The Guardian

Chapter Two

Julianna got up late the next day, her sinuses clogged and her eyes swollen from crying so violently the night before. She hurried through her shower and raced out the door, forgoing breakfast to get to school in time. She was late to homeroom, and she was given a late slip that her foster mother had to sign. She sighed. Her foster mother hated her being late for things. She knew that she would get a tongue lashing that evening.

"What's wrong?" asked Lisa as Julianna sat down beside her. "You look like you just lost your best friend." Julianna gave her a sick smile. "You can tell me", she said. "I know you didn't really lose your best friend. I'm still here." She grinned at Julianna.

"It's nothing", said Julianna.

"It has to be something", said Lisa. Julianna's stomach rumbled. "Did you leave without eating breakfast again this morning?"

Julianna's face turned red in embarrassment. "Yes."

"Why didn't you get up earlier?" asked Lisa. She reached into her bag and pulled out a granola bar. She handed it to Julianna under their desks. Julianna thanked her and ripped open the package, and hid it from their teacher as she snuck bites into her mouth.

"I went to bed late last night", said Julianna.

"So why were you crying?"

And Julianna had to come up with something to tell Lisa. Not knowing what else to say, she told Lisa about Aiden paying attention to her, and she told her about her foster mother's response to Aiden's attentions, her belief that Julianna was making it all up. It was the best that she could come up with. After all, she couldn't tell Lisa about her invisible friend.

As she finished whispering what had happened to Lisa, her Math teacher assigned homework and gave them the rest of the period to work on their assignment. He glared at Julianna for talking in his class, and Julianna shut her mouth and started to work on her homework.

Two weeks later, Julianna had decided that she would let herself get into trouble. She was tired of not hearing her guardian when she went to sleep or when she cut herself. She hated not having the connection with him, and not being reminded that she was loved. She had decided a long time ago to be a good girl. She had decided that being a good girl would be the reason that people would like her, that foster families would decide to keep her in their households. But, as she thought about it, her guardian had told her that he would always be there for her. That he would protect her – and being good wasn't an inducement to foster families to keep her. So, she made a conscious decision. She would be bad, and she would force him to come out of hiding to look after her.

She started slowly. Not handing in her English assignment when it was due. It just about killed her when her teacher told her that she was disappointed in her, and that she could have a week's extension on the paper. But nothing happened. Seth didn't appear to make her do her work, and she let the extension pass by as well. She stopped showing up for extra math help, and she stopped doing her homework. Seth didn't appear when she failed her next test, and Julianna decided that she needed to be more obvious about getting in trouble. She stopped being friends with Lisa and started hanging out with the crowd who congregated on the border of the junior high and the high school properties, the border where the smokers hung out. Heart pounding, she bought a bag of weed with her money from the diner. Seth didn't show up that night either, so she asked one of the boys from the high school what she was supposed to do with it. And he told her, without making her feel too stupid. So, she smoked her first joint. She didn't like it much, and Seth didn't come to her anyway.

She snuck out one night and met her friend from the high school. He gave her a beer. She drank it, becoming pleasantly muzzy-headed. Seth didn't come, but neither did she have to cut herself that night. Four months later, Julianna was drinking several beers per day and smoking pot once a week. Social Services pulled her from her existing foster home and put her in another home, and she wasn't allowed to finish her year at the junior high that she was attending. She buried her upset in alcohol, but no matter how hard she tried, she didn't hear Seth again. She kept drinking, more and more per day. After four more years, she was put into a group home for teens suffering from alcohol and/or drug addictions.