"I swear, Ms. Trent, they are just going to dump me like most of them." I told my social worker.
No one wanted me. I was too old for adoption, I mean I only had two years before I was considered an adult and I would have to fight real life on my own. After what happened at my last foster home the social workers were scrambling to put the kids into other homes. My social worker, Ms. Trent, a old social worker that really did try to get me what I needed even though I was placed in a not so enjoyable home.
When she did find a home, it was not in Miami, Florida where I had been living. This home was located in western Florida, in Pensacola. The family itself were personal friends of Ms. Trent, so they agreed to house me until another foster family home opened up for me.
The house I was going to was fairly big. It was sort of light blue in color with white trimming around the windows. Off in the distance I could hear the roar of the ocean. That was a familiar sound I had full knowledge of. One of the few places were I could go to and write on my own. Maybe they would let me go and hang out at the beach. But then again, it was Thanksgiving day, who knew what they were doing today. Who knew what sort of traditions these people had going on. Ms. Trent told me that they were all nice people and that they were expecting me.
"Everything is going to be okay, Annella." Ms. Trent told me as we approached the front door of the house. She pressed the front of her navy blue blouse down, trying to get the few wrinkles out of it. Her pencil skirt matched the dark colored top and had a few stray hairs sticking to it. At least she was trying to look presentable. I didn't have any nice cloths, at all.
I could hear a lot of people either inside or outside, maybe it was both. I became nervous because this was something that I didn't want to deal with. Not now. I'm used to all the quiet other homes had. But this family was a lot of loud when we got to the front door.
"Be nice, Annella. This is a chance for you to actually have a home for the rest of your childhood. Or at least until we can get you into another home."
"And then what, they'll drop me like a ton of bricks?" I asked.
She sighed before reaching over and ringing the doorbell. It didn't take long before someone opened the door. It was who answered the door that made me take a step back in uncertainty.
This guy was tall, taller than my five foot nothing height. He was built like professional football player. He had wide shoulders and a defined brow. He had long hair, curling slightly at the ends. He was definitely my age, because the man that also walked up looked like an older version of the guy at the door.
"Kimberly Trent, so glad to see you." The man said, moving around the tall guy.
I took another step from the man. He was big, he was actually on the fat side with short, stiff curly gray hair that hung down to his shoulders. He looked like a dark skinned Santa Clause without the beard, and gray hair. I already said that. When writing sometimes it's good to repeat things, but not always in the same paragraph. Dang it, I was going at it again with the grammar and literary protocols in my head.
"You as well, Sika. And this is your son, which one, Joe right?" My social worker extended her hand to the guy that was looking at me.
"That's right, Ms. Trent." He glanced at her before looking at me. "Hi, I'm Joe." Then he held his hand out to me.
"Annella Grange." I replied, shaking his hand, not because I wanted to but because I had to.
"Annie, so nice to meet you." Sika said, smiling wide and showing me his teeth.
"It's Annella, no one calls me Annie." I looked at the larger man.
"Maybe that will change." Joe smiled at me. "You'll be rooming with my sister Myritza, she's excited to actually see you."
"Go take her things up to your sister's room. Ms. Trent and I have some legal stuff to go over, Son." Sika said.
"Come on." Joe reached for my suitcase and took it from me.
Well I had no say in the matter. At least he had my cloths suitcase, my backpack is where I kept my writing stuff, my journal and some of the small books on how to write novels. My personal stuff was going to be personal, these people were not going to figure out my deepest and darkest secrets.
The upstairs of the house was where the bedrooms were. There were four. The master bedroom was nearest the stairs and there were three more that had different names on them, like plaques or something of that nature. But one door had two plaques and one of the plaque had a name on it.
"Annie's Room." I said out loud, looking at the black and red painted wooden plaque with silver letters. "Who's Myritza?"
"That would be my younger sister. She's the second to last youngest in the family. She was ecstatic about you coming so she made a door sign for you. Ms. Trent said what your favorite colors were and Myritza went to town after. She loves arts and crafts." Joe said before knocking on the closed door. "My, My, are you in there?"
"What do you want, Joseph?" A voice came out.
"Can you open up? I got something to show you."
"Just leave me alone. I hate Vanessa. She has to ruin everything for me."
Whoever was on the other side of the door didn't sound to be happy. Glancing at Joe, who groaned in agitation, I stepped closer to the door and leaning in towards the door.
"Um, it's Annella Grange. I just got here..." I didn't finish that sentence when I heard thundering footsteps and then the door swung open. "Uh hi."
The next moment I had a girl, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, hugging me. I yelped, struggling to get a secured footing because I felt like I was going to fall down. Helplessly looking at Joe, all he did was laugh at me, or at what was happening to me. I'm guessing this was Myritza, and she took to me like a trooper.
"Oh my God, you're not really what I was expecting but come on. I want to show you my, I mean our room." The dark haired girl said grabbing my hand and pulling me into the room.
Well, she was not what I had expected when I got here. Joe simply stood at the door and watched his younger sister parade me around in the room. It looked like a typical girl's room. Lots of pink and bright colors. Compared to my camouflage pants and black shirt, she was all bright and happy. There were two beds right next to each other, kind of like one of the dorm rooms I had been in with other institutions. Her bed had a pink bed spread on it while mine was red and black with two pillows and there was a stuffed bear sitting up on top of the bed.
"And this is your desk. We had to buy a new one because Vanessa didn't want to share a room with you. But I totally wanted to share with you so, yeah. That's your desk. You can decorate it however you want. Oh, and look what Mom and Dad got you, a laptop because your social worker said that you liked to write. I think Vanessa is jealous that you got a new computer while hers is old." The girl said all of that in one breath, I think. She had a whirlwind personality that's for sure.
"Myritza," Joe finally spoke up.
"What, I'm telling the truth." She looked at her brother. "And besides, I wanted Annie to come stay with us."
"Why?" Joe asked.
"Well, duh, she wrote in and won the young writer's contest. When I read that short story, I was like, wow, I would like to write like that one day."
I started to understand why she wanted me to stay with her. I could see the papers littering her desk, out of order and in a sort of disarray kind of way. She probably wanted to be a writer, too. I mean, all I could understand and do was writing because it gave me a place to put my thoughts and feelings. Maybe it was the same for her.
"Are you a writer?" I asked.
"I want to be one, but Mom and Dad want me to pursue more athletic pursuits, like cheerleading. Vanessa and I are on the team together, Joe's on the football team."
Glancing at Joe, he nodded as if he was telling me silently that what his sister said was true. So he was a football player, he looked like he was one.
"When you three are done," someone else joined us at the room.
I turned around to look. The person turned out to be a girl around my age. She had light eyes, much like Joe did. But she didn't look as friendly as Joe and Myritza. She was lean, with long black hair, and wide hips. Me, I was tiny, tiny in everything on me. At five foot nothing I was even towered over by Myritza. Joe, well, he was a giant it seemed to me. He easily towered over me.
"It's time to get food." She looked me over. "She looks like she could eat two plates, she'll need it."
"Vanessa," Joe warned.
"What, I'm just pointing out the obvious." Then she turned back to me. "Hi, I'm Vanessa Anoa'i. I bet you already know that."
"Not really, no." I replied.
"Well, come on. You don't keep hungry Samoans from eating for long or they get all sorts of angry." She turned so suddenly that she disappeared.
With this being Thanksgiving, I was not really sure how this family celebrated the holidays.
"We have cousins and aunties from California. Pensacola is where my family lives." Joe was not the one that said it, it was my new best friend, Myritza. "Our founding father came from Hawaii and moved to San Francisco."
There were a lot of dark skinned people in this place, a lot. Samoan, from what I knew, were from Hawaii, and that would explain why I felt suffocated in this place. Little kids running around, partents yelling at them to stop, and I was thrown right in the middle of all of this. Right on Thanksgiving Day, what a time for me.
"Better get used to it fast, a lot of our family wants to meet you." Joe leaned down and whispered into my ear.
I turned to look at him but all I got was a smirk as I had to follow Myritza through a throng of people in the kitchen towards the backyard.
Now the backyard was positioned in a way that it seemed like an indoor cafeteria was brought outside. Long tables and benches were lined up around the rather large backyard. There were people roasting on two barbeque pits, the smell of pork wafted through the air. Wafted, that was something I was not expecting to think about. Wafting, floating, I needed to work on my descriptive words when it comes to these things.
"You must be Annie." A man, a larger than life man, said approaching us. And I didn't have time to prepare for being lifted into a bear hug of bear hugs, this large man, I'm guessing Samoan and maybe part Asian, with a Buddha style body build. He pretty much could toss me around like no tomorrow. "Bet you know who I am by now." He said this after putting me down.
Still dazed about being picked up like a child's toy, I swayed where I stood. "Sorry, I don't. Am I?"
"You don't know who our dad is?" A teenage boy appeared, as if out of thin air right behind the larger than life man that had hugged me. "Where have you been living?"
"All over Miami." I responded, seeing two slightly identical guys now standing on either side of the large man. "I"m Annella Burke..."
"Oh, yeah, Aunt Patricia said that they were taking in a foster kid." Twin Two said, looking me over. "So, how old are you?"
"Sixteen."I answered.
"Funny, you look twelve." Twin One said, only to get smack up side the head by the strange man. "Ow, Dad, that hurt."
"Good, maybe next time you will remember to keep you mouth shut, Jonathan." Then the man turned to me. "I am Solofa Fatu, I am Rikishi from the WWF, well used to."
I furrowed my brows. "I don't know what that is, the WWF."
"Wow, you really don't know anything do you?" Twin One laughed.
"I've been shuffled from foster home to foster home starting at the age of two, when my parents abandoned me." I turned to look at the second twin who had said it. "So, yeah, if your family is famous I wouldn't know it." Really, did it shock anyone anymore that maybe there were people who just didn't know everything about anything?
"Sorry." Jonathan mumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets before walking away.
"You won't have to be bothered by my sons, we are flying home tomorrow." Solofa said, turning my attention back to him. "And accept my apologies, my sons don't know when to shut their mouths some times."
Joe hadn't said anything, Myritza looked like she was shocked to have heard the little tidbit about my past. At least this Rikishi guy seemed nice enough.
"So what is this WWF thing?"
"It stands for World Wrestling Federation." Joe finally said. "I think they are having legal issues with the other WWF thing over using that as a name."
"Oh." Really, was it this difficult to talk about something with these people.
"Come on, you're going to sit next to me at the table." Myritza finally stepped up, tugging me along towards a back fence where a long picnic table stood. "It's the best one because you can see the beach from there."
I didn't say anything because she was right. Just on the other side of the chain link fence and a gate was a beach with perfect white powdered sand. Maybe I could head down there after dinner was through. Dinner, it was still light out. Of course this is Florida, subtropical as it was. I'm sure people in Minnesota didn't have light at three like we did.
"So are you working on anymore short stories like you had done before?" Myritza asked as we sat in front of place mats on the table.
"Not yet, no. I was thinking about writing a Christmas story but I'm not really sure."
"Can you show me out you write?" When I looked at the younger girl, she sighed almost too dramatically. "I mean, what do you do to get your stories? It's so amazing, from the piece that I did read. It was really well put together."
Put together is right, I spent hours on that short story. Considering it came from personal experience, an experience in which my back was still slightly tender from what I had to go through. Flashes of memories popped into my head, but I pushed them aside.
"I start with a rough outline, or a list of things that I want to happen within the story." I explained. "It's good to keep a notebook with you at all times because you never know when inspiration will occur and some times it's in a place where you have no control over. Some of the conversations I heard were in class between two teens that were sitting in front of me."
"I'll have to remember that."
And I'll have to remember that this was not permanent, or at least I didn't think so.
Gee, I hope this sounds good for you guys. I have been toying with this story and with a late start I want to finish it before Christmas, to give it an honest to goodness holiday story.
Also, I haven't really seen any childhood stories about Roman Reigns so I thought I would give a crack at it.
