𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐀 | Unveiling, uncovering. The Greek notion of truth.
Esmerelda knew everything was going to change the second her super nice foster father suddenly turned into a snake monster and tried to eat her. She just never expected for all of...
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▬▬▬▬▬ CHAPTER ONE ▬▬▬▬▬
ESMERELDA HAD BEEN IN THE American foster care system since day one. She remembered one of the workers informing her that her mother, a woman whose name had escaped them, had walked into the building with a small bundle in her arms (Esmerelda) and insisted that the staffers took her in. She had only given them the baby's first name and birth (September 8) and was gone before the files could be completed. That was it. Nothing else. No 'tell her that I love her' or 'one day I'll see her again'. Her mother had just dumped her in the building and walked out without another word.
Babies had the highest chance of being adopted from foster care since they were what every couple looked for. Esmerelda, however, was different. Weird things always happened around baby Esmerelda which would lead her foster parents into giving her up, thus rendering her to another cycle of fostering. Foster parent to foster parent, she was always been returned with weird reasons such as 'she made the lightbulbs break with her wailing!' or 'she somehow set our curtains on fire!'. The workers thought they were high or something, but complied nonetheless and sent Esmerelda to another pair.
The first foster parents that she could actually remember were Lucy and Melvin Moss. She was five when she was sent to them, and they were very pleasant towards her. She was pretty sure they were even contemplating on officially adopting her but she managed to screw everything up as always.
You see, they were preparing for some sort of Christmas feast—their first Christmas feast together—and they were having a bunch of relatives over. Lucy and Melvin were busying themselves up, Lucy with cleaning and Melvin with the cooking. That left five year old Esmerelda alone with her boredom. She couldn't exactly explain how it happened, but she remembered wanting desperately for something to play with only for a metal container in their bedroom to magically open up. In there was a gun that she had mistaken as a toy. Melvin had came in to check on her only to shriek when he saw her playing around with his gun. The sound had startled her and she ended up accidentally pulling the trigger... which resulted in poor Melvin getting shot under the knee.
She had to be transferred to another pair of parents after that incident.
She had at least a gazillion more foster parents before she finally landed with Terry and Herbert Robinson when she was around nine years old. Terry reminded Esmerelda of those nasty foster parents who only wanted to take her in for the money. The woman made it obvious that she didn't care much for her with her blatant rudeness and tendency to ignore her. Her husband, Herbert, was a lot warmhearted towards Esmerelda, which immediately made her gravitate more towards him.
However, one day he came back... different.
She had been with the Robinsons for almost a whole year now and winter break was fast approaching in her elementary school, Hawthorne Elementary in Gastonia, North Carolina. She came home after school one day and was starving after all the brain-numbing lessons her dyslexic and ADHD-infested brain couldn't understand, so she set off to the kitchen and started slicing into an apple with a short, but sharp kitchen knife.
