All Those Words

Chapter 1

Calysta

One more day. I have one more day until I have to start senior year. Needless to say, I'm dreading it. Yeah, I know that high school isn't everything but it can be scary. Teenagers can be real bitches sometimes.

I'm trying to hold on to every single second I have left before I have to go back to that hell. I silently pray every single day that I don't have to go back; that I could just be home schooled but who was I to ask that of Victor and Deb Harmon? They had sacrificed enough for me, being my God parents. They had taken me in at a young age when my father had died and since they hadn't been able to have their own kids, they always treat me like their own. I refuse disappoint them further.

Enough depressing thoughts, I tell myself as I stick my feet into my combat boots. I know I've spent enough of the morning in my room, hiding because Deb and Victor are bringing in a new foster kid. It is already a full house with my younger foster siblings – three sisters and a brother. My little brother was ecstatic that he's finally going to have a brother and won't be the only male child. Sadly, I can't share his joy.

It took me enough time to get used to the rest of the foster kids they took in and start talking again at home. Being the freak that I am, I can't make eye contact with anyone outside my family, let alone talk to them.

When did I started fearing social settings? Around the beginning of junior high. What about before that? I had been a completely normal school going kid, a little shy but happy. So what changed? That's something I don't want to answer. Everyone has a chapter they don't want to read out loud, right?

Today is my turn to cook lunch so I have to go grocery shopping. I have to do my part. So I pop my first pill – because social anxiety disorder is an actual mental disease and there are pills prescribed for it. Not that they make me any less scared.

I grab my black hoodie, despite it being almost 70° outside. It is a necessity for me so I can escape the condemning stares of other people and avoid making eye contact. I hate people staring at me and bearing a little heat was a small price to pay to hide myself.

I pull the hatch up so I can descend the stairs, out of my room in the attic and into the second floor hallway. Judging from the fact that the bedroom doors are open, it's obvious that everybody is gathered downstairs. Did the new foster kid arrive? Did I dare to go down and find out?

"Cal!" Deb calls from downstairs. "Is that you?"

She knows I won't holler back. I never do but that never stops her from screaming out questions I'm not going to answer.

"We heard you come down, you know?" Trixie – my 13 year old foster sister – hollers with a chuckle. "Care to grace us with your presence?"

She isn't always sarcastic and rude. Not unless she forgets to take her mood stabilizers. Trixie suffers from bipolar disorder but no one outside our family and her doctor know about it. She somehow manages to get through school without problems, thanks to her medicine, and if she gets angry or rude, it passes off as bitchiness because she's pretty popular. She's the picture of perfection with her sandy blonde hair, brown eyes and curvy body and somehow that's a good disguise for her emotions being all over the place.

My social anxiety is harder to mask.

I descend the next set of stairs into the living room to find everyone sitting around the coffee table like they're having some kind of meeting with a new face – or rather feet since I was staring at the floor, keeping my head lowered as usual. It's easy to notice the ratty converse and that's because I've stared at the floor long enough to know every single pair of shoes that have entered our house.