Chapter One: Twisted Metal and a Twisted Mind

I was sitting in the back of a car. I looked forward at the back of seats and noticed tears in the cloth upholstery. I trembled as I reached forward to feel the tears which my fingers fit almost perfectly. I turned toward the window and watched the rain slide down it.

My brother Joshua slept soundly a few feet away. I thought about waking him even if it annoyed him, just to have something to do. I stared out the window again, the night time being interupted every few seconds or so by the streetlights falling down on the minivan like the rain itself.

I looked forward at my mother and said, "Mommy, I have to pee." Not my voice, but the voice of a five year old. My mother looks at me through the rear view mirrow and opens her mouth, but all I hear is the unmistakable terrible sound of twisting metal, breaking like an explosion.

I turn back to the window. Headlights burn into my eyes. This is always when I realize I'm dreaming. No matter what I do, I'm never able to wake up. I can only wake from my slumber when the car hits, my eyes always absorbing nothing from the wreck but the sound. My Mother's scream is all I remember of her voice. Her scream always hurt me the most. Out of hers, my father's, and even mine. She was cut off in the middle. She wasn't even allowed to finish her misery.

I wake up in a cold sweat as usual. My eyes try to focus on the ceiling, but the darkness seems to hang above me in dots.

I have nothing to show from my parents, but that damn wreck. Joshua was even put in a different foster home than I was. We stayed in contact from when I was five to when I was seven, but after that we just never saw each other again. Swept up by government vans transporting us to the next house we'd pretend to get "adjusted" to before they did it all again.

I was thirteen years old, and I've lived in thirteen different homes. Joshua's lived in more. I've heard through the grapevine that my fifteen year old brother isn't the sweet innocent nine year old I remember him being the last time I saw him. He's still my brother, and I embarrassingly still have vibrant dreams where he rescues me from this foster life and takes me somewhere beautiful where we can be together perhaps living on the streets doing odd jobs to just buy food.

Then I remember that he hasn't tried to contact me in years. I realize that he's forgotten me, he's forgotten his broken kid sister.

I turn on my small television to try and drown out my depressing thoughts. Full House brightens my room with its picturesque San Francisco opening. It's the first episode where DJ is still coping with her mother's death. Being Full House, they made it the most dramatic they could: their mother was killed, neigh, /murdered/ by a drunk driver.

I cry softly under my covers as I remember all over again. I whimper quietly like this under my warming covers until my alarm clock blares some Rap song into my ear. I sit up against my bed post and pull my knees to my chest.

I don't want to go to school as usual. When you move around so much, have no connections with anyone, and are alone as often as I am, you begin to form a bond with yourself.

In my mind, I'm much more the foster home orphan girl. I'm much more then the victim of the school system's biggest war, drinking and driving.

I'm me. And a speeding car could never stop that, one of the other girl's insults could never stop that, my foster mother's overly sweet attitude could never stop that.

I try and tell myself that over and over again as I make my way to school. Sometimes, it works, but today it doesn't as usual.