Not Just A Kid

“Why are you being like this, John!?” my momma yelled as daddy stood up off the couch.

“You know very well why I’m being like this! That little brat is ruining our lives! Seven years of it is enough! You know we don’t have the money to pay for her anymore!” he yelled back. I was hiding underneath the table in the kitchen, I was super scared. My daddy was yelling really loud.

“Jonathan, she’s just a kid! What did she ever do to you!?” momma said back. Daddy went right up to her and stood extra close to her face, and he looked really, really mad.

“SHE WAS BORN! BECAUSE YOU WERE SUCH A LITTLE SLUT, BRITTANY! THAT’S WHY!” he screamed at her. She moved away because she looked scared like me, but then daddy grabbed her arms and started shaking her. “WHY DO YOU STAND UP FOR THAT LITTLE PIECE OF TRASH!?”

“BECAUSE SHE’S MY DAUGHTER!” she said, looking angry now, too.

Daddy kept screaming at momma, and she just stopped screaming back. I don’t know what he was saying, but I know it was a lot of those words momma says are bad. All of a sudden, momma slapped daddy on his cheek, and his eyes got all big and angry like the big bad wolf in Red Riding Hood. He grabbed momma’s arm and went to that top secret drawer in his desk and unlocked it. That’s when momma got really scared, and she started screaming real loud.

“No! Jonathan, please!” her voice sounded like the people in those scary movies, and it scared me so much that I started to cry. Daddy looked around in the drawer for a minute until he pulled out that black thingy, he called it his “HK 45”, and pointed it at me. Momma kept saying ‘no’, so then he pointed it at her instead. She was crying a lot. I really wished that daddy would just say he was sorry, and then momma would kiss him and it would be all better.

“Leah, baby, run! Get out of here!!” Momma yelled at me. I was scared for a minute but I ran away, as far as I could until I got to the door and ran out. It was super dark out, and it was past my bedtime, but I was so scared that I just kept running. Right as I reached the end of the sidewalk, I heard a really loud bang sound come from where I had been running. Maybe daddy used the black thingy on momma…

The only place I could think of to go to was my school, because my teacher told me it was always a safe place. I ran to the big white building and up the steps, then started knocking on the big double doors with all my might. Nobody answered me, so I started yelling for my teacher.

“Miss Jenna, Miss Jenna!” I was yelling, but the big locks on the door never budged. I felt so alone, so I sat down on the steps and cried. I cried and cried, and my cheeks were very wet.

“What’s wrong?” I heard a voice ask me. I picked my head up and looked at a small boy with lots of long brown hair. He looked nice, so I decided he wasn’t counted as a stranger.

“I’m all alone,” I told him.

“Well, I’m Cole… you don’t have to be alone anymore,” he said back. His smile was pretty.

“My name is Leah,”

He put his hand out and I took it, and our hands felt super small, but they fit just right. We walked for a long time, and my brown hair kept blowing in my face. I pushed it out of my way to see lots of red and blue lights and super loud sounds coming from where my house was supposed to be. Cole started to run and he took us all the way to the park, which was far from my house. Like in the car, it takes a whole ten minutes just to get there!

“How come you were all alone?” he asked, sitting down on the grass next to the playground.

“Cuz my momma told me to run away from daddy,”

“Oh… well, my mommy told me that if I didn’t start being nice to the kids at school, I would have to go to see a lady called a…a sykatrist… so she could teach me how to be nice. I didn’t like that, so I ran away,” he said. I nodded and he took my hand.

“How about we run away together!” I said, smiling at my smart idea. He smiled and nodded his head.

“Okay. As long as you promise to be friends forever,”

“For ever and ever,” I promised, and we walked off to the sidewalk so we could run away from there.

*****Four Years Later*****

“Cole! Leah! Come down for breakfast!” Todd called up for us. I looked at Cole sleeping in his bed across the room and smiled. He looked all peaceful…

“Hey, Cole! Wake up, I’m hungry,” I said, getting up and pulling his covers off. I squealed and covered my eyes, turning away from him. “EEWWW!! COLE PUT YOUR PJ PANTS BACK ON!” I yelled. He groaned and got out of bed, putting his pants on. Boys are so gross, not wearing pants to sleep and all. We went downstairs and saw Todd setting the table with plates piled high with turkey bacon and eggs. I prefer turkey bacon, it just… I don’t know, it tastes better. We sat down and I grinned at Todd. He was almost like our dad, except not really because he just took us in three years ago. It was nice when he found us and said we could stay with him.

I tried to get comfy on the hard plastic bench, but my head felt bad from sleeping on it so many times. We had been walking for a very long time, but every day me and Cole had lots of fun. My eighth birthday was the day before, and Cole had given me all the special scraps he’d collected for me. Even some turkey bacon that a nice lady had given us, he saved it and gave it to me for my present. And he also got me this really pretty necklace he found a long time ago near the gutters. He made it sparkly shiny clean, and then he gave it to me for my birthday. I was real happy.

Cole moved around on his jacket bed on the ground, and he looked super uncomfy, too.

“Cole?”

“Yeah?”

“You wanna sleep on this tonight?” I asked him. He smiled and shook his head ‘no’. I sighed and closed my eyes. Then a big drop of water hit my nose. I scrunched my face up, and looked up to see what happened. “Uh oh…” I said as I realized it as raining. Cole reached in our backpack of stuff and pulled out an umbrella and gave it to me. I said thank you and tried to put it up, but it broke.

“What are you two kids doing out here so late?” A big man’s voice asked. I looked up real scared, and he was smiling at us. He had a big black umbrella and he was walking a super cute dog.

“We live here,” Cole answered the man. I shivered as the rain started coming faster. The man looked sad and pointed at a car not very far away.

“Why don’t you come home with me, eh? I’ll give you some food and some warm clothes, and you can sleep there until we find your parents,”

“No! We don’t wanna go back to them!”

“But… you’re just kids. You need to be with your parents,”

“We can’t!” I said again. He looked at us weirdly, but sighed and nodded.

“Okay then, just come with me before you freeze to death,”

And ever since then, we’ve lived here. We’ve been going to school and everything, but he always makes weird signatures on quizzes so the teachers won’t know he’s not our real dad. But Mrs. Landy has always been suspicious.

Cole and Todd were my family, I loved them both so much. Even if they were smelly boys. I’m still not sure about that whole cooties thing… I mean, cooties could very possibly be real! Todd’s wife and their son Jimmy were killed in a car accident a couple years before he met Cole and me, so that’s probably why he was so attached to us. We ate breakfast and right when we were getting our backpacks for school, there was a big knocking on the front door. I looked at Cole, and he was looking at me the same way. Todd came out of the kitchen and gave us both a look I didn’t really understand, then opened the door.

“Are you Todd Severs?” a big voice asked from behind the door. Cole came over and wrapped an arm around me.

“Yes sir, I am,”

“Do you have in your care a child by the name of Cole Moore?”

“Uhm… well, sir…” Todd started. An officer stepped into the house without a word and looked to the right to see Cole and me huddled together against the wall, our backpacks hanging lightly on our shoulders as we clung to each other. He came to us and kneeled down to be at our eye level.

“Is your name Cole?”
Cole took awhile to answer, and the officer placed a hand on his shoulder. I wanted to punch him in the face.

"Please leave my children alone, officer," Todd said sternly.

"My name isn't Cole" he lied. The officer looked frustrated.

"Son, you know it's illegal to lie to a police officer, right?"

"COLE! MY BABY!!!" an annoying woman’s voice rang out through the house. A woman in her thirties with red hair and green eyes came running to Cole and took him in a tight embrace, leaving me off to the side. The officer looked at me, and I tried to avoid him but he gestured me over.

"Hun, where are your parents? Is he your real dad?" he asked. I didn't want to lie to an officer but it didn't feel right to say no. I was scared of losing them. The woman was crying and Cole was hugging her, that must be his mom. The officer sighed and called in for non-emergency backup, then told me to sit down on the sofa. I hoped the woman and officer would just leave...

A car pulled up out front and another officer walked in to see me sitting scared on the sofa, Cole being hugged insistently, and Todd being arrested... The officer that had talked to me was cuffing Todd's wrists, and the other came to me and smiled, then took my hand and started going to the door. That's when it really set in that the woman and officers wouldn't be leaving.

"We're going to take you to a good home, okay? Don't you worry,"

"Wait, no! Leah!" Cole shouted as his mom was pulling him to the ugly station wagon she drove. He tried to wrench his wrist from her grasp but she held firm and gave him a stern look. I got really upset and started trying to run from the officer as well, but he was strong. As Todd was driven away, I felt by world crashing. My family was being torn apart.

"COLE! PLEASE, LET ME GO!" I screamed, fighting against the officer. I didn't care if it was wrong, Cole was all I had.

"Stop fighting me, how are you so strong?! You're just a kid!" the officer panted.

"LEAH! JUST DONT FORGET OUR PROMISE!!"

"I won't, but I wanna stay with you!!" I managed to shout before the officer had shoved me into the car and sped off.

I won't forget our promise, Cole. Best friends forever...

~*~*~*~

I sat in the blue minivan my new mom drove, waiting for her to get out of the Safeway with the groceries so we could get to my "Uncle" Rob and "Aunt" Jen's house. She was getting some food to help Jen cook dinner and some sort of dessert to bring as a gift. Her name was Eden and she was the best mom I'd had so far these last five years. And trust me, I'd had quite a few moms. A couple of dads, too, but most foster parents are women.

It was Cole's 17th birthday today. I hadn't seen him in five years, since the day some idiot police officer shoved me into his patrol car and drove me to a foster home until my parents were found. They were found alright, my mom was shot and killed that night my dad pulled out his pistol. My dad was taken to prison for life, and I stayed at various homes with new parents all the time. Great family, am I right?

Eden came back to the car and as I helped her load the groceries into the car, I thought about the fact that we were moving in with Aunt Jen and Uncle Rob, since she couldn’t afford our apartment’s rent anymore. Even though the salary she got for fostering me was good, it sometimes just wasn’t enough. So she was getting a job as a waitress at a local restaurant and we were moving to a small town in Arizona just fifty miles from Phoenix, where we had lived for the past three months. Looking around, I felt like I’d been here before. The Safeway we were at, the buildings we passed; it all seemed so familiar.

“So… I really want to go find Cole again,” I told Eden as she sat in the car and started driving.

“Honey, we’ve been through this. You have to wait two more years before you can get out of the system and go look up some boy from your childhood,”

“Eden, he is not just ‘some boy’! I’ve told you a million times…” I muttered, looking down at my lap. She sighed.

“You’re only 16 and you’ve got so much life ahead of you. You’re just a kid!”

“I am not just a kid, mom!” I replied, so angry all of a sudden. Everyone in the world seemed to think I was just a kid and nothing more. She smiled ever so lightly, happy that I had addressed her as ‘mom’.

“I know it doesn’t seem that way to you, but you’ll just have to have some faith that you will get through it. It goes day by day,”

“If you say so…”

Finally, pulling onto a neighborhood street, I realized why this place looked so familiar.

“Stop the car!” I exclaimed, staring in surprise at the old white school building I had gone to for seven years, the one I had met Cole in front of. She stopped the car and looked at me like I was crazy. “Wait here?” I asked, my hand instinctively going to the necklace hanging around my neck. She pulled the car over and nodded. I stepped out and walked slowly up to the locked double doors of my old elementary school, marveling at the fact that the school managed to stay the same the past nine years.

I thought of all the time I had spent with Cole and Todd, I thought of how Cole had found me here, I thought of how he had given me the necklace for my birthday so long ago. He was the best family I could’ve asked for. I missed him so much. My heart ached, as I slowly sat down on the top step and let my mind drift to all the times we’d had. Going riding in a shopping cart, or jumping off the swings at the park, or even finding the Easter eggs together on Easter Sunday. I missed him more and more by the day, and it was finally coming back to haunt me.

I thought I heard a voice mumble “Oh my god,” but shrugged it off; I was far too wrapped up in my thoughts to care.

“What’s wrong?” a shaky voice asked me. A voice I knew so well. I looked up, shocked and in utter surprise, to see a boy with long brown hair and a wonderful smile. His eyes smiled at me, though his bottom lip trembled like he was holding in tears. I stuttered for a second, before realizing what he was playing at.

“I-I’m all alone,” I answered, grinning through my tears. One slowly rolled down his face as he smiled back.

“My name’s Cole, and you don’t have to be alone anymore,”

“I’m Leah…” I said.

“Best friends forever?”

“For ever and ever,” I finished, instantly jumping up and running into Cole’s arms. He held onto me so tight and I hadn’t ever felt as happy as I did right then.

“Happy birthday, Cole,” I murmured. He laughed and we just stood there, hugging each other for the first time in five years.

Being like that, with him again, I didn’t feel like just a kid anymore. I felt like so much more than that. Like I was worth so much more than that.