My Salvation

02.

She is right, I did pack stale food, but we've never really been allowed to eat food that wasn't stale, unless of course we bought it ourselves. "Oh. Okay, uh thank you. Kids, grabs your bags, the bus should be here in like ten minutes," I say, slinging my plain, black bag over my shoulder and giving Jess a quick smile. My siblings say their goodbyes, grab their bags, and we walk out the door to the bus stop.

Waiting for a bus is always boring, and the bus rides are even more boring, but we shouldn't be dependent on Jess. She has work, and we shouldn't hold her down so she can make breakfast, pack lunches, and take us to school. That's what our mom did. She is not our mom.

Sure, I feel bad that I haven't really put in effort with befriending Mark and Jess as much as my siblings have, buts it harder for me. I'm surprised as to how much bonding they've done with Carlos and Maria; I mean, Mark and Carlos were starting to build a tree house yesterday for Maria.

At the same time, she was getting taught how to make apple pie by Jess, who turns out, is a professional chef; she also owns a very successful restaurant.

During the bus ride, I was drowning everything out by listening to music. Yes, we have phones, except Maria of course; she's seven. Our social workers thought that it would be best for us to each have one for safety reasons. You know, cause of all our other homes.

After getting some dirty looks from a group of girls, another group of girls flirting with Carlos, and Maria almost missing her stop at elementary school, we finally arrive at high school.

School is already a week in, which sucks, I feel like the first week of school is the most important, especially for Car; he's a freshman, so he has never been in a high school before.

We walk straight through the parking lot, I think Carlos was trying to ask me about how high school is, but I could barely hear him over the enormous amount of students create noise and chaos in the parking lot and school halls.

Finding the location of the secretary's desk from a map on the back of a pamphlet in the front of the school, we walk up to her.

"Excuse me?" I say, causing her to look up from her computer, peering over the glasses at us. She looks with a kind and confused expression. "Uh we're new here, can we please have our timetables and locker information?"

She nods, standing up and walking over to a filing cabinet. "Names," she questions.

"Oh, uh, Camila and Carlos Hernandez, I'm a junior, he's a freshman." Walking back over, she hands us both a timetable, locker location, and combo. "Thank you." We get ready to leave, before she speaks again.

"Hold on dear," she says, looking over her shoulder to see a girl walking out of what I'm assuming is the principal's office. "Miss May! Can you please guide these two to their first classes? I'll mark you as present in your form so you can skip it."

The girl she was asking shrugs and walks towards us. She looks cool, long, ginger hair which has been put into two loose braids and baggy overalls with paint splatters. "Yeah, as long as you tell Phill to stop yelling at me for living my life." She says.

"Lydia! You're not allowed to call the principal by his first name, and I'll talk to him about," She says, moving her hands at us as if she was shooing us away. "Go on now! Your classes should be starting soon."

I smile at the secretary, grabbing my brothers' arm, and dragging him over to the girl named Lydia.

She starts walking, tilting her head in the direction she's going, signaling us to follow her. "So, what brings you to this shithole of a school?"

"Oh, well we just moved to Seattle and this was the school we ended up going to I guess," I answer, not wanting to go into full detail about our screwed-up past.