Beautiful misery

Part 14

Flashing lights, rain drops sliding down the window, sounds of cars rushing by... and suddenly, we turned into a driveway and came to a stop. 

"Well, we're here". Said the social worker.

I reached out to open the door, stepped out and looked up at the big house I would be staying in for a few weeks. This was it. Starting from now, my life would never be the same as before. I took a deep breath and stepped forward following the social worker up the path to the front door. She rang once and waited in silence. After a few seconds, the door opened up revealing a middle-aged woman with curly brown hair, pale skin and a generously big body. She smiled sweetly the minute she saw us and called the whole household over to greet me. 

"Well hello, you must be Maya! I'm Wilma. We've been expecting you! Come on in!" She said stepping aside to let me in. "And you are Mrs. Abate I imagine, very nice to meet you."

"Thank you" She answered coldly, following me inside. 

There were about 10 kids rushing in from all sides of the house to come see me for the first time. The ages went from about 6 to 18 and there were a large majority of boys. In fact, there were only 3 girls. 

"Hi!" Said the eldest girl with a big smile. "I'm Gaby."

All the others did the same and introduced themselves, some clearly shyer than others.

"Hi" I answered back. 

"Would you like a cup of tea or hot chocolate?" Wilma asked.

"No thank you"

"I'll have a green tea please" Said Mrs. Abate.

"Of course, come follow me into the kitchen and take a seat both of you, we'll get you sorted." 

While the two of them were discussing my case, I concentrated on the 4 kids who kept poking their heads round the corner to look at me and quickly hide behind the door again and giggle. They were all quite young, and I wondered what had happened for them to be here and not with their realfamily. It somehow reassured me to think we were all in the same situation. We had all lost our family. We all had to live without a real family to love us unconditionally. And seeing the little kids laugh and play made me think: It'll be hard, but it's possible.

It took Mrs. Abate about half an hour to sort everything out with Wilma and decide to leave. Once she was gone, Wilma showed me around the house and led me to my room which I would share with the three other girls. The first thing I noticed was my bed. It looked so comfortable and cosy. So different from the one I used to have which was so old, you could feel the springs in the mattress when lying on it. 

Gaby was sitting on her bed reading a book and looked up as I came in.

"Hey! So how do you like the room?" She asked

"It's nice."

"You'll see, you'll get used to this place real soon. Just takes a bit of time what with all the kids and stuff. Don't worry, they're all really nice. How old are you?"

"16."

"Cool! I'm 18. I can leave the house now if I want but I'd first like to get a job and save up a bit to be able to afford an apartment as well as my studies at university."

I smiled, unsure of what to say.

"How long are you staying here for?"

"Um, about 1 to 2 weeks..."

"Wow, that's not very long! Where are you going afterwards?"

"To my Aunts, she lives on the other side of country."

"Are you looking forward to that then or are you sad to leave town?"

"I don't know her, so I can't say."

"Oh, I see..."

For a few minutes, we didn't know what else to say to each other so I went over to my bed and sat down wrapping myself around the warm duvet and simply thinking. 

"What happened to your parents?" She asked suddenly making me jump. "Ha ha sorry for scaring you."

"Um, my mom died when I was 7 and my dad, well he's in jail."

"...I'm so sorry."

Again, there was a moment of silence. Scenes of the person I once considered as my dad, beating me flashed in my head. His look of anger as he through me to the floor and grabed his belt. I closed my eyes tight to try to stop thinking about it, but it didn't help. Gaby's voice cut into my thoughts and pulled me back into reality.

"Do you wanna go watch a film? We have a tv room with a whole selection of different films if you're interested..."

I felt thankful for her concern, she was obviously trying to distract me from the memories. Plus, a film really did sound good. The last time I watched a film seemed to be a century ago. I wasn't allowed to watch films anymore once my mom died. My dad threw them all away to punish me because he believed I was the reason my mom died.

"I'd love to!" I said, joyously.

I let the others pick because when I looked at the selection they had, none of them sounded familiar. One of the boys decided to pick out his favourites and give me a short summary of all of them to see which one I wanted to watch most. At one point, he pulled out Harry Potter.

"You have to have heard of this film before!" he exclaimed.

"Um, no.. I've never heard of it." 

Everyone suddenly stared at me as if I was crazy.

"You've seriously never heard of Harry Potter?!" Asked a girl named Francesca.

"No." I answered back sheepishly.

"Well then we are SO watching this film!!" She cried.

Everyone agreed and ran to the big sofa to get comfortable while Gaby dealt with the DVD player. She then came over and sat next to me.

"You'll see, this film is really good!" She whispered to me just as the film started.

And she was right. It really was.