Someone to stay

~ Back To The... Past ~

Pov Beca

¦Flashback, Astoria - Oregon 1999¦

- Wake up rotten dwarf! You've got to clean up that dump of toilets!

I feel my shoulder shaking so violently that if it continues I'd risk falling out of bed. I just want to sleep, why don't they ever leave me alone?

- Look at her, she still sleeps with her thumb in her mouth! Suck it, Mitchell! Get up now or we'll worry about making your day a living hell.

Every day is like that. Abigail, and the other ducks around her, reserve this special alarm clock for me. They are the oldest, they are already 14 years old. While I, well, I'm just a 10 year old gutter, forced to stay in the institute for as long as I know.  Sometimes I try to assert myself, to have a bit of courage to face them, but every time it happens that, I find myself with shoes scattered throughout the garden, or socks full of toothpaste, or those few clothes that I have, covered with soil and mud. I have often tried to talk about it with those in charge, with Mr. Marshall and Miss Trainor, but they never believed me, or they always thought that were jokes made in good faith. But those harpies have nothing good about them, I've never been able to understand why they're targeting me, or whoever is my friend. No one talks to me anymore, Stella was my friend, but she hasn't spoken to me in a while. They started to spite her too, and from then on, we didn't do any more recreational activities together.  For children of my age there are no jobs to do, we are “baby” for that. The institute provides for us moments of play, physical activity and of course, gives us compulsory schooling. For the older children instead, are established activities that have as their aim to contribute to the maintenance of the institution, so cleaning activities, order, some also help in the kitchen. These programs should increase the sense of responsibility in the older ones, which unfortunately does not happen to all.  And a clear example is this sect of bitches who don't leave me alone. I know I shouldn't say bad things since I'm 10, but being in here is inevitable.

Today it seem I have to clean the bathrooms, which they should actually take care of, but they force me to do so. Once I tried to oppose it and there's no point in explaining how it ended. They locked me in the crapper for hours until two older girls came to get me out because had heard my crying hiccups. I can't help but live by the day and expect everything from them now. I always hope that a lightning bolt can strike in full, or that a roof tile can fall on everyone's head. It would be a dream, and also a miracle, as far as I'm concerned.

I glower at them and get out of bed slipping my feet into the shoes. In all this, they keep looking at me and smiling wickedly, while I walk to the chest of drawers near the window and pull out my clothes. I just hope they leave, I don't want to get change in front of them.

I feel someone approaching my shoulders and bending down to reach my height.

- We want you at the toilets in 5 minutes. If you don't show up, you know what happens.

Damn Abigail. I answer her with a faint voice nodding slightly, I also doubt that she heard me.

- Okay...

Everyone leaves the room and I exhale a heavy sigh that I didn't think I'd held back. I can't wait to grow up and get out of here. I pull out of the drawer a piece of paper on which every morning, I put a sign indicating a new day spent in this hell. It is since I learned to write that I do, in the hope that one morning, waking up, I do not find myself in this shitty place, surrounded by white walls and bunk beds, but in a room of my own, with drawings hanging on the walls and colored curtains to cover the window. It may seem stupid, but I would love to savour the normality of the world out there, even for a single moment. Understand what it means to have parents who take care of you, go to school with the yellow bus and have friends to go home with, so you can spend the afternoon playing. It sounds very cliché but it's the truth. Those few films that we have seen during our recreational hours have only worsened our survival in this place.  Happy children, perfect families, it almost seems like the ideal world out there. So much to underline how the world in here sucks. Unfair.