Living Free {Hold}

I

Chapter I

 "Come on sweetheart. Write your name." 

I stared down at the blank whiteboard resting in my lap with a frown on my face. I didn't know why I was here or who these people were. They have been trying to get me to talk for the past hour now but I refused to open my mouth. Since they figured I wasn't quite ready to talk yet they thought a whiteboard would solve their problem.

Well it didn't.

"There is no need to be shy sweetheart. We are all family. That includes you now," the woman next to me said. She told me whenever I got the courage to talk; I could just call her mommy. I knew that this woman was not my mom and that none of these people were my family.

I rolled my bottom lip back into my mouth and squirmed uncomfortably in the chair I was sitting in. I stared at the whiteboard intently for what felt like hours but was really only a couple of minutes.

The backdoor to the house opened and in stepped a guy who looked to be in his late thirties. He was wearing a black jacket that was soaked and covered in mud. It must be one of those rainy days that I enjoyed watching.

"Anything?" he asked the woman beside me.

She sighed and shook her head. "Nothing."

He sighed and mumbled a few curses under his breath before running one of his hands through his wet brown hair. His eyes suddenly lit up like he had some sort of idea that he was sure would work. He left the kitchen and came back in only minutes later with a baby doll in his hand. The doll looked like it had just come out of the box with its shiny plastic bald head and green ruffled dress on.

The man crouched in front of me and held the doll in front of me. "Look at what daddy you got sweetie. Her name is Sara and I think she needs a mommy," he said to me softly. "I will give her to you only if you write your name on the whiteboard for mommy and daddy."

I once again moved uncomfortably in my chair. I looked into his dark brown eyes before looking down at the whiteboard. I reached over and grabbed the marker off the table and slowly took the cap off. I shakily brought the marker to the board and slowly wrote a very squiggly 'L'.

"That's good! Now, just keep going," the woman said with a huge grin on her face.

I wrote the rest of the letters down very shakily and big.  The man the woman's eyes just stared at what I had wrote on the board with huge smiles on their faces.

"Laura. What a beautiful name," the woman says with tears in her eyes.

Just then a boy who looked like a younger of the man crouched in front me walked in with a confused look on his face.

"Oh good you're home. Meet your sister Laura. Laura, meet your brother James," the woman said as she wiped a couple of tears that had fallen.

For some reason I had this feeling that James would give me more problems than the rest of these maniacs.

And that feeling that I had was exactly right...

I gasped for air and quickly sat up.

I looked around at my surroundings and blinked a couple to make sure I was seeing right. Instead of waking up to beige colored walls I woke up to see white walls. The bed I was laying in wasn't the same stained, hard, and uncomfortable mattress I have been sleeping on for the past ten years. This was a non-stained, bouncy, and very comfortable bed. The walls were decorated with posters of the human body and facts about it.