Rachel lied on top of her new bed, staring up at her new ceiling in her new room.
Rachel Schmidt, she thought, annunciating the sounds in her mind.
Her former rooms were always someone else's. They had decorations and colors that she didn't like, or that didn't belong to her. They were less like rooms and more like prisons, in a way, despite the supposed freedom.
This room was blank, like a canvas. Whatever it had been before, it was a room now, and she could do whatever she wanted with it. It was her room.
Not that it mattered. This was temporary, like the other homes. The smiles were genuine, right up until they weren't. Then something would happen, someone would fuck it up for her, and then she'd leave, whether she wanted to or not.
Rachel turned to her side, back facing the door. The name escaped her lips, a secret whisper confirming it, as if speaking of it made it more real than it already was.
It was only a matter of time.
Her heart beat rapidly as she snuck down the stairs with as much guile as she could muster. She counted the steps under her breath, and skipped creaky step number fourteen.
She had been too careless, too caught up in the routine to notice before it was too late. Rachel always kept the jackets she wore around Rollo separate from the rest of her clothing. Stupidly, she had deposited the jacket in the regular laundry bin. If the dog hair didn't make it obvious, the smell certainly did.
She didn't know what her foster parents thought about having pets, but Rachel didn't ask. She was going to sneak around anyways; it was just easier to skip the inevitable disappointment and anger when she was denied.
Rachel froze on the last step. Her eyes were fixated on the bundle of laundry on top of the dryer and her foster mother, humming a melancholy tune as she folded.
Too late, she thought as her heart dropped to the deepest pits of her stomach. She knows.
Dorothy Schmidt turned over her shoulder, and saw her on the last step. "Rachel dear," she said casually, "Was there something you needed?"
Rachel was silent, her gaze still fixed on the bundle of fresh, folded laundry. Her jacket was on top.
Dorothy followed her eyes, and understood. Sweeping the pile into her arms, she walked over and dumped the clothes into Rachel's grasp. "Here you go, dear. Fresh from the dryer."
Rachel stared at her foster mother's smiling face, bewildered.
"Okay," was all she said while she took her clothes back to her room. She was being set up, Rachel figured. They were keeping an air as normality as possible, up until one of them came into her room and made an example of her behind closed doors.
She waited for her punishment.
None came.
The short drive from her school to the house stretched on for eternity.
"We talked to your teacher," her foster father Geoff said. His tone was more matter-of-fact than angry or even disappointed. "She says you attacked that boy. The spic."
Rachel's eyes were glued to the car floor. "He was picking on some girl in a wheelchair, being loud so everyone could hear. I told him to shut up. Then he started being loud to me. Wouldn't leave me alone. So I made him."
"On the nose?"
"Yeah."
Geoff nodded. "Good. But he's marked you, now. I saw it in his eyes, his posture. If you were a boy, he would have just retaliated. But you being a girl wounded his pride too much. Now he's going to escalate."
"Geoff," said Dororthy
The two briefly shared a glance.
"It was a good start, Rachel. But if you want this to end, then you're going to be as thorough as possible. You have to make sure that he never tries to lay harm to you ever again."
Seemingly satisfied, Dorothy nodded.
Rachel sat in bewildered silence. She knew she was right, knew that he had it coming. She hadn't planned on defending herself, just taking whatever her foster parents had wanted to dish out. Stupid, idiotic, worthless, feral. Those were the words she expected to hear, like she had so many times before.
But she didn't expect this.
Rachel felt him struggle under her grasp, arms flailing wildly, grabbing her arms, her shirt, for air. He was bigger than her, older, but that didn't matter when Rollo's paw held down his body.
He had followed her all the way to her sanctuary. He took Rollo, tried to drown him in a sack in a nearby lake to get to her in a way that she couldn't fight back.
Her power had kicked in then, fueled by her fear, her anger. Rollo had torn through the sack like wet tissue paper, and it was only by her intervention that Rollo didn't tear him apart almost immediately afterward.
She wanted to do this herself. With her own hands.
You have to make sure that he never tries to lay harm to you ever again.
Rachel lifted his head up from the water. The older boy sputtered as water dripped down his tan skin.
"Don't fuck with me or my dog again." Rollo's growl accompanied her own, responding to her tone, her anger.
The boy could only nod numbly. Finding his response acceptable, she slammed the boy's face into the ground, letting the blood pool from his re-broken nose.
Rachel watched her foster mother cooked meals that could feed three times the amount of people sitting at the table, and her foster father reading the newspaper without actually reading it.
She could anticipate what they were going to say before they could say it, because it was always the same. Enjoying the paper, dear? Of course, honey. Save the funny pages for Rachel, and put that away. It's almost time to eat.
They were genuine, right up until they weren't.
It wasn't like the others, who hid under a veneer of confusing politeness. They were like her, fumbling for something they couldn't understand, a void in their knowledge that they tried to bridge.
She pushed people away, unwilling to even try. They tried too hard, parroting what they think is normal, like reading off from a script.
Killing that boy meant she would have to go away. And it was only until now did she realize that she didn't want to.
If they could try, so could she.
"Good morning," greeted Dorothy, as she set a plate in front of her.
"Morning," Rachel responded for the first time as she filled her plate with bacon and eggs.
There was only a briefest of pauses, one that could only be seen if you were really looking for it. But just as quickly, the two of them adjusted.
"Good morning, Rollo," continued Dorothy as she set down a bowl on the ground. Rollo let out a happy bark.
Once they were all seated around the table, the Schmidt family enjoyed a nice, normal breakfast.