Prologue-Mrs. Karnstein
Laura's POV
In hindsight I was pretty lucky. A lot of kids had it a lot worse than I did. When I went in the system I already knew who I was and I never had to deal with insecurities about why I was there that a lot of my fellow foster kids had to deal with. Put on top of that some of the abuse some kids had to go through, I was one of the lucky ones.
I had only a handful of bad foster families but there was one house in particular that was the worst. It was the Karnstein residence.
Mrs. Karnstein was an intimidating woman to say the least. She was beautiful and tall but for all her beauty she was ugly because of what lay beneath her surface. Looking at her you saw beauty but if you looked into her eyes there was not a shred of joy or love, all you could see was hate and anger, all of which she took out on us.
The only good thing I remember about that time and that place was Mrs. Karnstein's daughter. Her name was Carmilla she was the most stunning girl I had ever seen, her beauty felt like the sun on a cold winters day, and unlike her mother she had love in her heart. Carmilla came across prickly and flippant even unlikeable at times but after living with her for a week it was easy to tell it was her way of dealing with her mother, even though she never hit Carmilla like she did the fosters it was still clear Carmilla was just as abused as the rest of us. And with this abuse came an unexpected friend ship, it's funny how two people can bond over the mutual hate of a third person but that's exactly what we did.
Carmilla and I became friends within my first week there, by the time I was kicked out we did everything together. Carmilla would even put up with my incredibly nerdy habits, she'd even let me read fanfiction on her phone when her mother wasn't around to see. To this day I have never had a friend mean as much to me as Carmilla, she owns a piece of me and I think she always will, I only wish I could thank her for everything she did for me back then. I am so grateful to her, especially for my last night there when she stood up to her mother. I never got to thank her. She took my beating that day leaving me in a new foster family and Carmilla in the hospital. She stood up to her mother fully knowing that she would turn on her and beat her worse then she would me and yet she did.
Sometimes I wonder what ever happened to her. Did she have to go back to her mother? Was she forced into the foster system? I don't know but where ever she is I hope she doesn't blame me as much as I blame myself.