A/N: Wow I feel so incredibly loved. The love is seriously overwhelming.
Just keep bringing the love. "All you need is love!" True, so true! I
can't believe I have so many wonderful reviews on just the prologue. Well
this should get good. I already have two wonderful candidates to be in my
story. If you want to be in this story say so on your review or e-mail me
your profile. If you say so in your review I'll e-mail you an application.
If you want to use any of my characters please e-mail me seeing as how they
belong to, yes me. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE REVIEWS!! KEEP IT UP!!!
SHOUT OUTS TO MY LOYAL FANS:
Faces-thank you so very much for the praise. I feel so...what's that word? Oh right, loved! Don't worry, you'll be in my story soon.!
Ember-the newsies are coming. It wouldn't be a good newsies fan fic if there weren't any newsies in it, now would it?
Seraph-thank you very much. I feel much more confident with my writing when I get compliments like those!
BabyD-well I don't know if I can GIVE you more, but you can definitely read some more! I think we all have this little *obsession obsession* with newsies or none of us would be here . . . LOL.
Volcanous-more happens! and more chappies on their way!
DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN NEWSIES! If I did . . . well . . . let's just put it this way, I'd be one happy girl. Suing me would of course be pointless because if by some bizarre law miracle you win all you'd get is a bunch of pencils, permanent markers, a binder filled with newsies fan-fics and *hee hee* safety pins.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CHAPTER 1: GOING WEST
I walked west. I walked west for a while. I didn't walk all the time, I rode some public buses but all that matters is the fact that I walked. It wasn't a long walk. I eventually caught a bus to Salt Lake, which is like twenty miles away from Park City. Once I got to the city, I wandered around for half an hour trying to remember where the hell the damned bus depot was. Once I got there I bought myself a ticket on the first bus headed west, not caring where it was. San Francisco . . . here I come!
600 miles. 600 miles on a fucking bus. That's like . . . what? 655 minutes. 10 hours. 10 hours and 55 minutes. I have to spend 10 hours on a fucking bus! Sure it's a charter bus and all. But 11 hours about? That's pure cruel and heartless torture.
The bus departed at 9 AM so I sat in the depot for like half an hour. To pass the time I listened to Godsmacks new CD. As people got on the bus, they gave me weird looks. I don't know how young, or old, I look . . . some people have told me I look 14 . . . and some have said that I look almost 20. Whatever. I don't give a flying fuck about what they think. I don't care what anyone thinks anymore. I'm on my own now. I don't have to listen to anyone, I don't have to wait for anyone and most of all I don't have to depend on anyone.
Some old fag sat next to me. He kept on glancing over at me and I'm giving him the bitchiest looks imaginable. I'm hoping that he'll pick up what I'm getting at. I checked the ticket and it turns out we'll be stopping in Carson City for half an hour. Picking some other people up I guess. If I judged it right it'll be something like seven and a half-hours until we get there. A good time for sleep if I do say so myself. There are no other lullabies like heavy metal to put you asleep. I cranked the volume all the way up and closed my eyes.
I woke up to find someone else sitting next to me. He was a boy, somewhere around the age of 17. He had blue eyes hidden behind a pair of glasses and shaggy blonde hair. I guess he noticed that I was staring at him because he turned and looked at me straight in the eyes.
"Hi" he said with a smile. I took off my headphones and let them rest around my neck.
"Hi . . ." I said slowly. I don't normally talk to strangers but there was something about this guy that just made him different.
"My names Dutchy. What's yours?"
"Merrily."
"You don't look like a Merrily."
"I know. My name means merry and I'm some physco depressive chick."
"That's not what I meant. You look more like a . . . Skunk" he touched my hair and I didn't flinch or brush him away. Because I knew why he was touching my hair. He was touching the chunk that was dyed black and swept over to the side. The rest of my hair is bleach blonde, naturally.
"Skunk?"
"Yeah. It fits you. I'm not saying you smell or anything. You just look like . . . Skunk. Would you answer if I called you that?"
"Sure" I replied. It's not like I'm gonna see this kid again after this bus trip so why not let him call me Skunk?
"So why are you here?"
"I ran away."
"How come?" I normally wouldn't tell a stranger these types of details but there was something in his eyes. His clear blue eyes peered deep inside my head and it felt like he already knew everything he needed to know about me. Those eyes. I knew I could trust him. Because of his eyes.
"My life had gone past the stage of living hell. Everyone involved in my life, in any way, shape, or form, hated me."
"Everyone?"
"Yes. And my mother hated me the most. At 15 years of age she definitely wasn't ready to have a child. But there I was and there was nothing she could do about it. Her parents, my grandparents, were distraught. You see, they're strict Catholics and she had sinned so much. This just made everything worse. For three years Ii lived with them. They took me to church every Sunday. She didn't go. As soon as she was 18 she left, taking me with her. Why? I have absolutely no idea. I guess she didn't hate me at the time. Well at 18 and broke she needed a job. So she decided to get in employed in what she did best . . . being a slut. She got a job at a strip club.
"At three years old I was a corrupt little child. I was being raised in a fucking strip club! I had the most vulgar vocabulary imaginable. It was quite disturbing. I'd be sitting at a table coloring and I would hear noises coming from the back room. I bet you can guess what those noises were. Well I sure as hell knew. At first it bothered me, but then it just became one of the back round noises, along with the music. And by time I was four I had already received all the lessons I would ever need in the human anatomy and sex education.
"Even though I was very corrupt I still was interested in things I saw on TV. And one of them was dance. Ever since watching one of those dancing competitions on TV, I wanted to be a dancer. I even told her this. And she told the rest of the girls at the club. They all thought that this was so cute and they knew that she had nowhere near enough money to afford dance lessons for me. But because they cared, and she cared a little, they all pitched in to help pay for dance lessons. Such nice girls for being strippers. I tried them all. Tap, ballet, jazz, lyrical, modern, clogging, and hip-hop. I liked jazz and hip-hop the best. So I took lessons in those two. And I loved them. I loved to dance. It was the only good thing I can remember about my childhood.
"When I was five my mother gave birth to Forrest. Nasty little bastard. I didn't like him from the start. It was then that I was first employed with the job of baby-sitter, while she stepped on stage, took off her clothes, and went off to fuck some random guy in the back room. I would usually just set him down in a corner and go about my business. He wasn't my damn responsibility. She would come back, barley clothed, to check on him and then after discovering I wasn't taking care of him she would bitch at me for not being responsible and looking after him. I would often bitch right back at her, seeing as how he was her son, not mine. She didn't like that so she would slap me and lock me in the storage closet until she needed me to take care of Forrest again. I started to hide snacks and things to do in the storage closet seeing as how I was in there so often. She even forgot about me and left me in there once. I didn't have a watch so I didn't have any idea what time it was. A night janitor found me and one of her fellow workers brought me home with her. That was the best night of my childhood, actually being cared for by a woman her age. Then this worker had to go and give me back to her.
"Of course my mother had to send me to school. So she did. I didn't enjoy it but if it meant getting away from her, I was willing to try anything. And her, being the way she was, couldn't help from fucking guys, so when I was eight, she had Lily. I liked Lily. For some reason I liked the kid. Maybe having another girl around, besides her, was the reason but I liked her no matter what the reason was. Forrest, on the other hand, was becoming an asshole and a mini-pimp. Seriously, the girls at the club loved him and couldn't seem to get their hands off of him. It was disgusting.
"That year she met Max. She fell in love with him and he . . . he was a bastard. When I was nine Max moved in with us. I hated him and I would constantly tell her this. She would just laugh it off and then order me to go make dinner or do something constructive. I was a genuine Cinderella. My counselor often called home to tell my mother her child was seriously depressed. She would just bitch at them and scream 'don't tell me how the raise my own fucking child!' So eventually the school rendered it pointless and just stopped calling. And all chances I had for escape went right down the drain and into the land of the broken dreams.
"I had never seen her happier to be pregnant. Maybe it was because she actually knew who the father of this child was, Max. They decided to get married so after Marigold was born they . . . got married. Forrest was of course the ring-bearer and Lily, the little two year old Lily, was the flower girl. Not the competent ten-year-old . . . no she had to take care of her latest illegitimate half-sibling whom she didn't care about and frankly, hated. So I didn't even get to see her get married. How fucking cruel can you get? Not even letting your very own daughter see your wedding. And low and behold, I didn't get to go to the reception either. I was too busy playing live in baby-sitter.
"The year after they got married Hunter was born. Because Max was too busy running his stupid fucking car business and she was too busy taking her clothes off and still fucking around with other guys, I was often pulled out of school to baby-sit. And if she wanted me to stay home to begin with, half the time she would forget to call in my 'excused' absence. I'm surprised that I even passed sixth grade with my horrible attendance record. Somehow, miraculously, I maintained good grades and . . . made it to middle school.
"Middle school. In middle school I started getting, how should I put this? Overly rebellious I guess you could call it. I dyed my hair bright green, got cat eye contacts, got my years pierced three times, got a cartilage piercing in my left ear, got my eyebrow pierced, which in case you can't notice has grown out, and got my belly button pierced. I constantly skipped class and could easily fake passes when needed. She really didn't care. She just bitched at whoever called from the school. Even with my rebellious attitude and punky looks and clothing I somehow avoided drugs and stayed mostly clean. I constantly looked toward suicide but my dance instructors helped me out of my strange depression.
"Life went well for the next three years. If you could call it well. Life went as good as it gets for my family. Then one day, when my mom got back from her gynecologist appointment she announced that she was three weeks pregnant. She and Max were very happy and I, of course, was pissed. I had thought that I was finished being the fucking live in baby-sitter. Well the next morning Max was livid. He'd been looking over his agenda for the day in his calendar when he remembered that he was out of town all week, three weeks ago. Meaning he wasn't the father of her child. Meaning she had fucked another guy.
"Life became hell. And there was no way to escape it. Besides dance I mean. But of course nothing good lasts forever. She gave birth to Harrison. And Max could not hide his utter hatred. So it took it out on her by beating her even more, and he took it on me, taking away dance. He said some bullshit like we didn't have enough money. Yet we had enough money to buy a whole fucking home theatre system. Did you know that the price of the one we got was equivalent to 2 weeks of my dance lessons? Yeah. Not enough money my ass. Life was past hell at that point. It went down hill from then until I finally cracked and ran away. Which brings me here" I took a deep breath and continued to look at Dutchy in utter amazement. Somehow he had endured my story but he was listening the whole time. His ears were listening, his mouth was listing, and his eyes were listening with utmost interest. And he didn't interrupt me at all. He just listened. And when I looked further into his eyes I could see that he understood.
"Wow" he finally said after an awkward moment of silence. "That really really sucks."
"Yeah. I never even had a birthday party. So . . . why are you here?" I asked, not expecting an interesting story like mine and of course, not getting one.
"I was visiting family in Carson City."
"Oh" I laughed. "Sounds like fun."
"Well it's certainly nothing like your story. I could have given you some bullshit story to make you laugh. From what I heard and gathered from your lives story you could use some laughter in your life. But no, I was honestly visiting family in Carson City" his blue eyes twinkled.
"Sounds awfully . . . normal" I said with a slight smile. My sky blue eyes were probably twinkling also.
"Hardly. You see I was visiting my mom and her husband. My mother had me when she was 19 and wasn't ready for a child yet. So she gave me to her seventh cousin once removed to take care of me. Once I was old enough I started visiting her and we became friends. I know we're never going to have an actual mother-son relationship but we'll have a friendship."
"At least you'll have some sort of relationship with your mother. And you're living with family. That's an experience I've never come to enjoy, but you seem to" I let out an exasperated sigh but I was telling the truth. I'm not the kind of person to milk sympathy and I wasn't trying. I just was telling the truth. Dutchy gave me a semi-hug. It was supposed to be a hug but that's kinda complicated to do on a charter bus, especially a moving one. So it was a semi-hug.
"I guess you're right. I'm sure that someday you'll find someone who really cares. IN fact I barely know you and I already care. You know what? Why don't' you live with me until you're ready to move on."
"I couldn't. What would your . . . mother's seventh cousin once removed think?" wow. That's a mouthful.
"Well you see Nel, the seventh cousin once removed, is kinda a foster parent. She doesn't do it for the state but for herself. After raising me for a few years she took in a boy off the street. Then she took in another, and another, until there were four of us boys. She'd love to have a girl in the house. It wouldn't be any trouble at all."
"Really?" I smiled so big and wide my face must have been stretched and my eyes probably looked like little bright blue light bulbs. "Are you sure? What would this . . . Nel think?"
"Nel would love you. She's the sweetest woman imaginable. She's incredibly welcoming and caring. Don't' worry about a thing" I gave Dutchy and semi-hug and looked up at him, still smiling. I don't think I've ever smiled this much.
"Just wondering, but how did you get the name Dutchy?"
"What do you mean? That's my real name!"
"No it's not!" I punched him lightly in the arm. "Seriously!"
"You want me to be serious? Fine. I'm Dutch. I know it's not particularly interesting."
"Whatever. Ii was just curious" I looked at Dutchy's watch. The time was 6:15, which meant we had about another two and a half-hours. I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. I've never trusted anybody this much before.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A/N-I know that was pretty long and sort of repetitive in some parts about her past but I hope it explained other things. And I also apologize if I got anything about Dance wrong, like the fact she was dancing with a bunch of piercings and bright green hair. I'm sorry if that offends anyone in anyway or if you are now convinced that I'm a stupid idiot because no one's allowed to dance in a performance with bright green hair. Be imaginative! More coming soon!
SHOUT OUTS TO MY LOYAL FANS:
Faces-thank you so very much for the praise. I feel so...what's that word? Oh right, loved! Don't worry, you'll be in my story soon.!
Ember-the newsies are coming. It wouldn't be a good newsies fan fic if there weren't any newsies in it, now would it?
Seraph-thank you very much. I feel much more confident with my writing when I get compliments like those!
BabyD-well I don't know if I can GIVE you more, but you can definitely read some more! I think we all have this little *obsession obsession* with newsies or none of us would be here . . . LOL.
Volcanous-more happens! and more chappies on their way!
DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN NEWSIES! If I did . . . well . . . let's just put it this way, I'd be one happy girl. Suing me would of course be pointless because if by some bizarre law miracle you win all you'd get is a bunch of pencils, permanent markers, a binder filled with newsies fan-fics and *hee hee* safety pins.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CHAPTER 1: GOING WEST
I walked west. I walked west for a while. I didn't walk all the time, I rode some public buses but all that matters is the fact that I walked. It wasn't a long walk. I eventually caught a bus to Salt Lake, which is like twenty miles away from Park City. Once I got to the city, I wandered around for half an hour trying to remember where the hell the damned bus depot was. Once I got there I bought myself a ticket on the first bus headed west, not caring where it was. San Francisco . . . here I come!
600 miles. 600 miles on a fucking bus. That's like . . . what? 655 minutes. 10 hours. 10 hours and 55 minutes. I have to spend 10 hours on a fucking bus! Sure it's a charter bus and all. But 11 hours about? That's pure cruel and heartless torture.
The bus departed at 9 AM so I sat in the depot for like half an hour. To pass the time I listened to Godsmacks new CD. As people got on the bus, they gave me weird looks. I don't know how young, or old, I look . . . some people have told me I look 14 . . . and some have said that I look almost 20. Whatever. I don't give a flying fuck about what they think. I don't care what anyone thinks anymore. I'm on my own now. I don't have to listen to anyone, I don't have to wait for anyone and most of all I don't have to depend on anyone.
Some old fag sat next to me. He kept on glancing over at me and I'm giving him the bitchiest looks imaginable. I'm hoping that he'll pick up what I'm getting at. I checked the ticket and it turns out we'll be stopping in Carson City for half an hour. Picking some other people up I guess. If I judged it right it'll be something like seven and a half-hours until we get there. A good time for sleep if I do say so myself. There are no other lullabies like heavy metal to put you asleep. I cranked the volume all the way up and closed my eyes.
I woke up to find someone else sitting next to me. He was a boy, somewhere around the age of 17. He had blue eyes hidden behind a pair of glasses and shaggy blonde hair. I guess he noticed that I was staring at him because he turned and looked at me straight in the eyes.
"Hi" he said with a smile. I took off my headphones and let them rest around my neck.
"Hi . . ." I said slowly. I don't normally talk to strangers but there was something about this guy that just made him different.
"My names Dutchy. What's yours?"
"Merrily."
"You don't look like a Merrily."
"I know. My name means merry and I'm some physco depressive chick."
"That's not what I meant. You look more like a . . . Skunk" he touched my hair and I didn't flinch or brush him away. Because I knew why he was touching my hair. He was touching the chunk that was dyed black and swept over to the side. The rest of my hair is bleach blonde, naturally.
"Skunk?"
"Yeah. It fits you. I'm not saying you smell or anything. You just look like . . . Skunk. Would you answer if I called you that?"
"Sure" I replied. It's not like I'm gonna see this kid again after this bus trip so why not let him call me Skunk?
"So why are you here?"
"I ran away."
"How come?" I normally wouldn't tell a stranger these types of details but there was something in his eyes. His clear blue eyes peered deep inside my head and it felt like he already knew everything he needed to know about me. Those eyes. I knew I could trust him. Because of his eyes.
"My life had gone past the stage of living hell. Everyone involved in my life, in any way, shape, or form, hated me."
"Everyone?"
"Yes. And my mother hated me the most. At 15 years of age she definitely wasn't ready to have a child. But there I was and there was nothing she could do about it. Her parents, my grandparents, were distraught. You see, they're strict Catholics and she had sinned so much. This just made everything worse. For three years Ii lived with them. They took me to church every Sunday. She didn't go. As soon as she was 18 she left, taking me with her. Why? I have absolutely no idea. I guess she didn't hate me at the time. Well at 18 and broke she needed a job. So she decided to get in employed in what she did best . . . being a slut. She got a job at a strip club.
"At three years old I was a corrupt little child. I was being raised in a fucking strip club! I had the most vulgar vocabulary imaginable. It was quite disturbing. I'd be sitting at a table coloring and I would hear noises coming from the back room. I bet you can guess what those noises were. Well I sure as hell knew. At first it bothered me, but then it just became one of the back round noises, along with the music. And by time I was four I had already received all the lessons I would ever need in the human anatomy and sex education.
"Even though I was very corrupt I still was interested in things I saw on TV. And one of them was dance. Ever since watching one of those dancing competitions on TV, I wanted to be a dancer. I even told her this. And she told the rest of the girls at the club. They all thought that this was so cute and they knew that she had nowhere near enough money to afford dance lessons for me. But because they cared, and she cared a little, they all pitched in to help pay for dance lessons. Such nice girls for being strippers. I tried them all. Tap, ballet, jazz, lyrical, modern, clogging, and hip-hop. I liked jazz and hip-hop the best. So I took lessons in those two. And I loved them. I loved to dance. It was the only good thing I can remember about my childhood.
"When I was five my mother gave birth to Forrest. Nasty little bastard. I didn't like him from the start. It was then that I was first employed with the job of baby-sitter, while she stepped on stage, took off her clothes, and went off to fuck some random guy in the back room. I would usually just set him down in a corner and go about my business. He wasn't my damn responsibility. She would come back, barley clothed, to check on him and then after discovering I wasn't taking care of him she would bitch at me for not being responsible and looking after him. I would often bitch right back at her, seeing as how he was her son, not mine. She didn't like that so she would slap me and lock me in the storage closet until she needed me to take care of Forrest again. I started to hide snacks and things to do in the storage closet seeing as how I was in there so often. She even forgot about me and left me in there once. I didn't have a watch so I didn't have any idea what time it was. A night janitor found me and one of her fellow workers brought me home with her. That was the best night of my childhood, actually being cared for by a woman her age. Then this worker had to go and give me back to her.
"Of course my mother had to send me to school. So she did. I didn't enjoy it but if it meant getting away from her, I was willing to try anything. And her, being the way she was, couldn't help from fucking guys, so when I was eight, she had Lily. I liked Lily. For some reason I liked the kid. Maybe having another girl around, besides her, was the reason but I liked her no matter what the reason was. Forrest, on the other hand, was becoming an asshole and a mini-pimp. Seriously, the girls at the club loved him and couldn't seem to get their hands off of him. It was disgusting.
"That year she met Max. She fell in love with him and he . . . he was a bastard. When I was nine Max moved in with us. I hated him and I would constantly tell her this. She would just laugh it off and then order me to go make dinner or do something constructive. I was a genuine Cinderella. My counselor often called home to tell my mother her child was seriously depressed. She would just bitch at them and scream 'don't tell me how the raise my own fucking child!' So eventually the school rendered it pointless and just stopped calling. And all chances I had for escape went right down the drain and into the land of the broken dreams.
"I had never seen her happier to be pregnant. Maybe it was because she actually knew who the father of this child was, Max. They decided to get married so after Marigold was born they . . . got married. Forrest was of course the ring-bearer and Lily, the little two year old Lily, was the flower girl. Not the competent ten-year-old . . . no she had to take care of her latest illegitimate half-sibling whom she didn't care about and frankly, hated. So I didn't even get to see her get married. How fucking cruel can you get? Not even letting your very own daughter see your wedding. And low and behold, I didn't get to go to the reception either. I was too busy playing live in baby-sitter.
"The year after they got married Hunter was born. Because Max was too busy running his stupid fucking car business and she was too busy taking her clothes off and still fucking around with other guys, I was often pulled out of school to baby-sit. And if she wanted me to stay home to begin with, half the time she would forget to call in my 'excused' absence. I'm surprised that I even passed sixth grade with my horrible attendance record. Somehow, miraculously, I maintained good grades and . . . made it to middle school.
"Middle school. In middle school I started getting, how should I put this? Overly rebellious I guess you could call it. I dyed my hair bright green, got cat eye contacts, got my years pierced three times, got a cartilage piercing in my left ear, got my eyebrow pierced, which in case you can't notice has grown out, and got my belly button pierced. I constantly skipped class and could easily fake passes when needed. She really didn't care. She just bitched at whoever called from the school. Even with my rebellious attitude and punky looks and clothing I somehow avoided drugs and stayed mostly clean. I constantly looked toward suicide but my dance instructors helped me out of my strange depression.
"Life went well for the next three years. If you could call it well. Life went as good as it gets for my family. Then one day, when my mom got back from her gynecologist appointment she announced that she was three weeks pregnant. She and Max were very happy and I, of course, was pissed. I had thought that I was finished being the fucking live in baby-sitter. Well the next morning Max was livid. He'd been looking over his agenda for the day in his calendar when he remembered that he was out of town all week, three weeks ago. Meaning he wasn't the father of her child. Meaning she had fucked another guy.
"Life became hell. And there was no way to escape it. Besides dance I mean. But of course nothing good lasts forever. She gave birth to Harrison. And Max could not hide his utter hatred. So it took it out on her by beating her even more, and he took it on me, taking away dance. He said some bullshit like we didn't have enough money. Yet we had enough money to buy a whole fucking home theatre system. Did you know that the price of the one we got was equivalent to 2 weeks of my dance lessons? Yeah. Not enough money my ass. Life was past hell at that point. It went down hill from then until I finally cracked and ran away. Which brings me here" I took a deep breath and continued to look at Dutchy in utter amazement. Somehow he had endured my story but he was listening the whole time. His ears were listening, his mouth was listing, and his eyes were listening with utmost interest. And he didn't interrupt me at all. He just listened. And when I looked further into his eyes I could see that he understood.
"Wow" he finally said after an awkward moment of silence. "That really really sucks."
"Yeah. I never even had a birthday party. So . . . why are you here?" I asked, not expecting an interesting story like mine and of course, not getting one.
"I was visiting family in Carson City."
"Oh" I laughed. "Sounds like fun."
"Well it's certainly nothing like your story. I could have given you some bullshit story to make you laugh. From what I heard and gathered from your lives story you could use some laughter in your life. But no, I was honestly visiting family in Carson City" his blue eyes twinkled.
"Sounds awfully . . . normal" I said with a slight smile. My sky blue eyes were probably twinkling also.
"Hardly. You see I was visiting my mom and her husband. My mother had me when she was 19 and wasn't ready for a child yet. So she gave me to her seventh cousin once removed to take care of me. Once I was old enough I started visiting her and we became friends. I know we're never going to have an actual mother-son relationship but we'll have a friendship."
"At least you'll have some sort of relationship with your mother. And you're living with family. That's an experience I've never come to enjoy, but you seem to" I let out an exasperated sigh but I was telling the truth. I'm not the kind of person to milk sympathy and I wasn't trying. I just was telling the truth. Dutchy gave me a semi-hug. It was supposed to be a hug but that's kinda complicated to do on a charter bus, especially a moving one. So it was a semi-hug.
"I guess you're right. I'm sure that someday you'll find someone who really cares. IN fact I barely know you and I already care. You know what? Why don't' you live with me until you're ready to move on."
"I couldn't. What would your . . . mother's seventh cousin once removed think?" wow. That's a mouthful.
"Well you see Nel, the seventh cousin once removed, is kinda a foster parent. She doesn't do it for the state but for herself. After raising me for a few years she took in a boy off the street. Then she took in another, and another, until there were four of us boys. She'd love to have a girl in the house. It wouldn't be any trouble at all."
"Really?" I smiled so big and wide my face must have been stretched and my eyes probably looked like little bright blue light bulbs. "Are you sure? What would this . . . Nel think?"
"Nel would love you. She's the sweetest woman imaginable. She's incredibly welcoming and caring. Don't' worry about a thing" I gave Dutchy and semi-hug and looked up at him, still smiling. I don't think I've ever smiled this much.
"Just wondering, but how did you get the name Dutchy?"
"What do you mean? That's my real name!"
"No it's not!" I punched him lightly in the arm. "Seriously!"
"You want me to be serious? Fine. I'm Dutch. I know it's not particularly interesting."
"Whatever. Ii was just curious" I looked at Dutchy's watch. The time was 6:15, which meant we had about another two and a half-hours. I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. I've never trusted anybody this much before.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A/N-I know that was pretty long and sort of repetitive in some parts about her past but I hope it explained other things. And I also apologize if I got anything about Dance wrong, like the fact she was dancing with a bunch of piercings and bright green hair. I'm sorry if that offends anyone in anyway or if you are now convinced that I'm a stupid idiot because no one's allowed to dance in a performance with bright green hair. Be imaginative! More coming soon!