"I tried to die. My mom said no."
Strength. It lives within her name, literally. She likes to think it also lives within herself. Vivien Valentine used to be a street kid from the south side of Chicago with no academic prospects, no family, and no...
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'BE slow to anger.' That's what the counselor that comes twice a week to the Mercy Home For Boys and Girls had advised her. But it's nearly impossible for Vivien to back out of a fight. So she's sitting with half a black eye and a maxi-bandage over her jawline, swinging her legs in the orphanage office. She's been scribbling obscenities in her grief journal instead of writing about, well, her grief. No point anyways, the transfer of words to paper won't take it away. And she sincerely doesn't feel like giving herself a headache with trying to write a solid paragraph right now. Four letter words are easy, though, and everyone knows what you mean, even if you mess them up. Right as she's about to add the last line to her stylized "S," a commotion outside makes her freeze.
"I'm sorry—just—"
"Sir, please!"
Vivien looks up, startled. There's a guy in a bedraggled suit who looks... not well, for lack of better words. His hair looks a mess to rival her own hours before wash day. He seems kinda shaky, like the guys on the street who would make her brother tug her closer and put a hand on his knife. This man is better dressed than those men in the alleys, but all the same, she's glad he's a room away, even if it's basically just a wall of glass.
But his eyes suddenly land on her, widening before he looks down and smooths his suit, standing and calming himself. He turns back to the staff and says something, quieter and more urgently. Vivien grips her Star of David and looks away like she'd never seen him. Some eighties song is playing, and she settles her pounding heart by matching the bouncing of her leg to the beat. They're talking in quieter voices now. She pretends not to try and listen while she alternates between drawing a sketch of the disheveled guy in her journal and looking out the window. Absentmindedly, she labels the picture 'homeless man.'
The door swings open, and the three that had been speaking walk into the building: Mr. Kensington, one of the building's security guards, and the homeless man, the last of whom is just staring at her in awe as he follows after the others. They walk into the back hall and disappear into one of the conference rooms. Vivien turns and perches on her knees to look out the dusty window at the cafeteria. The tables are all packed up, which means she's missed lunch. So they've let her sit there and do nothing for an hour and twenty-six minutes? She flips through the pages and huffs.
Vivien's nervous, and has been all day. It's Sunday, which means church at eight 'till ten. She usually hates church anyways. But she hadn't been able to focus on any of the hymns or parables all day, because of what her social worker had told her: that Vivien's going to get to meet someone special around dinnertime. Immediately, she had hopes of it being her brother, that he'd come back from service okay and everything her mother told her was just a lie. A cruel one at that, but Vivien would take it, if it meant she got to see Marc again.
And then she'd gotten into that fight, ruining the whole thing. Now, they would never let her see him, and she'd be stuck at the Mercy Home for Girls and Boys forever.
