Our Time To Shine
Part One: Elmtree House
Chapter 1 Our Time To Shine/Chapter 24 Not Alone Anymore
Where does this story start?
You may say the beginning, but when is the logical beginning?
February 2006 when Tee and Johnny Taylor were put into care?
2007 when Harry moved to Dumping Ground?
2008 when Frank was taken into care?
2011 when Tyler, Rick and Kitty came to Elmtree after Burnywood was burnt down?
Or 2013 when Kitty came back?
What about when Jody was discovered in 2011?
How about 2012, when Faith was brought in?
Or when Erin was saved in June 2013?
Or how Sam got her last chance a month later?
Or how Mo had slipped into the midst unnoticed?
Or how about when Mike joined, back in the olden days when there were dinosaurs, and no dentists, and the world was in black and white, because colour hadn't be invented yet?
No.
This story started on the 22nd of October 2013, a fairly ordinary day one would imagine; a Tuesday.
On this particular day Arietta Rosenberg, a Chinese girl obsessed with music and postboxes, joined the Dumping Ground. Some people might say that was the start of a new story, but being the start of a new story implies that the arrival of Arietta was momentous enough to justify the new story.
Which wasn't the case, because when you live in care new people come and go, and the people you are surrounded with are ever-changing. This factor makes it almost impossible to decide where to start to an account of their lives; it would be logical to choose the arrival of someone, and inconveniently the arrival had to be Arietta's.
Inconvenient because Ari arrived at Elmtree house during a very complex situation, a situation centred round 3 missing care kids, one – named Erin – who was conveniently pregnant. Said girl, Erin Walker, along with her boyfriend (who was also missing) Rick Barber were the leaders of the Dumping Ground, so their disappearance had nearly led to anarchy, which had been resolved but still the structure of the Dumping Ground was unstable.
However, as Arietta was being driven to Dumping Ground none of this mattered. Instead the 14 (nearly 15) year old girl was wondering whether she was going to panic or whether she was going to put up an impenetrable shield. After all Elmtree House or whatever it was called was her first experience of a mainstream care home, so she really had no idea what to expect.
Making a good first impression seems like a good place to start, she decided before catching her reflection in the mirror and feeling inclined to invent time travel, so she could go back and punch her past self in the face...
Or leave a memo reminding herself NOT to wear clothes that made her look like she had been dressed by a small hyper child, before being puked upon by a rainbow-vomiting unicorn.
Is there anyway to pull off this look? She debated, maybe I could give it a "super-fun vibe" or a... something vibe or a...
"Arietta Rosenberg! Have you listened to a word I have said in the last half an hour?" Steve, her social worker questioned.
"You were talking?" she replied, not bothering to hide her surprise.
"Ari," he sighed, "this is important."
"Yeah... pretend to be healthy, and not insane, so I don't get sent back to a specialist centre. Ya da ya da ya da, yeah I know," she said wavering her hands in air, "bloody government spending cuts," she muttered, pulling out her phone and putting on headphones, choosing to listen to some Vivaldi so she didn't have to converse with her social worker.
Xxx
When she was about halfway through the movement Autumn, Steve pulled up into the drive of a fairly large cream-coloured house with red doors that could almost be described as pretty.
"Nice house," Ari commented, jumping out of the car and going to the back of the car to retrieve her bags. Though looks can be deceiving, she added in her head, as she picked up her guitar which she slung over her shoulder and grabbed two carrier bags of clothes and miscellaneous items.
She couldn't help but wish she still had her violin; after all playing the violin had been her forte, and one of the few areas that she had excelled in. Unfortunately she no longer had a violin, after pushing her parents too far during a fight, nearly two years, and her Dad had taken great pleasure at throwing her treasured possession to the floor and stamping on it.
She shook her head, as if it to remove thoughts of her parents and the past, so she could allow herself to focus on the future.
Steve knocked on the door, which was answered almost immediately by a balding (and greying) man.
"Hello I am Mike Milligan, head care worker of Elmtree House. You must be Arietta?" he said, opening the door letting the girl in.
"Yeah, hi, that's me," the Chinese girl replied, examining the hallway. "Um... shall I just leave my stuff here?" she asked,
"Don't worry I'll take it up to your room," he told her, "but first we'll introduce you to the other kids."
"Cool," she stated, feeling a bit unsure how to act.
"They are great kids," Mike said, smiling, with an almost fatherly-pride, "but they're going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment," he explained.
"Oh ok, what happened?" she questioned, feeling more than a little bit disconcerted.
But before Mike could reply she found herself standing in a doorway;
"Everybody this is Arietta, make her feel welcome please!" Mike exclaimed, before rushing off, leaving Ari's question unanswered and an awkward silence filling the room.
She quickly scanned the room, surprised when she noticed a familiar face; a girl named Kitty who had been at the same specialist care home as Ari, but had left a few months ago. But the look on Kitty's face made it pretty obvious that she hadn't recognised the older girl.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a blonde girl, who had been sitting in the corner and Ari had missed in her original scan of the room. The girl stood up and walked over to Ari, before extending her hand.
"Hi Arietta, I'm Sam," she said smiling, "I'm 14 as well. This is: Harry, Tyler, Faith, Kitty, Frank, Mo," she told Arietta pointing at each person in turn, "and Johnny, who is upstairs," she added, pointing at the ceiling.
"Hiya," she replied lamely, before mentally kicking herself, who says hiya? No one speaks like that... well I suppose some people must do... she trailed off, stopping her brain from running off on a tangent, and focused what was going on outside of her brain. Small talk, what part of her brain commanded.
"Not being funny, but there isn't a lot of you here but this looks like a pretty big home?" All the kids sighed.
"Hiya" and "not being funny"... why couldn't she speak like a normal person? Like the normal person she evidently wasn't. Was that why they were sighing? She questioned, before it occurred to her that they might be sighing for a reason other than the way of her speech.
"One of the girls, Johnny's sister Tee ran away about 5 days ago and a few days ago Erin and Rick who were like the leaders of us all ran away after her," a boy, Tyler(?) stated.
"Oh," she said simply, "how old are they all?" she asked before she could stop herself,
"Tee's 13, that's why Erin and Rick went after her and they're both 14," Sam said, "But Erin's pregnant, so we're all worried about her and Tee's alone as far as we know so Johnny's really sensitive at the moment, so just be careful mentioning anything to do with her around him."
Arietta nodded, awkwardly, unsure about what to say.
"Anything else I should know?" she asked,
"Frank's got cerebral palsy, but he's completely normal. Johnny has anger issues, hence why you shouldn't talk to Tee about him, Erin used to have anger issues but they've definitely got better now and Mo likes hunting for treasure so hide your stuff," Sam told her laughing, amazingly everyone else laughed with her. Arietta nodded dumbly, unsure of what to say.
"Hey do you wanna play cards?" Tyler asked, sitting down at a table, grabbing a pack of cards.
"Yeah, go on then," she told him, joining him at the table, "anyone else up for a game?" She questioned.
Sam, the blonde girl, took a seat next to Ari,
"I'm not usually this awkward," she admitted to Sam,
"it's fine," the other girl replied, "it's only natural to be nervous, but everyone's really nice here," she told her, though to Ari her last statement that Sam was trying to convince herself that, rather than Ari.
"Been here long?" Ari questioned, noticing vaguely as Kitty and Frank sat down next to Tyler, who started dealing the cards.
"About 3 months," she admitted,
"I've been here about a month," Kitty said joining the conversation,
"what about you Frank?" the Chinese girl asked,
"I've been here for 5 years," he replied, "longer than all of them."
The teenagers kept chatting, and played the games. All of which ended with Frank thrashing the rest of them,
"you're not part of the Dumping Ground till Frank has beaten you at cards," Tyler told Ari,
"that's true," Sam commented, "pretty much the first thing that happened to me when I joined."
"What, is being beaten by Frank the standard welcome?" she questioned,
"more or less," Tyler stated,
"everyone used to get the Gus tour," Frank said,
"Gus was a really weird boy who lived here," Tyler explained,
"yeah, he was proper mental," Jody yelled from the other side of the room.
Ari bit back a response, not wanting to make it into their bad books so early on.
"He got fostered," Tyler commented, "by a gay couple."
"Were they cute?" Arietta couldn't help but ask,
"it was two women," Kitty replied, with a certain amount of distaste in her voice, as if believing that her statement had answered Ari's question.
Ari was very tempted to roll her eyes, but decided against it.
"So cute then," she said instead, and she noticed Sam clock her, definitely gay. Ari smiled slightly, glad that she had been able to confirm Sam's sexual orientation early on, best way to avoid confusion, she noted; and after all she hated falling for straight girls.
"What are you thinking?" Sam questioned, and before Ari could reply she was cut off by Kitty's phone ringing.
"I'll be back in a second," she said sprinting away, leaving the rest of them confused but they carried on playing without her, when she wasn't back after 5 minutes.
About 20 minutes later Kitty reappeared with a boy that Ari presumed was Johnny.
"We need to talk to you guys in private," she told the table, Frank, Tyler and Sam started to get up, and Ari copied. "No not you Arietta, sorry," Kitty apologized.
Sam froze as if to say something, before deciding against it and hurrying off after the others. Leaving Ari alone.
"Nothing like a friendly welcome," she muttered, tossing her cards down, before standing up and going to find her room.
After a fair bit of trial and error she found her room, and started unpacking her things; hanging her clothes up in the wardrobe, and making a mental note to only wear normal clothes from now on.
Well, more normal clothes anyway.
She placed her empty holdall in the bottom of her wardrobe, and turned her attention to her remaining bags; four carrier bags and a rucksack.
She half-wished that one of the other kids would turn up, and ask if she needed any help. Or even just acknowledge her existence. Arietta couldn't help but feel a bit like a Christmas present; interesting for all of 5 minutes, before being dumped in the corner and forgotten about.
Sighing she sat down on the bed, and plucked a framed photo out of her rucksack, she found herself smiling at the picture; it had been taken at a friend's Christmas party in 2011, only a couple of weeks before her world had been smashed to pieces. Her smiling 12 year old self had no idea what was going to come, and couldn't have even envisioned a future without the girl standing next to her; Symphony – her big sister and her best friend.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door,
"come in," she called after a moment, the door opened and Sam poked her head around it.
"Are you ok?" The blonde questioned, walking into the room.
"I'm peachy," Ari lied,
"peachy?" Sam asked, shaking her head slightly,
"don't ask," the Chinese girl replied.
"Sorry about running off like that, it was an emergency," she smiled softly, "we don't tend to deliberately isolate people."
Ari frowned slightly, yet again it sounded like Sam's statements were trying to convince herself instead of Ari, she shook that thought away.
"Don't worry, it's cool," she stated,
"tea is going to be ready in a minute," Sam told her, "but if we go now we can avoid the stampede."
"Are meal times usually that bad?" Ari questioned,
"trust me, there are," the blonde girl replied, "us kids are like a pack of hyenas."
"Ok, let's go then," she stated, "don't really want to get torn apart on my first day."
"I would say that we are not bad," Sam declared, as they made their way downstairs, "but that would be a lie," she paused for a moment, "this place can be like hell," she admitted.
"Not really," Ari replied darkly, "I've been to hell on Earth and it was a million times worse than this place."
Before Sam could ask what the new girl had meant she was interrupted by Gina roaring, "DINNER!" So instead she grabbed Ari's hand and pulled her into the kitchen so they could get the food first.
All while making a mental note to ask Arietta about her past.
Ok Chapter 1 done, hope you like it.
Please review xxx