A Taste of Everyday -- Chapter 2

Disclaimer: The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Zane, etc.), and everything else that has to do with the show belong to their respective owners, not to me. No money is being made off of this fic. I only own the original characters (Rena/X5-120, etc.).

I swear, if there were cameras filming this right now, I’d get an Academy Award. I knew that I could act, I’d been taking those acting and subterfuge lessons since I was nine in at least part to help prep me for the group missions test that I took and passed more than a year ago back in May of 2008, but I didn’t think that I was this good!

“…so I stayed away for awhile. I was so scared! I didn’t know what to do. Then when the guys started to try to approach me, I got even more scared and it got to where it was scarier to be by myself than it would be to go to the police and stick around so I finally came here and I am so sorry that I didn’t just go up to a policeman or a policewoman when I got back to the hotel and saw it burning.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” the woman in the Social Services office, Mrs. Wright, said. “You know that everything’s going to be okay. I’m sorry that we couldn’t find your parents’ bodies at the site of the fire. The fire was so bad and it burned so quickly, the whole place was completely destroyed and most of the bodies were burned to ash, including your parents. Don’t you worry, Jane. We’re going to try to find you a nice home.”

“How? I’m almost twelve,” I said, sniffing. I am already twelve, but that’s none of your business. “I had a friend back in Omaha and she was in foster care and she said that nobody adopts you if you’re older than five or six. She said that at the foster home that she’d been at before the one where she was when I left Omaha, she had a younger foster brother who was only four and she was ten at the time and her foster parents decided to adopt the foster brother but not her because he was young and she was older. She wasn’t even there for that long, only two months.”

“That’s probably not true,” Mrs. Wright told me. “I don’t know why your friend’s former foster family decided to adopt the boy but not her, but age is not as big of a factor as you might think. That’s more of a myth spread by the children in the system. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“I guess I can,” I said. “But I’m so scared still. Am I going to be put in a home right away? Am I going to be put in a group home? I’m so nervous about maybe being in a group home. My friend said that she was in a group home for awhile when she was eight and she said that it was really bad. She said that there were four of them in a tiny room and the lady who ran the home was mean and the food was horrible and the other people who worked there would yell at them all of the time and call them names and I don’t want to be in a place like that. You won’t put me in a place like that, would you?”

“No, we won’t,” Mrs. Wright assured me. “I don’t know what the child welfare system in the state of Nebraska is like, but this is Texas. I can assure you that even if you are placed in a group home, it will not be like the one that your friend in Nebraska was in. I promise.”

“Really?” I said hopefully.

“Really,” Mrs. Wright confirmed. She smiled at me and I smiled back. Maybe she actually does care about what happens to me and about whether I really do get put into a group home like the one that I ‘described.’ That’s weird. I definitely never met an adult like that back at Manticore and ever since I left, both when I was with Zane and after we’d been separated, I hadn’t met an adult who cared about me. This is actually pretty cool. We both heard somebody calling her name and she stood up. “Will you excuse me, Jane? I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

“Okay,” I said. I watched Mrs. Wright leave the room and I tried to listen in on their conversation. The distance wasn’t a problem, I think that she was still within my range without any obstructions, but it was otherwise pretty loud in the building and background noise, if it’s loud enough, can interfere a little bit with even an X5’s hearing range. But sure enough, just like she had promised, she returned to the room and sat back down in front of me. She was actually smiling, though I wasn’t completely sure if that was a good thing or not.

“I’ve got some excellent news for you, Jane,” she said. “We don’t have any room for you at any of the group homes in the area, but a couple just came in. Their application to become foster parents has just been approved and they don’t mind taking in older children. Would you like to stay with them?”

Holy crap, this is some good luck! “I sure would,” I said. “I can’t believe it! Where are they? Am I going to be leaving with them today or do I have to wait a day or two before I can leave with them? How does this work?”

“You will be leaving with them today,” Mrs. Wright informed me. “I’m going to take you into the other room so that you can meet them and then the three of you will be going back to their house and you will be settling in with them and then soon you’ll be back in school. Now, do you have any other belongings other than the clothes that you’re wearing and your backpack?”

“Nope, that’s all I have,” I confirmed.

“Excellent,” Mrs. Wright said. “Follow me.” I got up and put my backpack on my shoulders and followed the woman into another room and I looked over and saw a man and a woman sitting down in two chairs near a desk. They stood up when I came in the room and I looked at them. They looked like nice people. They looked a little young, maybe barely in their thirties, but they didn’t look like they would hate me or anything like that. If there’s one thing that I learned back in Manticore, it’s what a person who hated or could hate you looked like. I saw that too many times for even somebody like me to count! “Jane, this is Vincent and Brianne Griffith. Vincent, Brianne, this is Jane Richardson. Jane said that she would like to live in your home.”

“That’s wonderful,” Brianne said. “How old are you, Jane?”

“I’m eleven,” I told her. “I’ll be turning twelve on the twenty-ninth of this month.”

“All of the belongings that Jane has are the clothes on her back and the backpack that she’s carrying along with whatever is inside the backpack,” Mrs. Wright said. “Beyond that, she doesn’t have anything.”

“Well, we can stop somewhere so she can get at least enough clothes to get her through the next few days and then when she’s gotten settled in better, we can do a serious shopping trip,” Brianne said. “Is that okay with you, Jane?”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“What grade are you in, Jane?” Vincent asked.

“I’m in seventh,” I replied. “My old school district had a cutoff date of the end of the calendar year. I barely made it.”

“It’s all in the school records that were sent over from Omaha,” Mrs. Wright said. I was still annoyed with Zack a little, but I was also definitely impressed. He must have done one hell of a job if he managed to get a hold of some good looking fake school records or even forged them himself. Nice job. “Her grades, what classes she was taking, everything. Just let us know when you feel that Jane is ready to get back to school and we’ll call the local junior high and talk to them and send them Jane’s school records and then you can give them a call.”

“All right,” Vincent said. “Jane, do you want to get back to school right away or do you maybe want to take some time off before you go back? There is less than three weeks before Christmas break.”

I thought about it. I knew that I didn’t need to go to school. I knew more than the most gifted or insane PhDs did, but I knew that school would be more of a social thing for me and I knew how important it would be that I get into school and start fitting and blending in. Even being a new girl starting at a school with only a few weeks left until Christmas break, I still wanted to jump right in and get it over with. “I’ll start soon. I don’t mind getting back to school right away.”

“I think she’ll start on Monday,” Vincent told Mrs. Wright.

“Good,” Mrs. Wright said. “We’ll call the school right away and talk to them and then you can call them tomorrow morning. Do you have any other questions for me or anything?” Vincent and Brianne and I shook our heads. “Very well, then. Good luck to the three of you.” We said good-bye and then Vincent and Brianne and I left the office and went outside to Vincent’s car and got in.

“The southwest, actually the south in general from Arizona through to Florida and up as far as maybe southern Virginia, wasn’t hit as hard by the Pulse as the northern part of the country was,” Brianne filled me in as we were heading to their house. “I know that the Dallas area never lost power. We got lucky. The whole area is still pretty nice. What was it like in Omaha during and after the Pulse?”

“Not the greatest, but I guess it could have been worse,” I lied. I thought back to the town in northern Virginia where Zane and I had been living when the Pulse had hit. “The power was out for about a month in some areas, like the farther from the city you went out, the longer it took for power to get up and running again more or less for good.” That was actually true. They got the power going again up in D.C. fairly quickly considering what had happened. “It hit my dad’s business hard. The company where he worked officially went out of business a week before Thanksgiving and a few days after Thanksgiving, my dad and my mom and I moved here to Texas. Dad had heard that it wasn’t as bad down here as it was in Omaha so he wanted to see if he could get a job here. He'd gotten something temporary when we got here and was looking for something more permanent when the motel that we were living in burned.” I pretended to start to get upset.

“Don’t worry, Jane,” Brianne said comfortingly. “Things will be better for you. If you ever need to cry or to talk or anything, don’t hesitate to come to us.”

I was surprised. They were even nicer than Mrs. Wright was. I was really getting a good feeling about them. Maybe—as much as I hate admitting anything when I’m mad or at least annoyed at somebody—Zack was right. This probably is just the thing I need to calm me down. “Actually, Brianne, can you call me Janie? Everybody used to call me that. Only my teachers and strangers called me Jane.”

“Of course, Janie,” Brianne said. “Do you have any preference as to where to stop to get you some clothes?”

“No, as long as we get something to eat soon,” I said. “I’m hungry.”

Vincent and Brianne laughed. “So am I, Janie,” Vincent admitted. “We’ll stop for lunch first, how’s that?”

“Cool,” I said. I smiled. This is going to turn out really well.

TBC