Chapter 1

A small white car zipped across three lanes of traffic and barely made the exit. Inside, a fifteen year old girl, who was riding shotgun next to a thin serious-looking woman, clutched both the arm rest on her left and the door on her right, as they turned a corner sharply and then stopped rapidly at the stop sign at the end of the off-ramp.
The girl was about 5’7” with long, brown hair. Everyone always commented on how long her hair was, but she knew a lot of people with longer hair then hers. People also told her that she had the most horrible split ends, but she wasn’t really sure how you could tell without looking at all of the individual hair ends. She wore rectangular, black-rimmed glasses and a simple, black jacket with no hood.
The girl’s name was Mona Carter. The women sitting next to her was named Alexandra Proserpine, she was a representative with the Department of Child Services, Mona’s representative in the Foster Care system.
Once they were driving again on a somewhat straight road, Mona relaxed a little and was immediately caught up in a flashback. The last two days of her life had been the subject of her thoughts for the entire four hour drive that Mona had been forced to endure, and this time wasn’t going to be an exception. Being unable to stop her thought process, Mona closed her eyes and let the memories overwhelm her.
* * *
Mona waved to her friend, Jessica, as she drove away. Mona had just spent the day at Jessica’s house watching movies and playing card games. Jessica had dropped Mona off at the end of her long driveway, because it was virtually impossible to turn around in it and just as difficult to back out of. Mona adjusted her glasses and started the trek to the house. She carried her backpack on only one shoulder because she was to use her other shoulder for her violin. She’d spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at a Music Theory workshop. Her backpack only had a few notebooks in it, so when Jessica had wanted to hang Mona took her stuff with her straight to Jessica’s house from the workshop.
The driveway curved around to the house where it was swallowed by the garage door’s opening. It was only about 6:00 pm. So, Mona wasn’t concerned about being late or disturbing anyone. In fact, Mona could picture her three younger siblings lounging in various places around the living room watching one of those little kids TV shows that she absolutely detested. Her dad would be sitting at his computer desk, playing puzzle games or reading about recent sports events and her mom would be getting dinner ready.
This is what Mona expected as she opened the front door, but what she saw was disaster. There were chairs and furniture covering the floor, as if all of the things in the house that were common for everyday use had been dragged into the living room to create a sea of wreckage. If Mona had looked to her left she could have seen into the kitchen to see that the same had been done there, but the scene in a circle of uncluttered, clear floor in the middle of the room had all of Mona’s attention.
There, lying in grotesque positions covered in blood, were the bodies of Mona’s family. Mona was frozen. She stood with hand still on the door handle. It took her almost five minutes before she could tear her eyes away.
Slowly she backed out of the door. Shutting it firmly behind her. She carefully sat her stuff down and rummaged through her backpack for her cell phone. She noticed, surprisingly, that her hands didn’t shake as she dialed 9-1-1 nor did her voice when there was an answer. It didn’t take long for her to give her address and to report what happened, but it seemed like the five minutes that it took for the police to get to her house, were and eternity.
An officer had her sit on a rock that stood in her yard while he wrote down what happened and then left, telling her that someone would be there to get her momentarily. Mona felt smothered. She tried blaming the acute sense of impending doom on her anxiety disorders, but unfortunately, this time, her fear and sadness were completely rational. She found this thought somewhat amusing and probably would have smiled if she hadn’t felt so uprooted, but she took this ability to still find something humorous as a sign that she wasn’t going to go insane. Which calmed her down a little. Mona welcomed the numbness as her shock encompassed her as a way to assess her situation.
After sitting, contemplating her emotional state for almost ten minutes she stood up and walked to her front door. The bodies had been wrapped in white bags and were being prepared for transportation. Mona ignored them and walked through the kitchen and down the hallway to the door at the end, which was her bedroom. She had grabbed her stuff from outside and slowly opened the door. The room looked untouched.
“Excuse me.” a voice said from behind her. It was on of the detectives, Mona guessed, looking at his suit and tie, and the notebook that he was carrying. “You aren’t allowed to touch anything until that room has been swept.”
Mona glanced back at her room while another detective approached from behind the first.
“Don’t worry. I already go that room.” He said, nodding to Mona.
“Thank you.” Mona said, suddenly wondering if she should be embarrassed that people had gone through her room. When she got into her room, she emptied her backpack onto her bed and took out all of her notebooks, folders, binders, books, pencils, pens, and miscellaneous papers that were in her desk and organized them into her backpack. There wasn’t quite enough room for all of her books in the backpack, so she stuffed a few in the outside pockets.
Then she went to her dresser and grabbed some clothes. She folded them carefully and put four pairs of pants, seven shirts, fourteen pairs of socks, a skirt (just in case), and some underwear in a shoulder bag that she used to carry her scriptures and other things to church. Thinking this, she grabbed her beat up set from her bedside table, along with some other small things, and put them in her backpack. At the last minute she grabbed some Sunday shoes and shoved them in her shoulder bag. She still had room for something else, but she didn’t know what it should be. She stepped over to her closet and immediately saw the long black dress that her mother had made for her for Orchestra concerts. She took it down and folded it up. She could just barely get it into the shoulder bag.
She stepped back to stare at her assortment of luggage and felt the fear trying to overpower her again, but she ignored is; something that she had learned to do with years of experience, though she did find it interestingly easier to deal with her fear when there was something for her to fear. She sat on her bed for a moment to make a list of the things contributing to her fear. There was the fact that she was going to have to survive the remainder of her life without the support of her family, there was the prospect of having to adjust to a different life, (Mona didn’t like change, it was complicated) and then there were also her anxiety disorders, which always made a bad/scary situation worse.
Mona stood quickly as the door to her room opened and watched as a woman with dyed red hair and a dress that a secretary would wear. She stuck out her hand and Mona reflexively shook it.
“Hello, I presume that you are Mona L. Carter? Of course you are. My name is Alexandra Proserpine, I work with the Department of Child Services, and I am your representative while you are in the Foster Care system.” Alexandra spoke quickly, but pronounced her words very clearly, so that Mona had no trouble keeping up with her.
“Oh, look you’ve already packed, you must be a very bright individual. Oh, and sorry for your loss and whatnot. If you find that you’re emotional devastated, you can talk to me, but for now we are going to have to go, so say your good-byes.” She didn’t talk like an adult would to a child, which Mona liked, she also liked that Alexandra didn’t expect her to be overly emotional, even though she was probably full of emotions.
“Say good-bye to what?” Mona asked, grabbing her backpack full of books and her shoulder bag.
“Good question.” Alexandra said as she quickly, but gently, picked up Mona’s violin case and exited the room, with Mona right behind her. They walked through the house and out the front door, which was still open with policemen and other people moving though it. Outside they walked back up the driveway, weaving through the police cars that were crammed in the long stretch of gravel. On the side of the road in front of the house, was Alexandra’s little white car. With a push of a button, Alexandra popped the trunk and carefully loaded Mona’s belongings into it, then walked to the driver’s side door. Mona’s fear once again pushed its way to the foreground of her mind as she opened the passenger’s side door and got into the car. She could already feel the nausea trying to fill her throat as she fought to keep her control.
Alexandra pulled out onto the road and Mona almost burst into tears as she watched, for the last time, as her home faded away.
* * *
Alexandra dropped Mona off at a building where they kept the kids who had no other place to go, telling her that she’d be back in the morning. Mona tried not to think of it as an orphanage, because that sounded very odd to her. A woman took Mona up some stairs and into a room, where she was left alone. A look at her watch told Mona that it was almost 10:00 pm., but she knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep, mostly because of her anxiety disorders. Mona had read somewhere that sleep-onset insomnia was caused, sometimes, by anxiety disorders.
Even though Mona had not actually, officially been diagnosed with any anxiety disorder, she was 99% positive that she had three of the five main anxiety disorders. The first one, Panic Disorder, was Mona’s most prominent form of anxiety. She had panic attacks quite often, depending on the time period, she might have them, every day, for most of the day, or three or four times a week. If she was at home, they weren’t as bad; they only caused her trouble in a place that she was less comfortable in.
Then there was Generalized Anxiety, which made her into a very mild person, because even in slightly stressful situations, she was very anxious, so she did as little as she could and convinced herself not to care about very many things, so as to avoid being stressed at all. She couldn’t handle most little things, such as, losing something, like a wallet or being late for something. Also things like having to spend the night anywhere other than her room, even if it was just in a different room of the house, or even if she moved her bed to a different place in her room, Mona avoided. Partially because a frequent time for her to have a panic attack was at night and being stressed by her Generalized Anxiety Disorder because of the change often triggered her Panic Disorder. Mona dreaded things like changing classes at school or schools altogether.
Mona also had a mild form of Obsessive-compulsive Disorder, which, during her research, Mona had discovered was not what people thought it was. Mona learned in her seventh grade health class that most people had some form of OCD, but really what they had was Obsessive-compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) which was just preoccupation with order and/or symmetry; but real OCD was, as Mona understood, that repetitive or compulsive behaviors were preformed, not out of annoyance, but in the hope of banishing or preventing obsessive thoughts, that a person might be plagued with, and that there people often became more compulsive and/or obsessive if they were not able to control their obsessive-compulsive nature.
The article that Mona had read about OCD gave the example of opening or closing a specific door, which Mona directly related to. She could not leave the glass cabinet that held the cups alone. She was constantly opening and closing them, every time she walked by. She had yet to discover just exactly what kind of obsessive thoughts she was trying to prevent, though.
Mona sat on the bed in her room and thought about this. She was a little tired, but she knew that the minute, she closed her eyes to try and sleep, she would lose control of her fear and end up screaming in the night until someone could come and comfort her. She looked at her hands and realized that she had finally started shaking, which scared her even more. She felt like she was slipping. At that moment, she did the only thing that she could think of in her shattered emotional state. She knelt by the bed and started to pray.
She’d always been told about how important it was to be able to put into words what you wanted to tell Heavenly Father but Mona just felt stupid trying, so she channeled what she was feeling into her prayer. That’s where she finally fell asleep, (though she couldn’t remember whether or not she had finally started crying) and that is where Alexandra found her in the morning. Still kneeling in silent prayer.
* * *
David Sandson was sitting at the desk in his office, a room that branched off from his living room. He was doing research, preparing his Seminary lessons for the first week of school, mostly because he had nothing better to do. On his desk were several copies of The Book of Mormon open to various places and a mass of papers with notes scribbled on every inch of white, it was almost 9:00 pm.
This year was his second year teaching and he was still a little nervous about being in charge of so many kids, but he was confident that he could teach them something useful. He chewed on the end of his pencil as he consulted a verse in a set of scriptures opened to a page covered in blocked out verses, a mass of arrows going all over the page, and small writing covering the margins. When he read, he read aloud, mumbling the words and circling phrases, despite the amount of markings already apparent on the pages.
His concentration was so intense that he nearly fell off his chair when thee phone rang loudly from underneath the sea of notes. Paper flew to the floor as David tried to uncover the phone from beneath the papers and called to his wife, who was in the kitchen making a snack.
“I’ve got it!” he grabbed the phone and said, “Hello, this is David Sandson, what can I do for you?” He tried to retrieve some of the papers that had fallen to the floor.
“Hello, Mr. Sandson, this is Alexandra Proserpine, your representative from the Department of Child Services.” David stopped reaching for papers and sat up straight in his chair. His heart was beating faster.
“Oh!” He said, his voice nervous and excited. “Hello, how are you?”
“I am very good, thank you.” As always Alexandra talked quickly, but clearly. She reminded David of a teacher he’d had in high school. In person she looked like a secretary. The kind that wear suit jackets with their straight, plain skirts, and had their glasses connected to beads that allowed them to hang around their necks when they weren’t wearing them on their faces. David was now clearing off a spot on his desk and hunting for a clean piece of paper to write on, just in case. He and his wife, Annalise, had submitted their papers for the Foster Care System almost three months ago.
“Now,” Alexandra said, “The system has matched you and your wife to a foster child who has just entered the system. She’s a sophomore in high school, and she was matched based on personality, needs, and religious status.”
“Really? I didn’t know that religion was a factor in the placement of a child.”
“Well, actually, it’s a very important factor. We want the child to feel as comfortable as possible in their placement, and being in the care of adults who understand and share the same religious beliefs makes things a little easier for the child. Religion is not always specified and may not always be the deciding factor, but we always do the best we can.”
“Yes, of course, thank you.” David said, already trying to picture this teenage girl in reference to all the sophomore girls he had taught last year. They seemed to be giggly and highly emotional, which didn’t seem particularly appealing to him, but it couldn’t be all that hard to deal with. “How long until she comes to stay with us?”
“I’m bringing you her file tonight, so that you have a chance to become familiar with her and her situation, and then I was hoping to bring her over tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Wow, that seems a little soon.”
“Yes, this was kind of an emergency situation, so….”
“Yes, I see. Well, tomorrow is fine.” David said
“Thank you, Mr. Sandson, I will be over later tonight with that file.” David heard the click as she hung up without saying goodbye, and then practically ran to the kitchen to tell Annalise
Later that night, there was a knock at the door and Alexandra handed them a black, paper file. David read aloud the name printed in the top left corner.
“Mona L. Carter.” Then he put his arm around his wife and kissed her on the forehead.
* * *
It took Alexandra an hour to take Mona to the Department of Child Services Headquarters to get her formally registered and then to drive her to the small town where Mona was to be either temporarily or permanently stationed. Alexandra handed her the black file that contained all the information on her foster parents, for her to read during the drive. Mona had learned that, in the Foster care system, you were placed in a home as a temporary solution first, while the Department searched for any living relatives that you might have that wanted to adopt you. If they could not find someone, then you were cleared to stay there longer, assuming that you were assimilating effectively. Then the foster parents had the option to adopt you and if that didn’t work out, then you were placed somewhere else.
Mona had been sitting in the car for almost two hours and had read the file several times all the way through. At the top, when you opened the file, there was a little photo of the person or persons that the file concerned. Mona had stared at it, matching the names to the faces in her mind. The two people in the photo looked just like a Seminary teacher and his wife should. Annalise Sandson was tall, thin, and even looked quiet from her picture, though Mona saw that her smile wasn’t exactly shy, it was more like holding back a laugh. David Sandson was grinning. He was also tall and rather thin, which was pretty stereotypical of a Seminary teacher, he wore glasses, but they were the kind with very thin rims, like he was trying to hide the fact that he wore them.
Mona reached up and adjusted her glasses. They weren’t thick, per se, but they were more prominent then normally rimmed glasses. The file also held a profile of sorts that listed some of the things that they liked. Annalise lied to read and played the piano. She had majored in English (which Mona thought was rather cool) and minored in Music. David had majored in religion and minored in art. There was also a lot of other information, such as, birth dates and their anniversary. Mona stared at the name of the city where she was headed. Actually she considered it more of a town, as the population was only a little over 6,000. Though, according to the file on the town (which also contained a map), there were several smaller towns around it, making it seem pretty large.
Mona looked again at the name of the town, Tremonton, Utah. The farthest north you could get and still be in Utah. The local high school was Bear River High School. She stared at the name for a while before turning back to the front and inspecting the picture once more. It was professionally taken, with an old brick wall in the background. They were sitting together on a curb. David was grinning at the camera, but Annalise was sort of staring off into the distance, not really smiling at anything, but laughing silently at something in her mind. Mona also noticed that David was holding a set of scriptures in his lap and Annalise had her hand over his on top of them.
Mona thought that the symbolism was interesting.
By the time they excited the freeway and started down an incredibly straight road, with nothing in sight except for fields and the occasional home, Mona had stopped reading the files, stopped reliving her last two days, and dosed off leaning against the window.
Alexandra, realizing that she’d taken the exit before the one that she needed, switched on her navigation system and punched in the address. Surprisingly, she only needed to take one turn to get to the road that the Sandson’s lived on. It was about five miles down the road that she was on and then about ten North at the turn.
When they arrived, Alexandra coughed loudly to wake Mona. Mona studied the house in front of her carefully. It was small with grass surrounding it on all sides. At the edge of the grass was a chain-link fence, separating this yard from the yards on either side of it. Mona pushed the car door open and retrieved the bags from the trunk. She put her backpack on, put the shoulder bag over it and carried her violin in her hands. She let Alexandra ring the bell and waited uncomfortably. The door opened slowly and the women from the picture poked her head out of the door. Then it opened it widely to show her husband standing awkwardly behind her. Both stared at Mona and there was an awkward silence, broken when Alexandra said,
“Gay baby…” She said coughing into her hand and trying no to look amused. Annalise’s eyebrows came together and she cocked her head quizzically, and Mona watched as David’s face twitched.
“Come again?” Mona decided to ask before there was another awkward silence.
“Every time there is an awkward silence somewhere in the world a gay baby is being born. Didn’t you know that?” She asked looking around at them. Mona laughed, just because it seemed such an awesomely different thing to say to break the awkwardness of a silence, but also she was nervous about walking through the door. This earned her another stare from David, while Annalise glanced around.
“Anyway,” David said stepping to one side. “come on in.” He stuck his hand out to Mona, who shook it. Just like every other Seminary teacher she had ever met, his handshake was firm and instead of actually shaking it, he more just jerked up and then down once. She stepped through the doorway into the front room, moving a little bit sideways to avoid catching any of her stuff in the doorway.
The room that she now stood in was large, with a TV to her immediate right and there was a couch, an armchair, and a coffee table in front of it. Behind the couch, in the far right corner of the room were three doors next to each other (one was on the wall on Mona’s right and the other two on the wall directly in front of her). The two farthest to the right were closed but the other was open, showing a bathroom. Next to the bathroom door, on the left, was the bottom of some very steep looking stairs. Then there was a wall, and on that wall, adjacent to the stairs, was an opening that Mona couldn’t quite see through. There was also an opening on Mona’s immediate left that led to a kitchen, but between the two openings on that wall, was a gleaming piano. Mona felt the pressure in her heart and stomach decrease, making it a little easier to breath. David closed the door after Alexandra stepped through it and Annalise gestured toward the couch and chair.
“Please, have a seat.” Which Mona and Alexandra did. David grabbed a chair from somewhere in the kitchen and Annalise sat in the armchair.
As Mona sank into the couch and tried to look somewhat relaxed, which she wasn’t, she noticed a black file sitting on the coffee table that was almost identical to the one that was crammed into the shoulder bag at her feet along with her backpack and violin case. The only difference with this one was that it had her name printed in the top left corner. Mona reached into her bag and pulled out the Sandson’s file and set it next to hers. There was another silence and Mona laughed.
* * *
When David heard the doorbell ring he almost choked on the glass of orange juice that he was drinking. He carefully sat the glass down on the counter and tried to appear calm as he walked into the living room. Annalise, who had been re-reading the file whilst sitting on the couch, hurriedly put the file down on the coffee table and rushed to join David at the front door. He stayed behind her so that she could open the door, which she did slowly, peeking out first and then pulling the door open wide. There was Alexandra, not much changed from the previous night, but standing next to her was the last thing that David could have imagined. The girl wasn’t really short, but the way she stood and held herself, made her seem small and unnoticeable. She was wearing a plain, black jacket with a normal tee shirt on underneath, blue jeans and black sneakers. Her hair was long and brown, and she wore rectangular, black-rimmed glasses.
She was also carrying a large backpack with several books stuffed into the outside pockets, a bulky shoulder bag, and a violin case clutched firmly in her hands. She looked lie she hadn’t slept well and her blue eyes flicked back and forth between him and Annalise. Her face was expressionless and her eyes seemed guarded.
David didn’t realize that he was staring, but he could hardly hide his shock. This girl didn’t look anything like any of the kids that David had taught the previous year. All of those kids had been bright, smiling, and energetic. Well, some of them had been forced to take Seminary, so it was understandable for them to be a little sullen. This girl, though, was serious-looking. She looked a bit weird because of how plain she appeared and the intelligence in her eyes that said otherwise. There was an awkward silence as everyone, except for Alexandra, stared at each other.
“Gay baby…” Alexandra said, which was the last thing David expected to hear. He was unsure whether or not to laugh, smile, or make sure that he had heard her correctly. Then he heard the girl, Mona Carter, speak.
“Come again?” She asked in a low voice that was a bit mild, again like it was hiding from notice.
“Every time there is an awkward silence somewhere in the world a gay baby is being born. Didn’t you know that?” David’s mind was blank. He was wandering what kind of response you were supposed to give to that.
Mona let out a short laugh that almost sounded like an afterthought. David looked at her again, but she didn’t seem like she was paying attention. She was staring past him to where he knew the piano stood. He remembered reading in Mona’s file that she could play the piano and violin, and several different instruments. He glanced down at the violin she was carrying and then at the rest of the stuff she was carrying. It looked like a lot and it looked like it was probably heavy. He decided to speak before another gay baby could be born.’
“Anyway, come on in.” He said opening the door a little wider and stepping out of the way, into the opening that lead to the kitchen. He reflexively stuck out his hand as Mona stepped through the door. Seemingly as reflexively, she shook it. He felt a little bad because for her to shake his hand she had to take her hand out from under the other one and shift the weight of the violin case to her other arm, but she did so without much thought. She was already looking around the room.
He closed the door after Alexandra, and was about to follow as Annalise led them over to the couch, when he realized that he needed a chair. He walked into the kitchen and through another opening, which led to the dining room, and grabbed a wooden chair from its place around the table, and carried it to the front room.
Mona and Alexandra sat on the couch and Annalise sat on the armchair. Mona sat the same sort of way that she stood and talked, sinking into the couch and making herself seem as small as possible. She was tensed, with her hands in her pockets and her legs squeezed together, but she tried to look like she was relaxed. She had set her stuff at her feet. Her head was down and her hair had fallen from behind her ear to conceal her face.
She was staring at the table, where the black file still sat where Annalise had dropped it. He could see her name printed at the top from where he sat. He felt a bit embarrassed by this, but wasn’t going to say anything when she reached into one of the bags at her feet and withdrew a nearly identical black folder and set it next to the other one. No one said anything. It was another instance that David couldn’t think of anything acceptable to say. He was worried about another gay baby birth, when Mona started to laugh. When she laughed she sort of laughed to herself and it was less sound and more short bursts of air as her shoulders jerked with the laughs. She shook her head and sighed, then looked up at everyone looking at her.
“Well, I thought it was funny.” she said, shrugging as if everyone was missing out on something and coughing into her sleeve. Alexandra shook her head, smiled, and then chose this time to save them all from yet another awkward silence.
“Anyway, here are some legal papers and whatnot.” She said setting some more papers down on the coffee table and sliding the two files off of it and into her lap.
“You, Mona, go play us a tune on that piano. I heard that you were supposed to be good.” She said. David pulled his chair closer to the table as Annalise leaned forward so as to see better. Alexandra started to explain about how all of the stuff that was in the guardianship papers was just the formal way of saying that they claimed responsibility for the child’s needs. David watched out of the corner of his eye as Mona quietly stood and slipped over to the piano. She moved like a shadow, not making much movement and sliding onto the piano bench and beginning to play.
David looked back as Annalise froze halfway through signing her name as soon as she heard the music. She only froze for a moment, though and finished, handing the pen to David. When he was finished he slipped the papers back to Alexandra and glanced back at Mona, who was still leaning over the piano. He met Annalise’s eyes and she raised her eyebrows, indicating that she was seriously impressed. Although David didn’t have the ear of a musician, he could tell that the song Mona was playing took skill. It moved a lot, but wasn’t fast, and the chords that made a sort of backdrop for the song, were deep and blended. Mona’s fingers, thought rather short, moved skillfully and covered a good portion of the keys.
Alexandra stood up with David and Annalise following. Mona glanced over at them, but finished playing, whether it was just that part of the song or the actual end of the song David couldn’t tell. Alexandra smiled at her and moved toward the door.
“I think this might be a perfect match.” She said, “Well, I must go, now. It’s a long drive back to anywhere.” They all laughed except for Mona, and David opened the door for Alexandra. She walked down the steps and started down the sidewalk, but turned.
“See ya, around, kiddo. I’ll be back in a week or two to see how things are going.” David gave a little wave and Annalise said goodbye, but Mona just stood, staring after her as if she was the last thing connecting her to sanity. Alexandra got into her car and backed out of the driveway. Mona continued to watch out the door after she’d driven away, which made David feel bad for closing it, but he didn’t want bugs getting into the house.
“Well, how about we get you moved in?” Annalise said. David figured that she was trying to stop the awkwardness from coming back. She and Mona went to retrieve Mona’s stuff from in front of the couch, while David put his chair back in the dining room. He joined them at the foot of the stairs. He hated climbing these stairs, because they were so steep. When they reached the top they turned left twice, going around the stairs and down the hallway. There were tow doors and the end of the hallway slanted on one side so that the hallway made a sort of right angle at the end.
The door on the right led to David and Annalise’s bedroom, while the one on the left had been previously used as a junk room.
They’d converted it into a guest bedroom shortly before they’d registered for the foster care program. It held a bed and a dresser, and it had two windows, as it was in a corner. David opened this door for his wife and Mona, who carried the stuff in and set it on the bed.
“Would you like some help?” David offered, still feeling a bit awkward having a girl her age in the house. He didn’t usually interact with people that age outside of school and/or church, so, he wasn’t quite sure what his standing was. At school he was in a position of authority, and at church he usually only talked to kids that were is students, so he still had some level of superiority; but with Mona he wasn’t sure if he was the kind of dad that had complete authority, or if he was one who thought of the child as his equal, like a very good friend. He was used to feeling like a kid at home, because Annalise scolded him like a child when he did something dorky, but with Mona there, he wasn’t sure if he could be weird at home. He was a little worried that she would find his weirdness insulting in comparison to her own infinitely huge amount of weirdness. He’d already pegged her as the weird type, which he couldn’t really understand. Most of the kids at school were either loud and rowdy, or bright and optimistic, with the occasional weird person.
Mona looked a little surprised at his offer.
“Uh, if you want to…” She said, looking back at her stuff. David watched in amazement as she unzipped her backpack and started to unpack tons of books and notebooks. There were about thirty books in all and a bunch of notebooks and a few binders. She stacked them neatly on the bed in some order that probably only made sense to her.
“How the heck did you get all of those in there?” David asked, stepping forward. He enjoyed reading and had a pretty impressive collection himself, but the amount of books that this girl had crammed into her backpack and been carrying around shocked him, even though it was no where near the amount of books that he owned. He thought that he was pretty good at understanding kids, but he could tell that Mona fell into an entirely different category of understanding.
“It wasn’t easy,” Mona looked embarrassed and she adjusted a stack of books uncomfortably. “and I didn’t really have a lot of time…”
Annalise laughed, picking up a stack of books and setting it on the top of the small dresser, upright with the spines facing out, and she continued to laugh as she helped Mona transfer all of the books to the dresser and then unpack and store her clothes in the dresser (the violin, in it’s case, was placed against the wall on one side of the dresser where it wouldn’t be stepped on). David wasn’t any help at all. The most he could do was move out of the way as Annalise helped Mona place everything. He couldn’t help but stare at Mona, trying to decide what she was. She didn’t seem to want to fit into any particular category.
She caught him staring several times, but he couldn’t help, but try to figure out the anomaly that she was. He looked at his wife and saw how normal she seemed in comparison, yet how easily she managed to get along with Mona, without question. She was kind, loving, and perfect to him, which was so opposite to this girl who laughed at the strangest things and carried her personal library around on her back.
The last thing that Mona pulled out of the shoulder bag was a long black dress. Annalise took it carefully.
“It’s beautiful! What is it for?” She asked feeling the silky material between her fingers. Mona blushed.
“It’s my orchestra concert dress. My mom made it for me.”
“She made this?” Annalise crooned. “Aw, it’s wonderful.” She put it in the bottom drawer of the dresser that was still empty. David was thoroughly confused.