Opening Life

Chapter 5

After a slightly awkward episode at the beach, we were both silent on the ride home. As soon as we got in the house however, Beverly started firing questions at us left, right, and center. Before now I’d thought her intrest in our lives was fantastic- now I foud it annoying. I pretty much idnored her, which I’m sure hurt her feelings, but I didn’t dwell on it. She’d had foster kids before- she would just group me in that catergory of surly teenagers who are pissed to the entire world.

Walking up to my room, I had the need to write all this down in my journal. Ever since I was little, journals have sort of been this coping mechanism for me; write it all down and feel better. Flinging open the door I flopped down on my bed and realized with a start that I had a new sheets and a comforter. Smiling despite myself, I began to feel a little guilty about how I had ignored Beverly after she went to all the trouble of buying me new things.

Pulling out my laptop, I opened it pressing the power button . I pulled up Microsoft Wrod and started typing.

I saved the journal and closed my laptop. Then I stood up, streched my arm and started down the stairs. When I reached the bottom Ashley brushed past me and jugged up the stairs. With a huff I turned around and went back up to our room. From behind the closed door I could here Blink 182 blaring over the speakers and reconized the song as "Dammit," one of my favorites. I pushed open the door and stood there for a moment leaning against the frame. Ashley glanced up from her magizine, saw it was me and looked back down.

"Look," I said, "we’re gonna have to talk sometime."

"So, your point?" she snapped back.

I took a step into the room and sat down on the chair next to the door.

"So, my point is you can’t just ignore me forever, who knows how long I’ll be here" I said.

"Well, at the beach, it just…. was weird, It kinda scared me, it was just weird." She said while staring at the floor.

She glanced up toward the ceiling and then let her eyes fall down to mine.

"So….ok, it was weird for me too, but I moved on and so should you it was just a weird stare nothing more, it was just some weird thing that happened."

Wow, I thought I sounded really dumb right there and I repeted myself like six times.

"Ok, yea I souded dumb I know, but I think its best if we forget that it ever happened and its kinda gotten blown out of proportion because it was really nothing." I said, trying to make up for the blabbering I had just done.

There was a silence between us which you could hear the next song on her CD. She cleared her throught and started, "Ok, I vote we pretend this never happened, what about you?"

"Um, yeah, I’m with you on that. So ….now what?" I asked.

"Um….I’m drawing a blank here, any ideas?" Ashley replied.

"What about the mall?" I asked.

"Uh, sure." She said setting down her closed magazine.

"I’ll neet you down in the car, you can go ahead." She said as she tood up and turned off the stereo. I took off down ther stairs two at a time till I hit the bottom where I grabbed my purse, my DC jacket and the keys. I whipped open the front door and pulled it closed behind me as I ran to the car. I stopped just short of slamming into the car and let out a little yelp. I was so happy. Ashley and I were friends again and we were going to the mall….yea! Today was going great…..or so I thought.