California Sunshine

You know that old saying; "You don't know what you have until it's gone?" Well, you can't truly appreciate what it means to lose the pieces of your life that matter the most. Like a kind and loving family. Or a warm and cozy house.

That is, until they are gone.

It was the morning of my fifteenth birthday, June 22, 2017. The day of the earthquake. The day I lost everything that mattered. I still remember the way the ground shook, the sound of glass breaking, and the complete darkness. I was on one side of the house and my parents and little sister were on the other.

I was trying to make my way over to them when suddenly, half of the ceiling, the part my family was under, collapsed, trapping them beneath. I saw the stillness and quietness of my family's bodies under the ceiling, the part I remembered most about that night. I still can't get the image of my mother's lifeless face smothered under my home's broken ceiling.

At that moment, the earth stopped quaking and the house was silent, just like my family's still hearts. I knew that was the moment I needed to call for help. When the paramedics arrived, they escorted me out of the house because I couldn't bear to leave my family behind. I was never to see my home or family again.

Never again will I walk up and down the familiar neighborhood streets that I'd grown to love. Never again will I attend the school I knew for the past year, Easton High. Never again will I play for the Easton High girls softball team. Childhood friends seem like a distant memory.

Gone. Gone. Gone. 

"Cold and watery oatmeal mush," Elena rolls her eyes, playing and stabbing at the food in front of her. "My favorite."

As much as I want Elena to be wrong, I know she isn't. The oatmeal is cold. And mushy.

Its the breakfast that gets served every morning here at Sunshine Kids, the girls home I've been staying at the last two years of my life.

So yeah, I'm seventeen now, and still yet to be adopted. It makes me sad, and I always wonder why. Elena tells me it's because we're too old and people only want the cute, little girls. She thinks there's no hope in us ever getting adopted, but I believe she's wrong.

This is where Elena and I are different. Elena is always sarcastic and negative, and I'm always optimistic; a glass-is-half-full kind of girl.

I think about the name of the girls home, Sunshine Kids. The irony is, I'm the only happy girl here. That's how I earned my nickname, "Sunny".

After breakfast, Elena and I exit the dining room and walk inside the classroom inside the girls home. It's where we spend most of our days, learning. There are not very many people left in the facility, just six other girls, Elena and me, and the teacher.

After our daily Pledge of Allegiance, our teacher, Mrs. Martin, tells us that today, we will be doing something fun and different: an art lesson.

A happy, excited feeling rushes through me when Mrs. Martin gives us this news. Art was my favorite subject at Easton High, and I miss drawing and being able to express my creativity.

Mrs. Martin hands out a piece of paper and number two pencil to each of us and tells us to draw what matters most to us in life. After a long while, I decide I'll draw a man and a woman. I draw each in fine detail, using everything I picked up from the advanced art class I took my sophomore year at Easton High.

When I'm done, I feel proud of capturing each curve of the woman's body, the shape of her crossed legs, her leaned body against the man sitting next to her. The man whos holding her hand, fingers intertwined with hers. The man whose lips have met her lips, and the most important of all, the unspoken part of the picture: the love and happiness each share.