O'Shaun

Chapter 1

The air rushed in from the morning winter breeze hitting O'shaun in the face, as Michelle McBride walked in and opened the door to her office. She was a tall blonde woman in her late thirties, dressed in a worn brown jacket with black pants. She had been working for the department of child protective services for over ten years and O'shaun was her long term pet project, he had been in and out foster care since he was four years old.

She looked at him with his legs up on her desk.

"Come on O'shaun, what did I say about that?" She pointed at his feet, Get it off now!" She pushed his legs off. He sat up in the chair pretending like he cared to be there. He was tired, last night he slept out in the streets in a dumpster, underneath old pizza boxes and he smelled of cheese and pepperoni. He put his head in his hands, "how longs this gonna take?" He asked, "I'm sick of this shit."

Michelle looked up at him from the brim of her glasses. "The department warrants you to come here and I am supposed to get you into foster care." She announced shuffling paper on her desk.

O'shaun breathed out a sigh and looked at Michelle's certificates all over the wall.

"What you need to do is stay out of juvenile detention, how about you be sick of that shit?" She shook her head and straightened her glasses again. "Look, I know you've had enough of moving from place to place and family to family, but you're still under eighteen and you have no next of kin. So, since you're in the system we need to try to make sure we can fit you with a good family." Michelle explained.
"Yea, but you always say that shit, then I end up with some old fuckin' prick that wants to molest me" He said angrily as he played with the pencils in the compartment on her desk.
"I know O'Shaun, that wasn't our fault, you know we ran all the checks and nothing came up about him being a paedophile." She justified.
"Well too fucking bad for me then huh? I'm the one who gets woken up every morning to his hand on my dick!" He yelled.
"I'm sorry about that, I asked you if you needed to talk to someone about that, there's help out there, but you always refuse." She yelled quietly. "Come on, you know I'm trying my best to match you to the best family I can. Why don't you let me read the profile of these families? I'm sure one of them will be a great match for you." She said optimistically. She gathered all the paperwork together and stuck it in a folder, "Okay so I have an elderly white couple in San Bernardino." She read.
"Fuck no! I'm not staying out there!" He interrupted.

She looked at him, he was just a kid, a black kid who didn't have a chance in this messed up world, she thought. "First of all, stop cussing and listen to me," She took her glasses off and placed them in front of her on the file.

"It's going to get better okay, I promise. I know you've had some shit families, but I really believe that one of these families will be right for you. Just please give it one more chance."

He looked at the chocolate bar she had on the top of her computer terminal, "you want that?" She looked at it then looked at him, his lips wet from salivating, "here, I don't need any more calories anyway." She snickered and handed it to him. "Now come on, please make my life easy."

He opened the wrapper and scoffed it in his mouth, he hadn't had chocolate in months.

"Okay," she put her glasses back on, "so I have a middle aged black couple, they have two kids but they're out of the house, college I think.

He threw the chocolate wrapper in the bin like he was shooting a basketball. 

"Are you listening to me?" She asked.
"Yea, I heard ya." He answered.
"You got to drop the attitude O'Shaun, and stop with the tattoos, it's not helping you kid." She warned him shaking her finger in front of him.