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  Runaways

  Orphans #5

  V.C. Andrews

  Copyright (c) 1998

  ISBN: 0671007637

  .

  Prologue

  My eyes snapped open to the muffled sound of whimpering coming through the walls. These rooms shrunk to closets when you squeezed in our desks and chairs along with a dresser and two beds with a nightstand between them. To get the most space possible, the beds were smack against the walls. My ear was practically part of the wallpaper when I slept.

  Two of the new kids we called The Unborn were in the adjoining room. They sounded like puppies. We nicknamed them The Unborn because coming here, living in a foster home, was like being born again, only this time to live in limbo. They had been delivered here yesterday and had spent their first night at the Lakewood House, the foster home Crystal, Butterfly, my roommate Raven and I had christened Hell House.

  Information about any new wards of the state, as we were known, spread faster than jam on a fresh roll around here. When it came to learning about one of The Unborns, everyone was suddenly an attentive student, and if you overheard something, you almost felt obligated to be a gossip.

  According to Potsy Philips, one of the orphans who made a habit of picking on each and every new kid who came to our home, these Unborns had no father. They were alone with their dead mother for days before anyone noticed.

  So what's new about that? I thought. We've been here for years and no one's really noticed----or cared. Actually, that's not entirely true. We care about each other. Not all of the kids get along, but I'm lucky to have found true friends here, my sisters, Raven, Crystal, and Janet, who we call Butterfly because she is so fragile. We all arrived at the house within weeks of each other and became fast friends. When we feel like crying, or our hopes get so low we can't imagine them ever being high again, or when we have happy news to share we know we can count on each other. And that means more than anything.

  I lay in bed wondering if the new orphans would be as lucky, then realized that it was almost time to rise and shine. Louise Tooey, our foster mom, whose sickening smile reminded me of the Joker in Batman, would come knocking on doors in ten minutes, and if we weren't up and dressed in time, her husband, Gordon, might follow soon after, his boots falling like sledge hammers on the stairs and wooden floors as he approached the rooms. If we were still in bed, he was capable of ripping the blanket off and glaring down at us like some giant buzzard, his eyes wide, his thick lips curled, baring his teeth.

  "What do you think this is, a hotel? Are you waiting for breakfast in bed? I have to interrupt my work to come up here? That's ten demerits!" he would bellow, his tan face turning dark red, the muscles and veins in his neck looking like thick rubber bands about to snap.

  Your name would go up on the Big Board, a large cork bulletin board in the dining room. When you reached twenty demerits, it was room restriction, a day for every five points over twenty.

  Just looking around at the rooms would explain why it was a punishment to be restricted to one. We weren't permitted to put anything on our walls--no posters, no pictures. Supposedly, that was to protect the wallpaper, which looked like it was ready to peel itself off and roll itself into the garbage anyway. No radios or CD players were permitted because the walls

  were too thin and you couldn't possibly play your music low enough not to disturb someone, especially Gordon and Louise. If you were lucky enough to be brought here with a tape deck or radio, it had to be stored in the utility room and you could have it only during recreation time. You actually had to sign out for your own things!

  All the rooms had two windows. The older residents, like the four of us, had the rooms with a view of the lake. We had no curtains, just faded window blinds, most of which had something wrong with them so you had to put a pencil in the roller to keep the blinds down. We were told they were once a buttercup yellow, and the wallpaper was the color of fresh milk with circles as vibrant as newly bloomed violets. Now the walls were the bruised gray of twoweek-old hard-boiled eggs, and the circles looked more like dead violets, faded and dried and stuck in someone's book of memories.

  Just to make us appreciate where we were lucky enough to be, Louise liked to describe the Lakewood House as it had once been when her parents and grandparents ran it as a resort. She would stop to check on everyone in the recreation room and then gaze around and sigh, her eyes glazed with tears as she drank in the worn oak floors, the tired walls and peeling paint on the ceiling.

  "In its day, children, this was the most desirable tourist house in upstate New York, nestled between two mountains with a lake fed by spring water that was once crystal clear."

  Some of the younger children might smile. It did sound nice. Now, however, the lake was brackish, full of weeds, oily on the bottom and off limits to all of us. No fishing was permitted. The old dock was rickety and rotten and there were two damaged rowboats nearly completely submerged beside it. If Gordon caught you within ten feet of that lake, you received a full twenty-five demerits and one day's restriction immediately. No one knew what the punishment might be for a second violation. Gordon left it to our imaginations. Maybe he would put you in the barrel.

  There was a story going around that Louise and Gordon kept old pickle barrels in the rear of the house and if you were very bad, they put you into a barrel and closed the top with just tiny holes for air. You were left cramped up in there for days and had to pee and do your business in your underpants. When your sentence was over, the barrel was turned on its side and you were rolled hundreds of feet before you were taken out, shaken and dizzy. Most of the younger Unborns nearly wet themselves just hearing about it. When they then saw Gordon come lumbering down the hallway, his jaw slack, his rust brown eyes panning the room and the children for signs of misbehavior, they shook in their shoes and held their breath.

  Gordon was enough to give any kid nightmares for life. The fact that he and Louise became qualified as foster parents is, as Crystal says, testimony enough that foster children are on the lowest rung of the social totem pole. That's the way Crystal talks. You'd think she was already a college professor or something.

  I ground the sleep out of my eyes, ran my fingers through my hair and sat up. Raven was still dead asleep, her right leg out and over the blanket, her long dark hair fanned out over the pillow.

  Raven is by far the prettiest of the four of us. Her face is as beautiful as a model's, and everyone is jealous of her shoulder-length ebony hair. All she has to do is shower and shampoo and her hair gleams as if a fairy godmother touched it with her magic wand.

  "Hey, sleeping beauty," I called. She didn't move. "Raven, it's time to wake up," I sang out. Nothing, not even a twitch was visible in her body.

  I reached down and scooped my socks out of my tennis sneakers, rolled them into a ball and then flung them across the room, bouncing them off the back of Raven's lovely head. That got her attention.

  "Wha . ." She turned, looked at me, and smirked, sinking back into her pillow as if it were made of marshmallow.

  "Rise and shine, Miss San Juan, before youknow-who comes around and does you-know-what," I said and rose to open the dresser drawer to pluck out a fresh pair of panties. We had to share the one dresser, a reject from a thrift shop, that was here when the first tourist arrived from New York City, back when the trains were running and the Lakewood House was listed in a resort magazine called Summer Homes.

  "My grandparents began this as a small farm, couldn't make a living at it, and started to take in boarders," Louise told us for the four hundredth time yesterday. "From that they developed a well- known tourist home. My parents were very successful, but the economy changed so Gordon and I decided why waste all this? Why not do a good deed and become foster parents? You lucky kids are the%r />
  beneficiaries."

  You lucky kids? Do a good deed? Louise and Gordon care about someone else besides themselves? Crystal, who is smart enough to become President someday, if women could ever become President, told us how Louise and Gordon receive money for each child and how that money grows as the child gets older, and then how that money is tax free!

  "It's Saturday. Why can't we sleep later on Saturday?" Raven moaned.

  "Bring it up at the next meeting of the direc

  tors," I quipped. "You better move your rump, Raven,

  before the rug rats take up both bathrooms."

  On our floor we had to share the bathroom with

  six other orphans. Gordon was always lecturing us

  about running the hot water too long. We were

  convinced he was the inventor of the two-minute cold

  shower. The Lakewood House had its own well, and

  he threatened us with the horrible possibility of our

  running out of water and having to bring it up in pails

  from the lake.

  "I hate this," Raven grumbled. For a moment I

  stared at her as if she had said something unexpected. Yes, I hate it too, I thought, but neither of us

  has had any prospective parents nibbling around us.

  And chances were, we never would. Crystal, who was

  a junior computer whiz, spent the most time of anyone

  on the home's one donated computer. She often

  presented us with wonderful facts, especially about

  foster children. On any given day, she claimed, there

  were nearly 50,000 foster children who no longer lived with their mother or father and have been declared by the courts as free to be adopted, but who usually remained in state-run, state-funded substitute care. Good luck to all of them. Crystal told us the population of foster children is growing 33 times faster than the U.S. population in general. Maybe

  we'll take over the world, I joked, but no one laughed. I slipped into my panties and reached for my

  jeans just-as Crystal burst into our room, her face

  flushed. She was still in pajamas, which for Crystal

  was very unusual. She was Miss Punctuality. "What?"

  "She's doing it again! She worse. She's like . . .

  petrified wood!"

  I looked at Raven, who then leaped out of bed,

  threw on her robe and followed Crystal and me to

  Crystal and Butterfly's room. There was Butterfly

  with her legs pulled up and in, her hands clenched into

  fists, her eyes shut so tight the lids looked sewn

  together. Her lips were pursed stiffly, her nostrils

  quivering with her heavy breaths. We looked at each

  other. Butterfly went into these catatonic trances more

  and more lately. It didn't exactly take a rocket scientist

  to figure out the reason. She was lonely, fragile, afraid

  of rejection. For her, going into this trance was like crawling into a cocoon. Crystal, our resident child psychologist, said Butterfly was trying to return to the womb. Raven thought she was nuts, but I understood. I never said anything, but I sometimes wished I could

  go back as well.

  I shook Butterfly's upper arm and her whole

  body moved as if it were one frozen piece.

  "Butterfly, come on. We're all here. Stop this,

  now. You know what's going to happen. Gordon or

  Louise is going to come in here and see you and call

  for the paramedics or something and then you'll end

  up in some looney ward."

  I shook her again, but there was no response.

  Crystal stepped up beside me.

  "We need to join," she said.

  I looked back at the door.

  "Shut it, Raven."

  She did so and the three of us surrounded the

  bed, Raven and I on one side, Crystal on the other.

  We looked at each other and then as if we were all

  going under water, took deep breaths and leaned over

  so that all our heads touched. Linked this way, we

  began our chant. It was our secret ceremony. "We're sisters. We will always be sisters. One

  for all and all for one. When one is sad, we're all sad. We all must be happy for one to be happy. We're

  sisters. We will always be sisters."

  Butterfly's eyelids fluttered.

  "We're sisters," Crystal continued, and we

  joined in once more. "We will always be sisters." Butterfly's eyes opened and her mouth moved

  softly until she was into the chant with us. Then we

  stopped and stood back. Butterfly looked from Raven

  and me to Crystal.

  "What happened?" she asked.

  "You're all right now," I reassured her. "Let's

  get dressed and get down to breakfast. I'm starving." It had been Crystal who had come up with the

  joining and the chant and all because of Butterfly. It

  was really Butterfly who had brought the four of us

  together in the first place. No one was more

  vulnerable here. Crystal was her first protector

  because she was rooming with her and then Raven

  and I came in to keep the older girls from taking

  advantage of both of them. Crystal used her sharp wit

  and tongue to put down anyone who ridiculed Janet

  for her size and shyness. Eventually, the three of us

  circled her like three protective sisters and inevitably

  became closer to each other because of it.

  Crystal labeled us the Four Ophanteers instead of the Four Musketeers. We were always saying, "All for one and one for all." For now and maybe forever,

  we were the only family we had.

  Crystal- Said the ritual and the chanting would

  defeat our sense of isolation and loneliness. She really

  was like a schoolteacher. "Man is a gregarious

  animal," she lectured. "Religious and meditation

  groups favor group recitations. There's security in

  hearing other voices saying the same things or making

  similar sounds. Touch is intimate and a commitment,"

  she explained. I didn't know what it all meant, but I

  knew it made sense because it usually worked. Once again, it had worked this morning, but I

  feared the day when it wouldn't.

  1 A Glimmer of Hope

  As I got ready to go downstairs for breakfast, I couldn't help but worry about Butterfly, and wonder how my other sisters and I were spared the same fate: each of us had tragic stories, some, I was beginning to realize, more tragic than others.

  I was almost adopted when I was nearly thirteen by Pamela and Peter Thompson, a young couple who had never had a child of their own. Pamela was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and, though I thought it was strange that she wanted me to call her Pamela instead of Mommy or even Mother, I did what she asked. Orphans learn at a very young age to do anything, well, almost anything, to please prospective parents.

  Pamela had been a beauty queen and chose me because she thought I looked like a younger version of her. No one had ever told me I was beautiful before, or had the potential to grow up to be beautiful, so when Pamela and Peter chose me for that very reason I was completely surprised, but happy, and for the first time in my life I thought that maybe I was special. That I wasn't just a little girl no one wanted.

  I soon realized, though, that Pamela didn't think I was special because of who I really was, but because of who she thought she could make me into. All the pretty clothes and fancy lessons that at first made me feel like a char wed princess, soon became suffocating to me. I wasn't allowed to excel at the sports I played so well or to even be myself. I was getting all mixed up inside--I wanted to please Pamela, she was my new mother, but I also k
new that pleasing her meant losing myself.

  Peter tried to help, and explained to Pamela that I could do well in sports and be a beauty queen, but Pamela just got nastier and nastier. Finally, when it seemed that she just wouldn't ever listen to the dreams that were in my heart, I did the only thing I knew how to make her understand. I cut off my beautiful long hair--the hair that she so loved to brush and wash, the hair that would help me win her precious beauty pageants.

  Pamela went into such a rage when she saw me that she started to hyperventilate, gasping for breath, declaring she was on the verge of a heart attack. She said I would be an enormous embarrassment to her and was no good as a beauty pageant contestant, or even as a daughter. Peter didn't know how to deal with Pamela's fury and so he sent me back to the Child Protection Services like a defective toy. And, years later, I am still here at Hell House.

  Butterfly's experiences must have been much worse than mine, since she can barely talk about them. We've learned a bit over the years, but mostly when she tries to speak about it, or something reminds her of that time, she goes into one of her trances. Her foster mother, Celine Delorice, was a woman in her early thirties who had once had a promising career as a ballet dancer. She married a well-to-do

  businessman, Sanford Delorice, who supported her attempts to become a prima ballerina. However, shortly after their marriage, Celine was in a serious car accident and had to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She talked Sanford into adopting a foster child and Celine chose Butterfly because she was so dainty and supposedly had perfect feet. She believed Butterfly would become the dancer she had expected she would be, and she had her start training almost the same day they brought her home from the orphanage.

  Butterfly was a good dancer, but not a great dancer. She didn't progress as quickly as Celine had hoped and began to freeze under the pressure and the possibility of failure. Celine Delorice actually suffered a nervous breakdown from it. At least, that's what Butterfly told us, and soon after Sanford returned her to the system, claiming his wife's handicap made it impossible for them to bring up a child properly. Crystal thought there had to be something more, but she never pressured Butterfly, who could turn to stone if you forced her to talk about her past.