Chapter 1 – The Broken

"You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up, and you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly- that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp." –Anne Lamott

Ava was twelve years old the day she knew her life would never be the same. It wasn't so much as she knew, she could just feel it. From walking in the hallways at school to sitting on the bus. There was something in the air that told her something bad was going to happen. She got home from school with the military captain standing in the doorway talking politely but briskly to her mother. She stopped dead in her tracks as the wind blew her hair around her face. It was the perfect day, cold, dry, and completely blue sky, but something was wrong. She watched the men step off her porch and listened to the gravel crunch under their shoes. She was still frozen in place, and couldn't bear the look on their faces.

"I'm really sorry miss. He was a good man." She made a gasping noise while one of them placed a kind hand on her shoulder and continued to trudge along.

"Mom?" She whispered. She didn't remember walking the rest of the way up the driveway, but somehow she was standing in her mother's arms.

"It's fine. Everything's fine." That simple phrase became the normal in her house. Every day, she would hear it. She would hear that terrible, sick lie when they both knew everything was not fine. Her mom was getting more and more depressed, when she had a kid to take care of, when instead, Ava would take care of her. She wouldn't even get out of bed most days.

"Mom, get up," Ava would plead. "Mom, please."

"It's fine, everything's fine."

"You're such a child." It would go like this. On and on, up until the day she wasn't there to say it.

"Mom, I'm home!" Ava called when she walked through the door. She went to the kitchen to get a glass of water then went upstairs. She vaguely noticed the dishes weren't done, but nothing unusual. They never were anymore. "Mom, I need you to sign a form for school!" She called from the living room. "Honestly mother, this whole hide and seek game isn't fun." She walked up the stairs and to her room to set her backpack down then got the form out and walked to her mom's room. "Look mom, I even got a pen for you. Daughter of the year, Mom. Okay, seriously, where are..." Her voice trailed off as she stepped on wet carpet.

Ava looked in the bathroom and the tub was overflowing and there was an empty bottle of pills on the floor. "Mom no, mom what have you done?" She whispered to herself as she saw her lying on the ground, perfectly still. "Mom, don't leave me! Don't leave me alone please!" Ava sobbed.

Again, she didn't remember moving from that spot, but the next thing she was aware of, she was groggily waking up in an uncomfortable hospital chair. They told her she could stay until they find her a foster home. Her expression darkened as she remembered her family was coming to the funeral, but they didn't want anything to do with her after. She sucked in a big breath of air and choked down a sob. A nurse looked up from her station with sympathy and asked her if she needed anything before the foster agent came. Ava shook her head slowly. No, everything she needed was gone.

Ava was standing in front of her mom's closet deciding if she should even bother. She quickly erased that thought and grabbed her mother's favorite outfit. She placed it on the bed carefully and smoothed it out. She drew a shuddering breath and pressed her face into the soft material.

She looked herself over in the mirror skeptically. Her light brown hair was piled on her head carefully, and although her make-up was near perfect, she still felt like it wasn't enough. Her dress was printed with delicate flowers; not something one would expect for a funeral, but she knew her mother hated black, and she wanted to respect that. She decided she'd been to one too many funerals as she slipped on her shoes and took another look at her small, catlike frame, and went downstairs to meet the foster worker.

Ava tried to ignore the whispers of her family blaming her for her mother's death. Ava brought all the home videos from storage out and started playing them softly in the background. She stared at herself run away from her father trying to tickle her. Judging by the look of her post-toddler body, she was most likely four or five. She heard her aunt walk up behind her just as the video showed her father finally grabbed her around the waist and tossed her in the air as she squealed. She turned around and her aunt gave her a disgusted look.

"Why didn't you save her?" Ava could feel the words threatening to spill over, but she tried to hold them in.

"She was already gone when I got home."

"Why didn't you get home sooner?"

"The bus doesn't exactly run to my command."

"Are you smart mouthing me?"

"No," she said, already wanting to smack the woman. "I was answering your question." Her aunt narrowed her eyes to such small slits, Ava wondered if she could see out of them at all.

"You should have died, not her." She spat. Ava could hear the room grow silent at what she said. All eyes were trained on her for her response. All she could get out was an almost silent
"I know."

"It's quite a drive actually, but I didn't think you would mind being away from this place." The officer said. He'd been rattling on for about twenty minutes about nothing remotely important. The funeral ended quickly after the scene with her aunt, and Ava wondered if his words were supposed to be comforting her or himself.

"I don't mind." She said. She would love to go somewhere far away.

"You're going to need to fill out some paper work on the way there, just telling things about you. Can you do that?"

"Yeah," She said struggling not to roll her eyes. "Where are we going?"

"Texas. You like Texas?"

"I've never been."

"Oh lordy, kid. It's a nice place. Large." She gave a polite laugh. She didn't really care where she went, it didn't matter now. "There'll be about three to four kids there already. They should all be about your age, but I'm not sure of their age."

"That's fine," She said. "Will I be staying there?"

"Until someone takes you in, or you get moved." She expected the latter right away. Who would want an emotionally damaged teenager?

"This heat is ridiculous." Ava complained, coming down the stairs.

"Not used to this in Ohio?" said one of the boys sharing the house. It turned out to be a foster house, with the owners and foster parents next door. It's just for foster kids.

"No," She replied. "It never got this hot." She checked the temperature again. 104 degrees.

"I've lived here my whole life. You get used to it." He said. He was short-ish with curly brown hair and tan skin. Ava wasn't going to lie, he was pretty cute.

"Or I could just stay in the air conditioning." She said sitting down on the couch.

"Excuse me," he said. "That's my foot you sat on." She smirked knowing good and well that he didn't care that she sat on his foot.

"Excuse me, I must have left all my cares in the kitchen. Let me go look for them."

"Bring me back something nice." She just snorted in reply.

"You never told me why you're here." Leo said.

"It's not really something I like talking about."

"Relatable," he pointed out. He stared at her until she finally just blurted out her whole life story. He listened to every word of it intently, eyes never straying from her face. She realized how bad she missed that and longed for it when her dad was gone-when her mother no longer did. She hoped to stay in this house with this boy for as long as she could. She would do anything to feel like she was loved-listened to-whole again.

Hello all. I hope you enjoyed the first chapter. I've probably edited it about ninety times now, and probably will again, but that's okay. Now for some shameless self promoting!
DeviantArt: Rainy129
Tumblr fandom: robertdowneyjokin
Tumblr personal: geek-god
If you have any questions for me, feel free to leave a review or you could PM me. I'm always willing to help. Aye, matey's, looks like 'tis time to depart.