A Taste of Everyday -- Chapter 6

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 squirmed around on my seat on the school bus, trying not to have to resort to something fancy to keep from losing my balance. The school bus was older than dirt and even if the roads didn’t have potholes, it still bounced around more than Max and Jondy would when the rest of us would be trying to get to sleep.

“One word: Dramamine,” Vanessa snapped as she glared at the boy who was sitting across the aisle from her as the guy leaned his head out of the window and threw up. “It’s not that difficult.”

“Relax,” I said. If she knew how sensitive my sense of smell was, she wouldn’t be saying a damn word.

“Sorry,” Vanessa apologized. She turned around to face Nancy and me. “If I can talk my parents into driving all the way down to the Gulf Coast during Spring Break next month, do you guys want to come with?”

Nancy perked up. “Hell yeah! I haven’t been down to the coast since I was five. If my parents say I can go, definitely count me in.”

“Janie? You want to go with us if the Griffiths let you?” Vanessa asked.

“That’d be awesome,” I said. “I’ll ask them soon” The bus pulled up to Vincent and Brianne’s house and I stood up. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“Bye, Janie,” Vanessa and Nancy said.

I waved to them and walked off of the bus and looked around suspiciously for a moment as the bus drove off. Brianne’s car was not in the driveway like it usually was when I got home from school. She’d been working part-time since a month before my alleged thirteenth birthday, but I would get back from school around three-thirty and I knew she would get back from her job at three. I discreetly looked over the house and then shook my head. The house was clear. Of course it was clear. If Manticore had known my location and Zack somehow hadn’t realized that they knew, they wouldn’t do anything to make me think that something was off. They weren’t that stupid. I walked to the house and let myself in and saw that there was a message on the answering machine. I hit the play button.

“Janie, it’s Brianne. I left this message on your voice mail, but I’m leaving it on the answering machine in case you haven’t turned your cell phone back on yet. I’m sorry that I’m not home, but Vincent and I got a call half an hour ago that we’re getting another foster child and I’m leaving work right now and I’m meeting Vincent at the Children’s Welfare office in Dallas to pick her up. You’re getting a new foster sister. Her name is Marissa and she’s seven years old. We hope to be home before dinner time. I’ll see you later. Bye.”

I smiled and reached into my jeans pocket and pulled out the cell phone that Vincent and Brianne had given me for Christmas and turned it back on. We were allowed to carry cell phones at school as long as we turned them off during class. I kept this one turned off, but I kept the cell phone that Zack had given me a few months after he had dropped me off in Texas on all of the time. If Principal Saunders has a problem with that, he can kiss my ass before either Zack or I beat his to a bloody pulp.

I was feeling seriously excited about my new foster sister. I had a bunch of younger siblings already as well as a bunch of older ones, which does happen when you’re the ninth out of twenty kids. I’d never had a sister who was relatively significantly younger than me, though. Max is somewhere between two years and five months and two-and-a-half years younger than I am, which isn’t that much. I wondered if I would be able to relate at all to Marissa. You know, maybe I would. Being the new kid in town, being in a strange situation, I definitely knew all about that. I might not have written the book on it, but I definitely think that I contributed a chapter to it.

I went into the kitchen and got myself a snack and went into the family room and watched TV and finished my homework in seconds (okay, two minutes. Even I can’t write that fast). Finally, I heard Vincent and Brianne’s cars pull up to the house and Vincent and Brianne and Marissa get out and walked up to the house. I heard a key in the front door lock and then the door opened. “Janie? We’re back.”

“Finally,” I said. I got up and walked into the living room and looked at my new foster sister. Marissa looked down at the ground. “Hey, Marissa. I’m Janie, your new foster sister.”

“It’s okay, Marissa,” Brianne assured her. “You don’t have to be so shy. Janie won’t hurt you.”

“Hello,” Marissa said quietly. “It’s nice to meet you, Janie.”

“Sweetie, why don’t you show Marissa to her new room,” Vincent suggested. “I’ll be up in a little bit and then we’ll order some dinner in.”

Brianne nodded. “Sure. Come on, Marissa. I think you’ll like your new room.” She took Marissa’s hand and led her upstairs.

“Marissa seems really nice,” I said. “She’s pretty shy.”

“She’s coming from a rough situation,” Vincent told me. “Her biological father left her and her mother when she was an infant and her stepfather would beat her mother on a regular basis. Fortunately, he never touched Marissa. But a few weeks ago, he’d gotten especially drunk and beat Marissa’s mother to death. He’s locked up in the county jail until his trial’s supposed to start and social services haven’t been able to locate Marissa’s biological father and they don’t expect to be able to find him.”

“Wow,” I said quietly. “That is rough.”

“It is,” Vincent agreed. “She is a sweet girl but give her time, okay?”

“I will,” I promised.

Vincent smiled. “That’s the Janie that I know. You’re lucky that you had a relatively good life with your parents before they died.” He headed upstairs and left me standing in the living room by myself.

“Yeah,” I said quietly enough that only an X-series would hear me at close range. “I’m lucky.” Lucky that I saw one of my older brothers die practically right in front of me, lucky that I’ve been having seizures since I was little and having to hide them and being terrified that I’d be caught having one and having that fear justified one freezing night almost two years ago when Jack was taken away and killed, lucky that we were tortured into becoming soldiers better than any known to man. I guess I could relate to Marissa even better than I thought. I wish I could tell her that, though.

TBC