"Hey" Mike said sternly. "I don't know how it was where you two were before but here, we do not call each other things like losers." Elias looked up at him with a raised eyebrow and then just looked down again without saying another word. Glaring over the group around him. "So well, Elias, this is Tyler who you'll be sharing with. And Ivy, this is Sophia, who you will be sharing with…" Mike was going to introduce the rest of the people in the hallway when Elias interrupted.
"We want to share!" He let go off his sister's hand. "We've always shared why wouldn't we do it here?" Mike opened his mouth to speak but Elias interrupted first. "Well, I wouldn't want to share with some losers… I wouldn't want to live in the freaking same block as these losers. God can't you guys stop staring?"
I shook my head at him, and then sat down on the stairs to reach Ivy's height. Mike had told me during the afternoon that they had decided for Ivy to move into my room, even though they hadn't moved in a bed or anything yet since with two new children arriving at the times they had piles of paper work to do.
"Hey" I said softly as you would do to a child. "My name is Sophia, and like Mike here just said you will be sharing room with me. Do you want me to help you carry your bags and then we can go upstairs and look at where you're going to stay?"
Ivy didn't answer, but took onto her brother's hand again and leaned her cheek against his shirt. "Mike…" When Mike had stopped trying to talk to Elias Shawn came up to him. "If Elias doesn't want to share with Tyler, then I can move into Harry's room and he can have mine." Mike frowned and stroke Shawn's hair.
"You don't have to do that Shawn." Mike said calmly.
"I know I don't, I spend so much time in Harry's room anyway when we're playing. It will be fun sharing and then Elias will have his own." Mike sighed and stroke his chin. "And Harry is fine with it too. Aren't you Harry?" Harry nodded and looked up at Mike almost as if he hoped that Mike would say yes.
"Okay then. Shawn go and move the most important of your things over to Harry's room. I'll be there in a minute and we'll move your bed. Elias, come with me. Ivy, this is Gina, and she and Sophia will show you to where you are going to stay." Ivy frowned and took tighter onto Elias's hand and refused to come with me and Gina.
"Sweetheart." Mike kneeled and looked her in the eyes. "I'm sorry, but boys and girls aren't allowed to share. And you will still both live in the house so you can spend time together all day long, but you can't sleep in the same room okay?" Ivy frowned and still didn't let go of Elias's hand, but making it clear to us that she wasn't happy about this.
"No!" She stated, making it even clearer that she wasn't going to do accept this. "No, no, no."
"Babes." Gina tried instead. "Don't you want to come with us and see your room?" Ivy shook her head and didn't make another move. "Maybe, we can just go upstairs now, and then you can go back downstairs and be with Elias for the evening again for a while. If you'll be a good girl now and come with us, I can let you stay up for a bit so you can be with Elias for longer."
"NO" Ivy shouted and hit so she hit Mike when he came closer and he backed again. "NO, NO, NO. I WANNA BE WITH ELIAS." She grabbed tightly onto her brother, who didn't make any intention of having her let go and screamed at the top of her lungs when Mike had to grab her to have her let go off him.
"NO," She kicked backwards and Mike stumbled and fell upon the stairs. "NO, NO, NO" She continued hitting and kicking around her until she threw herself on the floor and started hitting her head towards the floor. Not even here Elias made any intention on making her stop but Mike rushed forward and lifted her up to keep her away from hurting herself.
Mike held her tightly while she screamed and kicked and hit around her in a tantrum. And even though I could see it was getting hard for him to hold on he refused to let go and at last Ivy went limp in his arms and he lifted her down to sit on the stairs where he kneeled in front of her to talk to her seriously.
"Ivy." He started. "We do not accept that kind of behavior here on elm tree house. And I'm going to leave it be for this time but if you do it again then you will be punished. And we don't have many rules here but we have three very important and those are don't hurt others, don't hurt yourself, and don't break anything. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
Ivy nodded and looked up with a pout I knew would make Mike's heart melt. "I just want to be with Eli!" Elias sat down next to her and laid his palm against her back.
"I know that!" Mike stated. "And you're going to be with Elias, only not sleep in the same room. And Elias will be just down the hall." Ivy nodded. "Now will you say you're sorry for that behavior and give me a hug?" Ivy nodded and mumbled a sorry and then leaned forward and aid her arms around Mike's back.
"Now Ivy." I kneeled so I too would be at her level. "Will you come with me and Gina and take a look at where you will sleep at night?" Ivy hesitated, and then nodded and took her smallest bag while I and Gina took the rest and then walked before her up and through the hallway to my room.
I looked to all of the three bags- they looked like any more in them and they would have exploded, and I knew I had seen several black bags with others of her things. I had heard that most children that came here came with at the most a bag or two- Elias and Ivy together had like ten! How much things could they actually have?
"Here is the room where you will be staying." I said when I opened the door. "There is my bed and Mike and Johnny or someone will probably put another one for you before it's time to go to bed." I looked to Gina who nodded. "And well… Can you read what that says?" I pointed to the big text on the wall. But Ivy nodded. "It says Love is stronger than hate."
Ivy lied her head to the side and seemed to be thinking about what that would mean while looking around on the walls and seemed to be wondering if everything was nice enough or not looking at my paintings.
"I'll go and see if I can find another dresser or something else for you to keep your things in. Are you okay there Ivy?" Ivy nodded to Gina's question and didn't make another move while the door closed, then she reached towards the lowest drawer in my dresser. The drawer that I didn't for anything want anyone to see what was in it.
"What's in this?"
"NO" When the drawer was just barely opened I jumped forward and quickly closed the drawer before she would have had the time to see what was in it so she could tell the others. If she mentioned the rope, the others would for sure know which rope it was- and that would not be good!
"OW" I hadn't noticed Ivy's fingers were in the way to close the drawer and then she took a grip of them with her other hand and started crying loudly. "ELIAS, ELIAS" She shouted. "ELIAS SHE HURT ME!" I tried for everything in the world to calm her down. After all- it had for sure been an accident!
"No, please Ivy calm down." I tried almost whispering but as well almost panicking. "Please calm down. I'll give you a biscuit if you calm down, please, please calm down."
It didn't succeed and Ivy was still crying loudly and holding her fingers with the other hand when the door flew open and Elias came running in. "What did you do to her?" Elias looked and sounded furious while he checked what was going on with Ivy. "Well Sophia or whatever your name was, WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?"
"I- I…" I tried to stutter something but didn't quite succeed and Mike and Gina came in too just as Ivy started stuttering and sobbing while telling them what happened.
"I- I wanted to see what was in the d- drawer and sh- she shouted at me a- and hit i-it on my fingers."
"Sophia?" Mike turned to me.
"It was an accident." I tried, Elias glared at me in a way that let me know that as soon as he had calmed Ivy down he would not have mercy was me and I looked to Mike who with a stern expression showed me to come after him and I followed him quite nervously down the hallway, down the stairs and into the office.
"Mike I swear." I begged as soon as the door behind me was closed. "It was an accident!" Mike didn't react so I was going to explain to him. "She started opening that drawer and it's got some things I didn't want her to see so I just… I just needed too close it and I swear I didn't see she had her fingers in the way. It was an accident I promise."
Mike's expression softened and he lifted his arm and pulled me closer. "I know." He said softly and rubbed my back. "Only Elias don't, so I just wanted to get you out of there so he couldn't keep on going. And if he asks you're on dishing duty okay?" He lowered his chin to look at me while I looked up.
"But I always do the dishes!" I said truthfully, I had always had a weird like of doing certain chores- dishing just gave me a chance to just be there and think. Mike nodded.
"I know. But Elias doesn't." I couldn't help but to let hear a short laugh and shook my head- say what you want about Mike and how squeamish he was. But no one- not even his other children, would ever be allowed to mess with us.
I'm not too sure on how Elias would still be letting Ivy sleep in the same room as me, but that night I laid awake and listened to Ivy's slow, deep breaths where she laid on the other bed put right next to the wall by the door. And I couldn't help but remember all the times I had lied awake back in Gota, just for the cause to lie and listen to Sophie's breaths, or Aaron's, or Luce's- just to know that while so many of our loved ones lost their loved ones- they were all safe.
I turned a bit in my bed so I could look out the window and up at the moon shining bright tonight alongside billions of stars. And so I remembered a story my dad had used to tell us when we were little- that the ones we lost, would always be within us- and up in the skies looking down at us and smiling at us and try to help us make the right decisions.
Was Luce up there too now? Or was he somewhere else looking up at the same moon as me? Or was it cloudy so he couldn't see it? Or was it just a story and none of them saw it, and none of them would be there?
I shook the thoughts off, I guess it wasn't right of me to wonder about these things. I could guess that maybe there weren't any rights or wrongs thinking about death while still alive. And I could only hope that whatever would happen about the day I died- I would come somewhere where I could be with my family for all times.
Fantasizing about a bright light and my family welcoming me with open arms I felt peaceful and was finally able to drift off. But it was a long night with never sleeping for more than half an hour at once after I was woken up by the pitter patter of little feet towards the floor and Ivy leaving the room, even though I was never quite awake enough to realize what was going on and just turned on my other side and fell back asleep.
"Mike" Early that morning when I had woken up for real and seen Ivy wasn't in her bed, I came tip- toeing into the master bedroom at the dumping ground. "Mike…" He sat up like shot out of a canon and looked around. "Ivy's gone…" It was still for a second, then Mike jumped out of bed and pulled me with him while walking down through the hallway and to Sh… Elias's room and opened the door carefully.
I had expected it- even though I had decided to go to tell Mike about it first. On Elias's new bed Ivy lied curled up by the foot of it and them both sleeping tightly. Mike sighed and shook his head slightly to me before he closed the door carefully after us and we walked down the hallway again and down to the office where I slumped down the sofa while Mike took a pen and a paper and started sketching on something.
"It's not allowed to have girls and boys sleeping in the same room." Mike sighed and didn't look up from his sketch while he was talking to me. "But obviously it's not working to just tell them so I need to come up with something that she will get for it. It's more important for Ivy to do right since she's too little to understand all of this. Do you have any ideas?"
"Maybe some kind of reward system, so if she does it right then she gets a mark, or a sticker or whatever, and when she does anything bad they're taken away and if she reaches a number of them she will get or get to do something she wants." Mike bit his lip.
"That's not a bad idea." He continued sketching and I yawned. "You can go back to bed Sophia, or just sleep there if you want to. I'll have this done by breakfast so you all will know what's going on!" I nodded and lied down towards the arm support of the sofa where I drifted off again.
"Here Ivy" A few hours later Mike came up to the table and sat down and showed her the big paper- sign he had made with some stickers. "Now, I didn't tell you, you and Elias couldn't be in the same room because I'm that mean. I told you that because it's against the rules for girls and boys to be in the same room. And tonight you broke the rules so I made this…"
Ivy frowned while glancing over the big paper and then started riffling through the stickers. "…And when you do something good, we will put another sticker on this like we have put three now. But when you break the rules, like going to sleep in Elias's room even though we told you it was against the rules, or throwing a tantrum like yesterday, then one or two stickers will be taken away. Then, when you've gotten stickers. Do you know how many ten is?"
Ivy nodded and held up her hands. "Yeah good girl, when you've gotten stickers and have had ten for a few days you will get something you want okay?" Ivy nodded. "But if you do bad things then you won't get more stickers so you can. Do you understand?" Ivy nodded and hugged the purple stuffed tiger she always carried tightly to her chest while seeming to wonder about what was going on.
"So are you going to do your very best and do right and not wrong?" Ivy nodded again and for the first time today she said something.
"I'm going to do my best to do right Mike!"
So… let's end it there then… Ivy is for sure kind of spoiled, but hopefully will the rest we see of her and Elias make sense. What do you think about them so far? And is there anything you'd like to see happening further in the story with either them two or the other characters?
Well… to next time.