1. Ana
ONE
Ana
“ I f they don’t come for me, promise me you will. Promise me you won’t leave me like they did, Blaise.”
Blaise cupped my face, her usually unemotional eyes filled with anger, sadness, and determination. “I promise I won’t leave you, Ana.”
And that’s how I found myself being adopted into a family. Blaise was young when she made me that promise. Only in college at the time, but she never gave up on me. Even when my parents came back to adopt me, she would storm into our house in her combat boots and pink hair. A broad menacing man behind her as she checked over the home. Made sure there was food in the house and I was being properly cared for. She didn't trust my parents after they got locked up and social services took me. I met Blaise in the orphanage where she was interning for her child therapy degree. And somehow we just clicked.
Living with my parents was a short feat. Maybe five years? Six? I wasn’t counting. I was just surviving. But the day social services came and my parents had left, abandoning me, that was the last time I had to stay in that house. They took me back to the orphanage. To my own personal hell. Especially with Trenton waiting on me in my old room. He was older now. Like me, he was eleven. Both of us in the awkward pre-teen years where nothing was proportional and pimples raged our faces. His hair had grown darker, no longer the light blond I’d come accustomed to. Now it was a darker blond, and hanging in his eyes. Eyes I knew to be a deep brown.
He unfolded himself from the wall, walking towards me as I shrank in the door. His shoulder brushed mine and he paused, leaning closer to my ear. “You should have never come back. Now, I’ll ruin you.”
I remember the tremble in my hands as I unpacked the small amount of things I owned.
Remembered the way he made every waking moment a living hell.
I remember the joy I felt when Blaise, her husband and two children came to take me away. And the sadness when I saw Trenton waiting with them as well. Bag packed and a glare that could shatter glass.
And from there on out, I had a family, and an adopted brother that hated me. Trenton ran off every boy I liked, fucked my friends, and ruined my life. But I finally escaped him.
College was my fresh start.
My time to shine.
Only he followed me there too…