"Kaila, Kaila. Wake up." The voice of my 8 years old little brother woke me up.
"Alex.. Five more minutes."
"No Kaila, we gotta get up now, it's Adoption Day, I let you sleep as much as I could but now Miss Williams is going to start yelling if we don't get down, please please please wake up Kaila." It was not at the threat of hearing some yelling, but at the fear in the voice of my baby brother that I woke up suddently.
"Hey Alex, it's alright, I'm up. I'll just go put some clothes and we'll go downstairs."
The blonde blue eyed boy that was sitting on my bed nodded, his eyes deep into mine. Sometimes I felt like we were sharing one soul, or maybe it was a heart. Yes, we shared a heart.
I grabbed some clothes from a drawer. There were not great, some of them didn't even fit me anymore, but that's what you get when you live in an orphanage.
I then went to one of the two common bathrooms of the orphanage to take a shower and get dressed.
As I took my pajamas off, I checked on the several fresh cuts that were on my left arm. They were fine, none of them was infected. I was glad I never had to deal with any infection from them, I would really hate to have anyone finding out this secret. I had many, but this one would really put me into trouble.
I had started to cut when my father left us. No one knew where he was, or if he was even alive. But me and my brother thought that he has probably left UK to go start over in France, or maybe in America. The day our father ran away from his life, our lives, was 4 years ago, when I was 10, and my brother was 4.
He didn't run away for no reason though. He ran away because my mom was diagnosed with bipolarity. He tried to handle it for a few months, but it was just too much, and my mom cheated on him.
I think, maybe, if that happened to me and I hadn't any child with the person, I might have wanted to leave too. So I'm not really angry at him. I just wish he said goodbye instead of waiting for us to go to sleep before leaving during the night.
But why are we at the orphannage, if our mom is still here ?
Well, she isn't.
She never took her meds, she said they made her even more sick. I tried to make her take them, but I couldn't take care of Alex and watch her all the time and go to school at the same time, so I made the mistake of believing that she would be alright anyway.
I became an adult very quickly after my father left. I learned how to cook, how to care for a four years old, how to handle a bipolar person, even though it didn't mean I could handle my mom all the time.
Sometimes she would go crazy and violent, and I would have to lock myself and Alex in our shared room until she fainted or gave up.
During those times she would yell insults at us and threaten to murder us, and Alex would start having panic attacks. But I knew the system was a bad place, I saw documentaries of children being abused in foster homes, and orphanages were prisons for children.
So I told my brother to hold on, I told him we would be fine, because I knew we would, or at least he would, if I had to sacrifice myself in the process, I didn't mind.
So I did just that.
Until, one morning, two years later, I woke up to the scream of my little brother. It was so full of horror, I would never forget how that scream sounded.
"ALEX !" I had yelled at the top of my lungs, running towards the origin of the sound.
The 6 years old boy was standing in front of the bathroom, looking inside, a look of pure dread on his face.
"Alex ?" I had asked quietly, my heart skipping a beat at the idea that maybe my mom was in that bathroom, covered in her own blood.
The boy didn't respond.
I walked to him and pulled him into a hug, hiding his face into my shirt before even looking inside the bathroom. I was so scared, and the smell of alcohol was suddently overwhelming.
My brother didn't react.
I finally looked into the bathroom, and saw something that I instantly knew would haunt my nights for the rest of my life.
My mom was leaning against the bathtub, a bottle of vodka in her left hand, and an empty bottle of pills in the other. There were many other empty bottles of meds on the ground, and many pills too.
I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. I just held onto my brother tighter, before letting him go to go touch my mom's cheek. It was as cold as death. I went back to Alex and hugged him again.
"We're all alone, now." I told him, and I sounded dead.
And maybe, just maybe, that was the day I truly stopped living and became an empty shell.
After that I decided that between being homeless and living in an orphanage, the prison for children was better. At least here we would get food and education.
So, with all the courage a twelve years old can have, I told my brother to pack his stuff, which he did without a word as I packed mine. It wasn't as if we had a lot, we were poor and my mom had lost her job a year ago.
I then took his hand and he followed me outside silently. We walked to the nearest police station and I told the officer about what had just happened.
We were then taken to an orphanage in London, and I screamed and cried until they let me and Alex share a room. I was quite proud of myself for that, because I knew orphanages were places where you can't expect to have anything more than what they're forced to give you.
Alex didn't talk for a year and a half after that. No one really cared about it, except the other kids who bullied him a lot for this, but they never did it when I was around, because I was never afraid to throw in a punch or two to protect my baby bro.
The day he started to talk again was the first time he saw me cry. I always hid away from him when I cried, but that night I thought he was asleep, and he wasn't.
He had gotten up and hugged me tightly, and I was very confused and about to tell him that I was alright, when he whispered to me : "I love you Kaila, please, don't cry. I love you."
And I started crying harder, but it wasn't tears of emotional pain anymore.
No one ever wanted to adopt us though, because we would fight with all we could so people adopted us both, and not only one of us. We would promise to break our new parents' life if they didn't take us both, promise to give them hell, to be the worst child they ever met. That would usually be enough to scare them away, and that's how we succeeded both at staying together for two years, and at not being adopted.
And we really wanted to be adopted. We just didn't know how. People never wanted teenagers, or they were scared away by Alex's anger issues.
Also, people usually didn't want children that were only interested by nerdy stuff, like video games, bands such as MCR, FOB, TOP, Panic!, or youtubers like Dan and Phil.
Dan and Phil were the reason why Alex and me kept smiling from time to time. We would watch their videos on one of the computers in the common room once a week, and it was the best time of the week.
Back to the present, I was now fully dressed and I had fixed my hair. I didnt put make up on because I don't like having something on my face.
"Kaila, you're ready ? Miss Williams started yelling." Called Alex from the other side of the door.
I opened it and we shared a small smile.
"Ready to be adopted, baby bro ?"
"We won't be Kay." replied my brother sadly as we made our way downstairs.
"Come on, you have to keep hoping, it might be our lucky day !" I faked my excitement, I knew very well no one would want us, but I needed Alex to keep hope. I needed him to do this for both of us.
Adoption day worked this way : all the orphans had to get down into a special room and play or do whatever, and potential parents would get in and go talk to the children that interested them. A few days later, or sometimes even the next day, some potential parents came and signed papers and everything because they wanted to adopt one of the kids. Obviously, the child had to agree to all this. Then, maybe two or three weeks later, after social services checked the ability of the potential parents to actually be parents, the new parents came at the orphanage to get their new kid, and that was it.
Alex and me got into the room, and we were late, all the orphans were already there.
Miss Williams walked toward us, and she looked very angry. Alex hid behind me immediately.
"WHAT WERE YOU DOING ! YOU'RE LATE ! NO FOOD FOR YOU TODAY !"
I opened my mouth to protest, but thought better of it and closed it. If I talked back to her, I'd be slapped.
"Yes Miss." I said before pulling Alex with me to the corner of the room the furthest away from the door the potential parents would use.
We sat there, our backs against the wall, watching the door.
"What if Dan and Phil wanted to adopt ?" Wondered Alex quietly, yet hopefully.
"Don't be stupid Lex. That won't happen and you know it. They don't want to bother with children when they travel all around the world so often."
"Yeah, you're right" Replied my brother sadly.
I felt guilty to kill his dreams, but I didn't want him to be sad that his new parents weren't Dan and Phil. I wanted him to be happy with whoever would agree to adopt us both. I knew I would. Well, unless they turned abusive, I knew that shit happened too.
The potential parents started getting in, and none of them looked at us twice. Then, I heard a familiar laugh, and two giants walked into the room.
"Is that.." Asked Alex, eyes wide.
I looked at my brother, then back at the two giants, then back at my brother.
"Pinch me."
Alex pinched me. It hurt. It was real !
"It's real Alex, they're really here !" I whisper-squealed at him.
But Alex wasn't listening, he was looking at something behind my back, eyes open even wider.
"Alex ?" I called, kinda worried at his behavior.
"Hm, Hi, my name is Phil." Came a very familiar voice from behind me.
I jumped and turned around, surprised.
And here was Phil Lester, kneeling in front of us and smiling, his bright blue eyes scanning us.
"H-Hi, my name is Kaila, I am 14, and this is my brother Alex, he's 8. You can't adopt just one of us." I said the last sentence quite protectively, grabbing my brother's hand and looking right into Phil's bright blue eyes.
Phil frowned.
"I would never even think of separating you ! Why would I do that ?"
"Sorry about my sister" Said Alex quietly, still watching Phil with wide eyes. "Are you real ?" He asked in a little voice.
"What ? Of course he's real !" Exclaimed Dan, sitting next to Alex, an amused smile on his face.
"This big guy is Dan" Said Phil, and Alex laughed.
"Why are you laughing, is my name funny ?" Laughed Dan.
"No, he's laughing because we know you" I said, a wave of shyness suddently overwhelming me.
Oh my god. I was talking to Dan and Phil. I was actually talking to them, and maybe they would adopt us.
Maybe.
Probably not.
I really hoped they would.
"Hey, something's wrong, Kaila ?" Asked Dan, frowning.
"No, no everything's fine, I'm fine. Just lost in my thoughts for a second." I smiled, blushing a deep shade of red.
"Hey, no need to feel shy around us, we're just humans like you" Said Phil gently, sitting cross legged in front of me and Alex.
"So, what do you two like ?"
Alex replied shyly, almost sounding like he was asking a question.
"Hm, we both like the same things, for most of it. So, we like a lot of bands like Fall Out Boy and Twenty One Pilots and My Chemical Romance and a lot of others, we like to play video games even though we can't at the orphanage, and we like to was your videos."
By the end of it I was very surprised, Alex usually only talked to me, talking to other people only when he truly had to, but he seemed very open to Dan and Phil. Probably because it felt like we already knew them.
"Waow, you two seem to be very cool !" Smiled Dan widely.
"Yeah, amazing children !" Said Phil, his eyes almost sparkling.
Alex looked at me, and I looked at him, and we were both thinking the same thing. We nodded at each other and turned back to Dan and Phil, hopeful.
"So you both like us ?" We asked at the same time.
They both smiled.
"Yeah, we do."
"Time to stop ! Say goodbye children !" Yelled Miss Williams.
"See you in a few days, kids" Smiled Phil as Dan winked.
Alex and I looked at each other, overjoyed. We both jumped into each other's arms and started crying. We were going to get adopted by our favorite people in the world.
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