroom clean-up duty at the girls' home for a little over a year, a newly wedded couple accepted Rachel as their foster daughter until they could have a child of their own. Sally and Evan Garcia spoiled Rachel and managed to keep her anger levels decently low. Of course, there were a few bumps here and there when Even would attempt at feeding Rachel the healthier, more vegetarian option for dinner, or when Sally would accidentally spill her plans about donating Rachel's unused clothes.

                The Garcias were by far her favourite foster family until she learned that Sally was expecting a baby and planning to stop fostering her. The fury Rachel felt the day she was told she was being moved from the Garcias was what determined that day as the day she decided that getting too close to others was an extremely bad idea.

No one ever got as close to Rachel as the Garcia's did until her foster sister Elaine when she was in her fifth foster home at the age of thirteen. When Rachel would lose one of the friendship bracelets she liked to make, Elaine would always hold her hand and tap along to the rhythm of their favourite song with her. Elaine didn't see Rachel as a lit fuse waiting to go off, but instead as a flower that needed to be watered and tended to before it wilted.

Although Elaine never made Rachel feel happy, she never pushed her past her limits to the point of lashing out. When around Elaine, she would still feel the presence of anger and madness above any other emotion, but it was more diluted by contentment than it had ever been before.

Elaine and Rachel entered high school together, and when Rachel received an 'F' on her English paper, Elaine drew her back down from her fit of rage by syncing their breathing and humming along to an old Beatles song while holding her close at the foot of her bed. Elaine also introduced her sister to the school's girls' lacrosse team in an attempt to relieve some of her pent-up anger.