It was a sunny morning in Lawndale. Among the sounds of the birds singing, in a hospital room, the nurses and the doctor were helping Amanda Lane while she was giving birth.
"Push, honey!" said Vincent, the father of the baby that was being born.
Amanda was calmer than most of the mothers that went to that hospital to have their babies. This was her fifth kid so, at that point, giving birth was nothing new to her.
Only a few moments later, yelling loudly at first, Jane Lane was held in the hands of the doctor.
It was a beautiful baby girl with bright blue eyes.
"This girl, Mrs. Lane, screams so loud that I bet she will never have trouble with making people hear her" commented Dr. Meyers.
Jane Lane was the last child of Amanda Lane. At the hospital, things were calm, quiet. But she hadn't seen her new home yet: the Lane house. Her brother, Trent, who was then five years old, was the only one who was interested in being at the hospital for her new sister's birth. When he first saw her, he made a weird expression, because he wasn't used at all to see newborn babies.
"That's your new little sister" said his father, Vincent, who was standing right behind him.
"What's her name?" he asked without taking his eyes off the baby.
"Her name is Jane".
Trent got his finger closer to Jane and, with her tiny hand, she held his finger as soon as she felt it touching her hand.
"Jane" he repeated as if he was trying not to forget it.
And that was when she first met Trent.
What she didn't know yet was that she had three more siblings waiting at home. Her brother Wind and her sisters Penny and Summer. Her sister Penny was 11 years old, Wind was 14 and Summer, the oldest one, was 16. The house was sort of chaotic. With four kids in the house-now five- and the parents busy with their own business the house wasn't a very organized place. Summer and Wind, and maybe even Penny, were, according to Amanda's thoughts, old enough to take care of themselves and most of the time, also of their little brother Trent. They ate tons of mac 'n' cheese and if they wanted anything else, they either had to order it, beg Amanda or do it themselves. Summer, who was meant to carry with most of the responsibility of taking care of her younger siblings, wasn't very interested in it. She was busy by that time, with her then boyfriend Nick, and she wasn't very good at taking care of kids at all. She did not have the patience nor the will to take care of three noisy, annoying kids. And with Jane it was now four.
When Summer heard about her mom's new pregnancy, knowing that this new kid would end up being her responsibility too, she ran away with the boyfriend she had before Nick: Joey. Things didn't work out after they hit the road and, after breaking up and running out of money, Summer ended up going back to the Lane house.
Still at the hospital, little Jane still had the peace and the silence she needed, with her brother and her parents. She still had some time before going to her unstructured and chaotic home, at 111 Howard Drive.