Chapter 11

Carson City, Nevada

February 23, 1967

"Kelly, move! You're in the way!" the harried woman said pushing past the teen.

Kelly scooted backwards and tried to flatten herself against the wall as her foster mother scraped by with an armful of grocery sacks.

It had been over two years since the St. Agnes Orphanage had been destroyed in an electrical fire. Kelly hadn't seen Dallas since her eleventh birthday. Her and the other children had been whisked away before Kelly even had a chance to find out what happened to Beemish following her disturbing confession to Sister Anne. With nearly one hundred children displaced, the state of Texas had been dealt the highly inconvenient task of finding a place for the homeless orphans. Kelly was sure the usual background checks and research that went into placing a child were substantially relaxed in order to quickly find them homes. Immediately following the fire, several children, Kelly among them, were sent to an orphanage in nearby Forth Worth, Texas. The orphanage wasn't prepared to house so many new charges, so the children of St. Agnes found themselves scattered across the country over the next few months. Kelly had ended up in an orphanage in Oklahoma, where she had stayed nearly a year before reaching the twelve year age limit set by that certain campus. After that, it seemed she was in a different foster home in a different state every month. Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, it was all starting to blur together for her. Kelly quickly realized that her chances of getting adopted were slim to none. She was twelve years old, nearly a teenager. Sane people didn't adopt moody teenagers, she reasoned, they wanted cute little babies. She had behaved herself well enough in her foster homes, mostly keeping to herself and trying to stay out of the way. Some families treated her better than others. None of them had made her feel too welcome, though. After bouncing in and out of seven different temporary foster homes for nearly six months, Kelly was moody, frustrated, and sick of the lack of stability in her life. Finally, she had been placed in a middle aged couple's home in Carson City, Nevada. She had been here for eight months already, longer than she had been in any other home. Now thirteen, she had the good fortune of moving in time to enroll in the seventh grade at the local junior high right before the new school year. That made life much easier.

For the first three and a half months, things were normal. Kelly didn't like the home she was living in, but she didn't dislike it either. While her foster parents were rude and neglectful most of the time, they rarely hit her and had the decency to leave her to her own devices. They barely spoke to her unless absolutely necessary. She had a feeling the government check had much more to do with her being there than her foster parents' love for children.

The past several months though, the pressures of having a kid seemed to be inconveniencing her foster parents more than usual, and the cruel insults and beatings, which had replaced the occasional slaps, were becoming more and more frequent. Life was miserable now. She felt like a burden and tried her best to stay out of their way. Which couldn't be avoided sometimes.

"Don't just stand there! I have a whole car full of things!" Kelly's foster mother snapped at her. Candace Hanover was a tall, thin, middle aged woman, with dyed blonde hair styled in an almost fashionable beehive hairdo. She was a bossy neat freak who nagged Kelly constantly about the state of her room, clothes, homework, and anything else she deemed imperfect. She was married to a big bear of a man. James Hanover was a tall, stocky, man who wore his shirts a size too tight and seemed to know everything about anything. Since he spent most of his time being chided by his waspy wife, he took great delight in imposing his superiority over Kelly. He bullied her mercilessly, constantly correcting or challenging anything she said, arguing with her just for the sake of seeing her back down. When that wasn't satisfying enough, slapping Kelly around seemed to bring him a greater sense of accomplishment and he did it with relish, when he thought she needed it.

"Hurry up, the milk is going to spoil!" Mrs. Hanover yelled at her.

Taking the hint, Kelly jogged outside to the navy blue Mustang that was parked in the drive. With an armful of groceries from the backseat, she walked back inside and set them down on the table. Her foster mother was sitting now, talking animatedly with her husband, her back towards Kelly. Realizing that the task of unloading the groceries had been left to her, Kelly walked back out for a second trip.

She made four more trips. As she stepped back into the kitchen with the last load of groceries in her arms, she caught her foot on the leg of a chair and tripped. As she stumbled forward, her free arm flailing wildly to regain her balance, the sack of groceries slipped out of her grasp and flew across the kitchen to the ground with a thud. Kelly followed immediately after, landing hard on one knee and falling forward, her open palms slapping the floor loudly. The chair crashed down beside her.

"Oww!" she hissed in pain, sitting up and rubbing her knee. She looked at the sack on the floor, hoping that nothing made of glass had been in there.

"Oh, Goddammit, Kelly!" she heard her foster father yell out at her. He picked himself up with a grunt from the chair he had been sitting in and closed the short distance between them. He bent over, yanked the dropped bag up off the floor and put it on the table.

"Sorry." Kelly muttered as she got to her feet.

"Sorry." he repeated back to her in a mocking imitation of her voice.

Kelly's face flushed in anger. She hated being made fun of. Shaking it off, she righted the chair she had tripped over. They all immediately noticed the obvious chip in the wood where the top of the chair had hit the floor. Kelly swallowed and looked at her foster parents fearfully. The couple turned to stare at each in exasperation.

"I'm sorr-" Kelly started.

"Shut up. Just- Just shut up." Mr. Hanover interrupted, running his hand over his face in frustration.

Kelly closed her mouth and gave her foster parents an apologetic look.

"I can't deal with her right now. I have a headache. I'm going to go lie down." Mrs. Hanover announced. Her foster mother got up and headed to her room, rolling her eyes in disgust at Kelly as she left, leaving her and Mr. Hanover alone in the kitchen. Feeling horrible, Kelly silently began to put the groceries away.

"Ugh!" her foster father suddenly cried out in disgust. Kelly turned to look and saw him pull his right hand out from a grocery sack covered in slime. He glared at her and wiped it off with a nearby dish towel.

"You broke the goddamn eggs!" he barked accusingly. "Shit, will you look at this mess!" He pulled out some cans and some meat wrapped in brown paper from the contaminated sack. All were covered in broken egg yolks.

Kelly looked at the mess in dismay, mentally cursing her clumsiness. As if breaking the chair wasn't bad enough.

"It's like every time I turn around you're messing something up. You stupid girl, how hard is it to carry a goddamn bag from the goddamn car and set it on the goddamn table. Christ, if they would have told me how fucking stupid you were, I would have let them keep you and their goddamn check. Completely useless." he ranted angrily as he emptied the contents of the bag Kelly had dropped.

He stopped what he was doing and looked up at her in disgust. "That's what you are, useless, aren't you?"

Kelly lowered her eyes.

"Aren't you?" he repeated, his tone more threatening.

She looked at the floor and gave her head a slight nod.

"Say it!" he demanded.

"Yes, sir." she answered softly.

"Yes, sir, what?"

"I'm useless."

Hanover nodded his head in satisfaction. "Damn right, you are. Useless and stupid."

"Useless and stupid." she agreed in a quiet voice.

His cutting insults tore away at Kelly one after another and she hung her head in shame. He played this sick game often with her. He enjoyed making her admit to any number of derogatory things from how useless she was to how ugly, and the more she said or wrote it the more she began to believe it. She sighed miserably and rubbed her temples with her left hand. Of course, of all the bags she could have dropped, it had to be the one with the eggs in it. I can't do anything right, she berated herself angrily.

"Look, Mr. Hanover, I'm really sorry, let me clean it up." she offered wearily. She moved to pull the ruined sack off the table with the intention of throwing it away.

He shoved her hand away and turned his back to her. "Just go to your room. I don't even want to look at you right now."

Kelly tried again. "Please, sir, I'm really sorry, I'll clean it up." She walked around him to the slimy mess on the table.

His hard slap to her face caught her off guard, and she cried out in pain and fright.

"Go away, I told you!" he shouted at her. Nothing made him more angry than this useless foster child wasting their money.

Kelly, eyes wide in shock, began to back away slowly. Apparently, she didn't obey fast enough for her foster father.

Moving faster than it seemed possible for his large frame, he grabbed her by the front of her shirt and violently shoved her backwards into the wall. The back of her head slammed into the wall and bounced off with the force of the sudden impact. She gave a frightened cry and shut her eyes tight, scrambling backwards in a desperate attempt to get away from him, her arms raised to shield her face. He used this against her by ramming his fist into her stomach. She doubled over with a strangled gasp of pain, and her face now left unprotected, Hanover took the opportunity to land another brutal slap. She yelped, the force of the blow rocking her head to the side and causing her to go sailing to the floor. She landed hard and skidded a few feet on the slick tile floor before curling herself into a ball, coughing and struggling for air, one hand cupping her now bloody nose, the other folded against her stomach.

Her foster father quickly cleaned up the mess on the table and regarded her with a sneer of contempt as he wiped his hands on a dish towel. After he was done, he balled up the towel and threw it at her.

"Go to your room." Hanover said coldly, stepping over her as he walked out of the kitchen.

Kelly lay still and waited until she heard his bedroom door close, then crawled to a kitchen chair and, propping her arm on the seat, used it to pull herself to a sitting position. Groaning, and with her arm still clutching her stomach, she leaned against the chair, rested her aching head on the seat, and gave herself a few minutes to recover. After catching her breath, she rose shakily to her feet, wincing as she stood straight. A few drops of blood fell and dotted the front of her shirt.

She stalked furiously to her room and slammed the door shut behind her. The girl sniffed and wiped angrily at the blood from her nose with her sleeve, doing little more than smearing it over her face. Tears of outrage and frustration stung at her eyes. She hated her life. She hated being picked on and slapped around. She hated packing her bags every few months to go live in a different city in a different state with a different family. She slammed her fist into the side of her dresser. The sharp cracking sound it made was extremely satisfying. She punched it again, and a third time, each time harder than before, the past two years of pent up aggression exploding from her as the hot, angry tears spilled down her cheeks. A shooting pain in her knuckles finally registered just before she hit it a fourth time. Kelly sucked in a breath and shook out her injured hand. She felt drained all of a sudden and sank down to the floor, all the fight gone out of her. She took a deep breath. Calm and in control once more, Kelly looked up at her dresser and saw several dents in the wood. She realized what she had done and felt ashamed of herself. Breaking things seemed to be the only thing she was good at. She gathered her knees to her chest and looked at her right hand. The knuckles were split and bleeding, the skin around them taking on a shade of bluish purple. She wrapped her hand in her shirt tail and leaned her head back against the wall. This was no way to live.

Late that night, while her foster parents slept, Kelly lay in her bed formulating a plan. She had to get out of here, there was no question about that. The problem was how she was going to do it. After several discarded ideas, she thought maybe she had worked it out. She walked the half mile to the junior high every morning, so she would have no obstacles in her path with cutting class tomorrow. The teachers would mark her absent and she wouldn't be missed until she didn't come home at four in the afternoon. That would give her plenty of time to get down to the train station, sneak aboard a car, and ride away to freedom. Just the thought of escaping made her giddy with anticipation. She went over her plan again and frowned. It wasn't a very good plan, she realized. She had no idea if she would be able to get aboard the train unnoticed and though she had a little money saved up from doing odd jobs around the neighborhood, she didn't have nearly enough to buy a train ticket. Once she was on the train, how would she know where to get off? Where would she get off? These thoughts danced around in her head, giving her a headache. Wincing, she gingerly touched the large bump on the back of her head, hoping to alleviate the pain. Finally, she decided that anywhere that train would take her was better than here. That taken care of, the only thing standing in her way was actually getting on board the train. She decided to take a chance on that. Feeling determined, she kicked off her blankets, climbed out of bed and quietly packed all of her personal belongings in the dim moonlight of her bedroom.

She didn't sleep that night. She was too filled with nervous energy to sleep. Impatiently, Kelly lay in bed waiting for morning to come. Her bags were packed and hidden safely in her closet. She didn't have much. A knapsack and a large duffel bag held all of her personal belongings. At the first signs of dawn, Kelly sprang into action. Her bedroom window looked out onto the side of the house. She retrieved her bags from the closet, silently slid open the window and dropped them outside. She didn't want to be seen leaving the house with them for fear she would be questioned. She dressed quickly in a pair of faded denim jeans and a dark long sleeved shirt. It had been snowing outside so she pulled on her only hooded sweatshirt and made her way to the kitchen grabbing her school bag on the way.

She sat down at the empty kitchen table, her knees bouncing up and down. It was way too early for her foster parents to be up, she had jumped the gun a bit. She thought about leaving right then, the decided it would be better if they watched her leave for school. She drummed her fingers on the table nervously and looked at the clock. 6:05. Exasperated, she rose from her chair and paced the kitchen. After what seemed to be a long time, she looked back at the clock.

It was now 6:12.

Kelly groaned and slumped back down in her chair. She needed to relax. She looked around the kitchen and decided it would be a good idea to take some food with her. Kelly went over to the fruit bowl and grabbed a few apples and bananas and stuck them in her school bag. She opened the icebox and looked around. Thankfully, Mrs. Hanover had gone grocery shopping yesterday and it was well stocked. Kelly pulled out some sliced deli meat, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of milk. Carrying her selections to the table, she began to stuff them in her bag. She paused when she looked at the milk. It probably wouldn't last long. She left it on the table and grabbed a carton of juice instead. It was cold outside, it would be fine. Next, she opened the pantry door and grabbed a box of saltine crackers and package of cookies. Her bag full, she decided that anything else would have to be gotten along the way. Feeling productive, she poured some milk into a glass and drank it.

An hour later, the Hanover's made their way into the kitchen. As usual, they ignored her and went about their business. Mr. Hanover started making coffee while his wife opened the fridge.

"What do you want for breakfast, Jim?" she asked her husband absently

"How about some scrambled eggs." he answered back, shooting Kelly a dirty look.

She glared right back at him.

He didn't notice as he busied himself with the coffee maker.

Twenty minutes later, the Hanover's were eating toast and bacon and drinking coffee. They didn't offer any to Kelly and she didn't ask. She decided it was time to go because if she waited any longer she would most definitely burst.

"I'm going to school now." she announced standing up and hefting her bag over her shoulder. Her foster parents grunted in acknowledgement and continued with their breakfast.

Kelly walked out the front door, closed it gently, walked past the kitchen window and immediately broke into a run. She made her way to the side of the house, transferred her food into her duffel bag, discarded her school bag and jogged away towards the train station.