Chapter 2
Dalia's POV
Η μνήμη, το άτομο, και η αλλαγή
Running.
One of the first things I remember is running.
Well, scratch that. The first thing I remember is the man.
He was big and strong, and mean looking. He had too many tattoos for my liking, and a buzz cut for his hairstyle that made me think that he was a prisoner or something.
The next thing I remember was the man accusing me of something, of which I can't remember. And I remember snapping, finally getting enough of the accusations. Then, I remember punching him.
My hand made contact with his skin in between the nose and mouth, not a very good hit but just enough to throw him off guard. It knocked his sunglasses off of the top of his head and made his nose bleed. At first he just stood there, I guess he was surprised of what I did coming from a ten year old. Then the look in his eyes changed.
His eyes changed to madness. Rage. Anger.
And then, he reached back into his back pocket. He pulled something out, but I didn't figure out what it was until later. I remember turning around and running as fast as I possibly could.
I ran away from wherever the place was, and into the woods that were nearby. Often in the memories, the man is chasing after me, screaming my name and various curses as he stumbles behind. From what I remember, he never caught up with me. I was too fast.
And sometimes in the memories, if I stay attentive for that long without zoning out from total fear, there are gunshots that follow. The gunshots are loud, full of anger and hatred. The sound pierces my ears and its so vivid that sometimes I believe I can smell the smoke and gunpowder. The bullets always zoom past incredibly fast. And they are always aimed at me. But I don't remember why.
I ran away from wherever the place was. I zigzagged to throw the man off, then I went back to where me and my brothers Bryson and Theodore were currently staying at the time.
At the time we were living off on the streets, our "home" changing almost every other week. We didn't have any money, because our mom didn't leave us any. When she had left us (Bryson says I was about 8 or 9 at the time) , we stayed in the house for about another month or so. Then the cops found out that we were staying alone inside of a house that hadn't been paid for in over 4 months, so we ran away before they could take us and separate us from each other.
We survived off of stolen food, clothes, and blankets for close to a year after the incident with the man. We slept in alleyways and behind buildings. We never went to school, or learned right from wrong. I still went to playgrounds with Theo, and sometimes saw my old friends there. But they always looked away or acted like they didn't know m. The authorities eventually found us while we were sleeping in a park one night, and so they took all three of us to the Duke Street orphanage, where our lives suddenly turned into an even worse hellhole, if that's even possible.
We "lived" there for the next four years. By the time that Alicia came, I was 14, Theo was 13, and Bryson was 18. We were also the only kids to stay at the orphanage for over a year. Nobody wanted us, so we stayed there, forced into doing chores and getting blamed for the other kid's slip-ups and pranks.
Fast forward four years and nine months after we got put into the "home for homeless kids", and that's where this story starts. It was the day our lives changed forever, better or worse we still don't know. But there were three things I knew from the start.
One was that that day was going to be different.
The second thing I knew was that me and my brothers were going to finally have our chance at happily ever after with an actual loving family.
And the third thing?
The third thing I knew of was that the moment Alicia stepped into the room, she was hiding something from me, my brothers, the orphanage runner Mrs. Brown, and pretty much everyone else.
And boy, I couldn't be more correct about that.