Runaways (Orphans)

Running away from their nightmarish foster home, orphans Brooke, Crystal, Raven, and Butterfly take to the highway in pursuit of their dreams but find themselves vulnerable in new ways.

Chapter 1: A Glimmer of Hope

As I got ready to go downstairs for breakfast, I couldn't help but worry about Butterfly, and wonder how my other sisters and I were spared the same fate: each of us had tragic stories, some, I was beginning to realize, more tragic than others.

I was almost adopted when I was nearly thirteen by Pamela and Peter Thompson, a young couple who had never had a child of their own. Pamela was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and, though I thought it was strange that she wanted me to call her Pamela instead of Mommy or even Mother, I did what she asked. Orphans learn at a very young age to do anything, well, almost anything, to please prospective parents.

Pamela had been a beauty queen and chose me because she thought I looked like a younger version of her. No one had ever told me I was beautiful before, or had the potential to grow up to be beautiful, so when Pamela and Peter chose me for that very reason I was completely surprised, but happy, and for the first time in my life I thought that maybe I was special. That I wasn't just a little girl no one wanted.

I soon realized, though, that Pamela didn't think I was special because of who I really was, but because of who she thought she could make me into. All the pretty clothes and fancy lessons that at first made me feel like a charmed princess, soon became suffocating to me. I wasn't allowed to excel at the sports I played so well or to even be myself. I was getting all mixed up inside -- I wanted to please Pamela, she was my new mother, but I also knew that pleasing her meant losing myself.

Peter tried to help, and explained to Pamela that I could do well in sports and be a beauty queen, but Pamela just got nastier and nastier. Finally, when it seemed that she just wouldn't ever listen to the dreams that were in my heart, I did the only thing I knew how to make her understand. I cut off my beautiful long hair -- the hair that she so loved to brush and wash, the hair that would help me win her precious beauty pageants.

Pamela went into such a rage when she saw me that she started to hyperventilate, gasping for breath, declaring she was on the verge of a heart attack. She said I would be an enormous embarrassment to her and was no good as a beauty pageant contestant, or even as a daughter. Peter didn't know how to deal with Pamela's fury and so he sent me back to the Child Protection Services like a defective toy. And, years later, I am still here at Hell House.

Butterfly's experiences must have been much worse than mine, since she can barely talk about them. We've learned a bit over the years, but mostly when she tries to speak about it, or something reminds her of that time, she goes into one of her trances. Her foster mother, Celine Delorice, was a woman in her early thirties who had once had a promising career as a ballet dancer. She married a well-to-do businessman, Sanford Delorice, who supported her attempts to become a prima ballerina. However, shortly after their marriage, Celine was in a serious car accident and had to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She talked Sanford into adopting a foster child and Celine chose Butterfly because she was so dainty and supposedly had perfect feet. She believed Butterfly would become the dancer she had expected she would be, and she had her start training almost the same day they brought her home from the orphanage.

Butterfly was a good dancer, but not a great dancer. She didn't progress as quickly as Celine had hoped and began to freeze under the pressure and the possibility of failure. Celine Delorice actually suffered a nervous breakdown from it. At least, that's what Butterfly told us, and soon after Sanford returned her to the system, claiming his wife's handicap made it impossible for them to bring up a child properly. Crystal thought there had to be something more, but she never pressured Butterfly, who could turn to stone if you forced her to talk about her past.

Despite her reserved façade, Raven wasn't all that different from the rest of us. She had lived with her real family, her mother's brother, for a while after her mother had been arrested for a drug related crime and put into rehabilitation. We didn't know the nitty-gritty details, but something happened and Raven was brought here. All she would tell us was her uncle and aunt were not fit parents, especially her uncle. She did tell me that whatever had happened at her uncle and aunt's home involved her cousin, Jennifer. I wanted Raven to trust me enough to explain what had happened, but it seemed like Raven had trouble trusting anyone, even Crystal, Butterfly and me.

Raven's situation was really a lot more complicated than ours because Raven had a natural blood parent out there, somewhere, and the state made it almost impossible to adopt a child if there was even the slightest possibility she or he could be returned to that parent.

Crystal was the only one who really had a good experience with foster parents. She didn't speak about them very much, but when she did talk about them, she described Thelma's obsession with her soap operas and Karl's obsession with being efficient and organized. She told us he was an accountant and saw life as a balance between assets and liabilities. He often lectured her about being sensible. She said her adoptive parents were pleasant enough people, but from the way she spoke of them, I think she believed they were both living in a fantasy world. When they were both killed in an automobile accident, none of the relatives wanted to take her in, which resulted in her being returned to the system.

So here we were, the four of us, the Orphanteers, so different from each other, and yet, drawn to each other, feeling safer in our own little group, each of us adding something that we all needed, each of us willing to risk pain and unhappiness to protect the other or the group. Just looking at us, no one would think we had anything special to hold us together.

I usually wore dungarees and a tee shirt or old sweat shirt. I had sneakers and one pair of dressy shoes, but I favored my clodhoppers, as Raven called them, with sweat socks. I always wore the pink ribbon my real mother had tied in my hair before I had been given over to foster care. Of course, it was quite faded by now. I just tied it on my wrist. I hardly ever wore lipstick or makeup and used a stick deodorant rather than a cologne, when I even cared. Raven always wore a skirt or a dress.

Crystal wore simple one-piece dresses, and kept her dark brown hair either in a bun or sometimes in a ponytail. She would wear lipstick rarely, much less any makeup. She could walk around with an ink stain on her chin all day because she rarely looked at herself in the mirror.

Butterfly had much of the clothing she had when she lived with the Delorices, dainty little dresses, multicolored sneakers, a nice pink leather jacket. It was as if her growth had been stunted by her unhappiness. She hadn't grown out of much. She kept her golden hair in curls and only wore lipstick when Raven helped her with makeup.

Despite our four individual personalities, we did have something special, something we knew the other girls coveted. Maybe it was just the "Joining." Maybe there was some spiritual tie. At least we had something to believe in: each other.

Despite the episode with Butterfly, we were dressed and on our way down to the dining room in plenty of time. The Lakewood House was physically a perfect dormitory for two dozen or so foster children. Very little had been changed since its resort days. There was still a large sitting or recreational room where there once were card tables used for board games, dominos, card games or a game none of us had ever heard of before, something called mah-jongg. Louise said it had been the most popular game the tourist women played. She showed us the pieces, all with Asian writing on them, but warned us never to touch them. She explained that she and Gordon were just waiting for the right time to sell them as valuable antiques.

Most of the house was antique, or just plain old. The stairway we took down to the dining room shook and squeaked. The pipes groaned like arthritic old people, windows froze in their grooves, even in the summer, and very often, electrical fixtures didn't work. Gordon hated doing any maintenance, and usually waited until it was absolutely necessary. He didn't replace a step that had cracked badly on the stairway, for instance, even though it was dangerous, until he knew someone was coming from the state to inspect the premises. If something broke in our rooms, or if there were plumbing problems, he blamed it on one of us and let it remain broken for as long as he could.

Early on we noticed Louise was almost as afraid of Gordon as we were. If she ever contradicted him in front of us, he would just glare at her, his face crimson, his eyes glowing like embers in a fireplace, his neck muscles straining so hard, the arteries and veins would pop out, and his two large hands tightened into mallets. He was unusually strong. When he felt like showing off, he would permit the children to watch him chop down a tree. He did it with an ax, never pausing from the beginning until the tree actually began to topple. Chunks would fly around him like pate yellow moths; the tree seemed like it was made of paper. These demonstrations of power were indelibly pressed into the minds of the children. Woe to those who were the target of Gordon's fury.

And yet, whenever there were guests or state officials at the house, Gordon metamorphosed into a soft, smiling, gentle giant of a man who could walk around with a seven-year-old on his shoulders, loving, caring, protective. To see someone with such obvious physical power behave so gently was heartwarming to the visitors. Once, he caught me staring with disgust at him while he was putting on one of these Academy Award performances. He glanced my way and then he turned back to me, fixing his gaze on me with such a cold, bone-chilling look, I had to walk away quickly, my chest vibrating with the hammerlike thumping of my heart. I avoided him for days after that and finally he seemed to forget about me.

None of the wards seemed of any real interest to him. He knew our names and he knew which children to use when he wanted to demonstrate his concern and care in front of state people, but he usually left the real parenting work to Louise. She was the true administrator of the Lakewood House; he was more like a work boss.

However, Gordon was always after her to keep some distance between herself and the wards. He would complain about it, out loud, right in front of us.

"You're getting too involved with that one, Louise. I warned you."

Afterward, she explained that she and Gordon had been specifically instructed not to get too close with or form any sort of bond with a foster child. The logic was we were here only temporarily and soon were going back to our real parents or off to new adoptive families, and no one wanted any of us to feel sad about leaving or resent our new homes. What a joke. Who would resent leaving this? For my part, I was happy Gordon kept some distance and happy he was always after her to do the same.

Sometimes, she looked at us as if we really all were her children. Childless, she regretted losing any one of us. A real mother couldn't be more possessive at times, but warm affection around here was like contraband. She had to look for Gordon first and be sure he wasn't around before she planted a kiss on a child's forehead or held someone close to her ample bosom.

Louise wasn't the only one who tried to make us feel like a family here. A sweet elderly lady who insisted we all call her Grandma Kelly prepared our meals each day and always had kind words or a smile for us. Grandma Kelly lived in the nearby village of Mountaindale and had actually worked for the Tooey family when the Lakewood House was still a tourist retreat. She was only about five feet three with a round face that always had scarlet tinted cheeks, especially when she worked over a hot stove. She had soft eyes as blue as blue jay feathers. Her hair was the color of pewter and even more curly than Butterfly's, but she always wore a cap when she was in the kitchen. She told us she hadn't been brought to America until she was nearly twelve. To this day she still had an Irish brogue. Crystal said she reminded her of a leprechaun.

"It would be great if Grandma Kelly really was a leprechaun and led us to treasure so we could get out of here," I said.

Of course, Crystal didn't believe in such fairy tales, but we all liked to think that there was a pot of gold out there for us.

We joked about what Grandma Kelly would have made for breakfast that morning as we walked down to the dining room and while we stood in line waiting for our meals Crystal told us she planned on spending the day at the library, using their computer.

Crystal's dream was to become a doctor, and she told us she'd been researching information on getting college scholarships. She claimed that anything we wanted to learn about could be found on the Internet.

"What about my future?" I asked.

"As I told you before, there are statistics about foster children. Every year about fifteen thousand graduate from foster care by turning eighteen with no permanent family, and forty percent of all foster children leaving the system end up on welfare."

"Thanks for the encouragement," I muttered. "Miss Good News."

"You could get married," Raven said. "That's what I'm going to do as soon as I find someone rich enough."

"Why should he marry you?" I asked.

"Because I'm the prettiest girl he'll know," she replied, turning her shoulder and fluttering those long, black eyelashes. "And I'm the next Selena who will make one hit song after another, that's why." Butterfly laughed and Raven hugged her. "Someone loves me," she said. "Butterfly will be a famous dancer too, Crystal, so put that into your stupid statistics."

"I hate to disappoint or discourage you, but it's pretty hard to make it in the entertainment industry," Crystal joked back. "And look what happened to Selena!"

Raven stuck out her tongue as she turned to take Butterfly's hand. "C'mon Butterfly, let's get our food and let Crystal be grumpy by herself. She just doesn't know how to believe. We can be anything, as long as we believe." Raven's words sounded brave, but I knew that they were mostly for Butterfly's benefit; she was still shaking from this morning's episode.

As we waited in line for our food we surveyed the dining room.

Along the walls were the old photographs of the Lakewood House's bygone days, group pictures of guests gathered at the lake or around the lawn chairs. In most of the pictures, the people were dressed formally, men in jackets and ties, women in ankle-length dresses with high collars and frilly sleeves, all with pale faces, and all looking years and years older than they really were. There were many photos of families because the Lakewood House catered to families. The foster children now living here looked at these pictures closely, usually with soft, dreamy smiles on their faces, imagining themselves as part of one of those families, hugging their mother, holding their father's hand, standing close to their brothers and sisters, having a name.

It did took like the Lakewood House was a pretty, happy place once, full of laughter and music. According to Grandma Kelly, the guests sat on the big wraparound porch and talked into the wee hours while the crickets chirped and the owls peered through the moonlit night, curious about the murmur of voices, the sound of...