Hybrid: The Awakening

Chapter 5-Asher

"But not too many friends. Don't want you forgetting about us now do we?" Dion joked. I rolled my eyes and laughed.

"I don't know, maybe I could find a better best friend."

Dion's response was cut off by yelling down the hallway. He rolled his eyes. "Ugh, it's too early for this," he groaned as he took a bite of his own breakfast. Four small children came running into the room.

"Ash! Look at these cool new toys!" shouted Ben, a six year old boy with vocal chords so big that everything he said sounded like screaming. He held up one blue and one red toy car to my face.

"Wow, that's really cool Ben! Where did you get these?"

Mrs. Nancy answered the question for me. "A wonderful stranger donated them! They gave us two boxes full of toys and clothes. It makes my heart so happy when people do such kind things."

"Well that's nice," a girl, Sadie, interjected. Her blond hair was wild and she rubbed her eyes as she walked into the dining room. She held her phone in her hand and sat down with a thump. "But you know what would be really nice? If they took these screaming monsters away so I could get some sleep."

I mocked horror as the other kids gasped. "Sadie! How could you say such a treacherous thing?" The children faked-cried as I wrapped my arms around them. "Don't worry you guys. I'm sure Ms. Grumpypants didn't mean it." Sadie made an epic eye roll, turning her attention to her phone as me and Dion chuckled.

That was the thing about living in our foster home. Everybody was one big happy family. We laughed, teased, and joked all the time. It didn't matter what our past was, or that we were orphans. We had each other, and our bond was probably just as close as any other blood-related family.

Of course I wouldn't know. Out of all the other children in Mrs. Nancy's foster home, I was the only one that had been an orphan all my life, without ever getting to experience what a real family was like. Which, I guess from a certain perspective, is a good thing. I can't miss them if I never met them.

The identity of my parents is a complete mystery. I was found abandoned on the side of the road wrapped in a small blanket. My legs were crushed and twisted. The people who found me were sure I was dead. I should've been.

For a few years after that, authorities searched for who could've been cruel enough to leave their newborn son injured and alone next to a highway. They never found my parents, and I was glad. I didn't want them to. In fact, I never do. Why dwell on the past if the present is so much better?

After breakfast I went to the bedroom that me and Dion shared and put on the clothes that I had laid out for myself the day before. It was a simple blue Adidas t-shirt and black sweatpants with sneakers. The same outfit I wore pretty much everyday.

Struggling for five minutes to put on my pants, I finally managed to put them on and packed my school supplies in my black backpack. I quickly stopped to check myself in the mirror. My dirty blonde hair stood out all over the place. I stroked a few hairs out of my green eyes and tried to tame the rest with my fingers.

I smiled, not big enough to show my dimples, but real enough to hide the fear I felt circling through my brain. It was constant, really, but I never showed it. And I never told anybody the reason why I could never sleep for more than four hours each night.

I don't know what happened the day that I was found and taken to the hospital, but sometimes I would get flashes of memories. I would see a pair of red eyes. Echoes of screams. The pain that overtook me as my bones shattered. It didn't make any sense that I would remember anything of that night; I was only a few hours old. What could've been so horrible that it would still haunt me fifteen years later?