Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me

CHAPTER 1 Just shut up. I'd like to tell my brain to just shut up. Have you ever noticed how you can't make your mind stop thinking even though you try to think about absolutely nothing? You still keep on thinking about how you're trying to think about nothing because you want to avoid thinking about the thing you don't want to think about? Oh, shut up. I appear to be talking to a machine. I can blank out people. Wipe them right off the board. Paint over them. Close the book on them. Click, erase, gone. It's me I'm having trouble escaping. A computer is very close to perfection. I love the way you can press cancel or delete and it actually happens. To the printed word, that is. I'm leaving this place. Mrs. K. and Frank are past tense. It's not breaking my heart to leave because as a ward of the Children's Aid I'm used to it. Any idea what that means? Not bloody likely. Here's a hint. What do you do with something you don't want? Throw it out, of course. And what do you call the junk you throw out? You got it. I'm losing it, obviously. Do I expect this machine to give answers? My new address will be: Sara Moone, c/o E. Huddleston, RR 3, Ambrose, Ontario. An easy address compared to this one: c/o Mrs. Avartha Koscyzstin, 319 Campagnola Street East, North Malverington, Ontario. And let's see, what was the one before that? Station Road. No number. That was the Lomers, I think. The only thing I remember about that place was, Arn never laid a hand on us kids. He made us memorize that statement. Sonia, his wife, got slapped around on a regular basis, however. I have no idea exactly how many foster homes I've been in. I was in a group home once and hated it more than anything. Kids kept stealing my stuff. I hide everything now, money especially. Having my own money is very important to me. A lot of cruelty went on in that place. One of the older kids broke my finger by tricking me. "Put your finger in the crow's nest," he said, "the crow's not at home." So, like a sucker, I stuck my finger into his big, crunching fist. My finger's still crooked. I used to get sucked in by Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me, too. Until I found out the right answer. Don't plan on digesting my whole life story here, because I've forgotten most of it. And what I remember would bore the brains out of a dead cow. I came to stay with Mrs. K. (everybody calls her Mrs. K., including Frank, her elderly husband) when I was about thirteen. I'm fifteen now. That's the longest I've stayed anywhere. I'll be sixteen at the end of August and then kaboom. I start living. No more social workers. No more foster parents. No more school. I will be me, alone, untouchable. I'd better start packing. They took Mrs. K. off to the hospital about an hour ago, although she wasn't supposed to have her operation until next month. "I'm a bit sickly," she always said to me. Sickly! She's been at death's door since day one. There were times when I wouldn't have minded nudging her right through it. I've been playing nursemaid here for the past year and a half, almost. Oh well, so what? It's February, which means only six months left in limbo. I can hardly wait to start my life. I've got everything packed except this machine. One suitcase and one cardboard box hold the contents of my socalled existence. Another cardboard box contains my books. My other existences. I've got my money pinned to my underwear. Frank said he'Johnston, Julie is the author of 'Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me' with ISBN 9780887766480 and ISBN 088776648X.