Foundling Dos

Sunny sat in the bed pushed against mine in the 'suite' on the third floor. She was flipping hair bands across the room, trying land them on the ledge of the window. Sunny and I lived in Fallon Hall with two other girls, Jaz and Sarah. A large, three floor, brick building. It had been a hospital in the 19th century. There were rumors that it was haunted by bloodletting barbarians. When we were younger, this theory held water and we sat up at night, sweating undercover, being decidedly un-British and letting our emotions get the best of us. Then year six history came along and we learned that by the time Fallon was built, bloodletting was declared quackery. Everyone pretended they had never believed and life moved on. There were still tell-tale remnants of Fallons former life… Squeaky polished tile floors, wash basins in every room. There were halls with nothing but small and separate rooms, curtain tracks made semicircles around the ceilings of them. Then suddenly there would be an open sitting area that had been made into haphazard sleeping quarters for the unlucky. These 'suites' had no doors and sleeping quarters were at a first come, first serve basis. You had to be a diligent, early riser to get the coveted individual dorms. Sunny and I, we were in the 'suite' on the third floor. Despite the ragtag, cobbled together family that occupied it, it was a grand building. A gorgeous, curving staircase led up to the first floor from the ground floor with it's large and inviting common room. It was hard to imagine near death patients being wheeled in. Women about to burst with life being rushed into the 2nd floor maternity ward. The very likely prospect of risking their life to bring another into the world running through their heads. I was struck by the prosaic goings on in this place that once tethered life and death together on a string. Now it just housed foundlings grappling with the Earth shaking idea of rejection from the most lawless of boys. For nefarious was a compliment in this crowd of cast-offs.

Night fell on London and we were all in our rooms, lights out. I was still awake as usual. Sunny could sleep with a freight train roaring over our heads, and I, the opposite, could be awoken by a petal falling from a flower two kilometers away. I had the envy of an insomniac. Most of my nights consisted of prayer, rumination on all things pointless, trying to avoid rumination of the not-so-pointless, giving up, and staring at Sunny, Jaz, and Sarah in rapt jealousy. I thought of Grim, sound asleep, and peaceful. Sneaking out was not an easy operation, and therefor not often attempted… even by the sneakiest by which I mean, the company I kept. And besides it was one o'clock in the morning, and in five hours Sunny and I would have to wake early to head into town (from Lambeth a $30 cab ride) and buy her dress that will cost our weekend (The $45.00 each, four people donating their allowance) and make for a very grumpy Grim. I resigned myself to the positive, and nestled into the warm cocoon of the dark room.

I woke with an alarm blaring in my head, my feet almost numb from having made their way out of the covers in a fitful sleep. Sarah was up, and had gotten to the shower before me. Sunny, of course, slept through the alarm. I pushed her awake. And went on a search for one of the rogue hair bands by the window.

"Its dress day!" Sunny said. Hands outstretched, "I feel a bit nauseous about the whole bit honestly,"

"You are not alone," I smiled.

"The ball, not the shopping,"

"Oh, yes. Well it should be beautiful." And I stayed silent. Despite her faults, I understood why Sunny would go along with being paraded about by Judge Simon. Survival was a crude human instinct that will be the last of all of our anthropological virtues to die. It is the nature of the beast. Most especially when that beast had been as abounded, and contused as our lot.

Before long we were all dressed and in a black cab headed for central London. Buildings that spanned the timeline of our country loomed overhead. We passed Lambeth Castle, once home to the archbishop of Canterbury and now taken over by the Mr. Simon himself. For years unfathomable it had been a holy place of residence, and now it was mired it the most unholiest of lives. I tried to imagine Sunny occupying the castle, Judge Simon's two children trailing her out the front door as they headed for the Rhyne. The Rhyne is the main Judicial building. It stands near to Parliament, the grand old building with its golden spires sits stoically next to a building made entirely of screens. The screens alternate between advertisements and holographical projections of Candidates, and Judges, and Ex Cathedra's. England was made up of five provinces at the present moment, though through money and brute power they are subject to change. Judges run provinces, Two Ex Cathedras, usually a husband and wife, oversee them and 'control power distribution'. We live in Civitas provence. It's been held in a steady stronghold my entire life by first Judge Simon Sr. and now by the Judge Simon you have come to know. The provinces and the areas they encompass are as follows…

Five Provinces

1. Civitas- London, Surrey and Kent

2. Externus- W. Sussex, E. Sussex, Hampshire, Berkshire, Oxforshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk Essex, and Hertforshire.

3. Solum-From Gloucestershire, around the Externus border down to the Southernmost tip of England. Also, Isle of Wighte.

4. Viscus-From Hereford and Worcester to Cheshire to Lincolnshire.

5. Caelum-From Merceyside, along the Viscus border, up to Northumberland.

The Simons own various textile, and precious gem distribution companies internationally. They also own the store we are about to enter, InterMerch. Intermerch has been been an architectural innovation when it came out. They had kept the outer facade of the Tower of London, but nearly ripped all of it's guts out, replacing it with hi-tech candy. It had been the death place of two of Henry the VIII's wives, and numerous others. The crown jewels are still housed in the top of the East turret, and Beefeaters still glamorously guard the tower. Now we were buying a dress, and the various accouterment here.

New

Foundling

The bottle crashed against the wood floor, sending shards in all directions, glinting by the firelight. Blood dripped from a cut on my palm. Red on white, this was gonna be a long night.

Grim was in the other room with Sunny, writing their way into jail, while I did the dishes. The smell of oil paints and turpentine permeated the frozen London night. There were six other people currently in an abandoned cottage that only housed two. The cold outside couldn't weave it's spindly fingers in here if it tried, the heat from the multitude of bodies... most of which engaged in many things illegal, caused the windows to sweat.

We, the people that occupy this room, these halls in this ancient building, are children of sculptors, actors, film makers, poets, novelists, and these days... outlaws. We are all orphaned, or abandoned. We are master thieves with hearts of gold, writers, actors, machinists stuck in our own minds, directors, musicians. These things are banned in the new world. These art forms that we practice we practice now in secret, by firelight. In an age of a dissolving stock market and overwhelming greed we, as well as our parents and predecessors, were forced underground decades ago. Record companies no longer exist, studios are empty skeletons, silver screen back lots hold nothing but the carcasses of old sets. We were outlawed because we were dangerous in our influence and they, the Grandee… the bank owners, the big corporation executives… were all too aware.

Somehow, were forced to make this work. Were not of legal age to be thrown out on the street yet so we live in orphanages. All of us are from St. Mary's for girls or St. Nicholas for boys respectively. We slog through our classes during the week and make our way to the English countryside by the time weekends crawl in. We scour the abandoned homes, and set up shop where we read and write and act and paint. It's our coveted bit of rebellion in this modern cold world, where we create our legacy. It is ours to bear into this world with pain and anxious, pacing wait. It ours to fuck up, it is ours to love and coddle, it is ours. It's all we have.

That morning we rushed to get dressed and be the first into the bathrooms. On most mondays we could be found scrubbing the paint from our hands while everyone else ate in the other wing.

"Isn't it sad that it would be entirely scandalous to find something as simple as paint on our hands?" Sunny complained.

"It is the way it is," I said.

Note: I want circumstances to show that she has a strong maternal sense. I want her to be sort of nonplussed by the censorship because she has her 'family' to worry about. Not because she doesn't care.

"Alright, well Im headed out, you coming?"

"I'll be there in a bit,"

I heard her heels click on the tile floor as she walked out. I perched on top the toilet in the far left stall, and avoided all responsibility for a moment. I traced the red river of a cut on my hand. It would scar no doubt, and waited. I waited for tears to come hot, and damp down my cheeks. Nothing came, just a lump in my throat that made it ache. I felt stuck, my skin crawled. I felt injustice in the way that only spoiled sixteen year olds feel injustice. I was born to a computer program developer father, and a ballerina mother that saved herself by marrying my dad. They died in the 2090 tram attack, I was seven years old and immediately sent here. Unlike the others I was raised thinking anything was possible. I was raised with art. I've played piano since I was three. I was trained classically, but often played like a maniac when everything got all pent up as it usually does, like now. It's how I got the nickname Rocker. The frustration inside of me was about to burst, I wanted to hit, and break, and crash, and slam, and inflict all manner of onomatopoeia on the new world. If I couldn't get it out, I'd go insane, so I decided I was going to sneak over to St. Nicks chapel. Where Grim would be.

The first friend I made here was Sunny (actual name). After a self imposed nietzschean silence, she was the only one I would talk to, and she led me to Grim. When we were children we would meet on the far reaches of the concrete playground, about a half mile out from the school, shrouded in the trees. The nuns would sit on benches leaned directly on the East side of the building, and rarely move. They cared little what we did as long as we were cunning enough to keep it from the head masters. And one thing Grim never lacked was cunning, in every sense of the word. Grim still looks mostly the same as he did then. Tall, lanky, shoulder length blonde hair, wide blue eyes. He always has the biggest smile on his face, and eyes that sparkle, soaking up the big world. It's how he got the name Grim you know, a sort of childhood irony. He was, and is, everything I am not. I loved him instantly.

I slid through bathroom window and out onto the side lawn. I felt a bit of guilt for Sunny who have to cover for me, but it wasn't like I hadn't done it for her plenty of times. Sunny had some neat little secrets of her own. There was a space of about half a football field in between the respective schools. The grass was emerald green, even in the earliest stages of winters strangulation. No light escaped from the sky this morning, but it was clear and crisp, and the smell of precipitation on grass this early in the morning reminded me of camp. My feet touched ground and made a satisfying, albeit terrifyingly loud, crunch. The headmasters hall was across the lawn from me, basement floor. I said a little prayer asking God to please keep any and all priests in their quarters at this time. Counterintuitive but I was sure God could see my plight. Just then I heard the squeal of an opening window. These buildings were Victorian and the windows were hard to crank open, they often warranted assistance. I'd been caught. I bolted across the lawn, my shoes slipping in the cold dew. Whoever was trailing me could run faster than I could, no small feat. I felt a hand grip my shoulder and slid into the mushy soil.

"What the hell are you doing?" Grim said.

"Coming to get you! How did you get the window open alone? I was lying in watt, I thought you were in chapel still?"

"I have what is known as brute strength. And also it was left cracked a bit. Breaking the seal is the hardest part," He said, grinning, "And you're hair is like a fire signal red,"

"And you, dear, have the hair of a precious baby girl," I said.

"You are, if you are anything, original,"

I grabbed shoulders in mock chill, "I feel quite vulnerable out in the open lawn, so risky,"

He stood up, and extended his hand, "Shall we?"

And we walked in silence to the back woods of our childhood. We swatted through overgrowth until we came to a less overgrown area.

"Still slightly uncomfortable, but cozy," he pointed out.

I nodded. We say facing each other, legs bent and intertwined.

"Know whats weird?" I said.

"Whats weird Rock?"

"Secretive places always have to make me pee. Like a good hiding spot during hide and go seek, or when you made tents out of sheets and your bed. I always have to pee as soon as I'm nicely tucked in them," I said.

"I do that too, incredibly inconvenient," He paused, "Do you have to pee right now?"

"Kind of," I said.

"Me too, but I'll be a gentlemen and suffer with you, despite my ability as a boy to pee anywhere at any given time,"

"You are the definition of chivalrous Grim,"

He smiled. A bright Grim smile that can only be expressed through literary terms as 'inexpressible in literary terms'.

"So what's the trouble Rock?"

"Same old trouble, same old frustrations. I got sob storied into using the gas money for a new dress for Sunny. Well more for the Judge than for Sunny,"

And now was one of the unique times that Grims face became dark and stoic. He looked like a mirror image of me.

"He's appalling. He's married," He started.

"He's loaded. He's higher up. He makes big promises to insecure girls. He may be a predator, but it's not always the preys fault," I said, defending Sunny.

"I never said it was, I just can't believe we lost a trip to the cottage to a judge."

Judges were second in line to Senators and they were all the grandee, oppressors of our kind. This particular judge liked to promise the world to pretty, but beggared girls, and use them for show and recreation. This is nothing new in the long line of politicians. The grandee just didn't care who saw it, wives or no.

Just then we heard the kids break onto the playground, and it was time to get to class. My heart grew heavier as we trudged toward our respective buildings. The kids barely gave us a thought. Kids don't care about flame red hair or skinny, long haired boys. My hopes and dreams were held in suspension by the thieving hands of an orphan, hands intertwined in mine.

The nutritional value of Lettuce

By the time I got into high school, I had been in the hospital a bazillion (yes, that's the exact count) times, withstood the adversity that is middle school with relative grace, and went through a lot personal obstacles. So I considered myself kind of a bad ass. I dyed my hair colors not found in nature, an activity I still practice. I listened to Rancid, The Ramones, Saves The Day, and the like religiously. I also made multiple valiant, but as yet unsuccessful, attempts at owning my older brother in skateboarding. I have zero hand-eye coordination and I don't believe I even have a center of gravity, so that was fun. I also had a bit of an eating, or lack thereof, problem. About eighth grade is when girls start eating like birds, and not like the nonchalant gluttons of their youth. I can't remember the exact day that I stopped eating full meals, I don't think eating disorders are something many people set off to do. In my recollection, it started with not drinking pop (soda for the non-midwesterners) anymore. I used to drink it like water (to this day, caffeine is my one addiction, but soda makes my stomach twist). And then it just... happened. Opened itself up from some time bomb DNA particle, and left me in the end, almost 100 lbs and scared of food.

I'd convinced myself that everything had E-coli in it. Especially if it was at a restaurant. I reread one of my old journals recently and I was freaking out about eating a Bagel Bite, ONE Bagel Bite. But, in tradition with everything else in my life, music stepped in. I can't play anything, save Mary Had A Little Lamb on the piano... and even then I get the end messed up. I've had friends crack up laughing at my trying steering wheel drumming, but I love music. New song love, can't stop playing it over and over, feeling yourself crack open somewhere that you can't pin point, true new song love... saved me. I was sitting indian style on the floor of my bedroom, candle lit, the carpet was thick with dust and hair because I didn't believe in cleaning, and "ANA's Song" was playing on the radio. The song is by Silverchair and when I heard the first few lines ...

"Please die, Ana

For as long as you're here, We're not

You make the sound of laughter

And sharpened nails seem softer

And I need you now, somehow"

I cracked open. He knew it, that kid got it, and I knew it. I started with a diet, with a need for some kind of control, and then I lost it and skidded off into that scary unplanned abyss. The thing was, no one else seemed scared at all. A lot of girls at school ate peckishly, and they seemed fine. I however couldn't eat without sitting in my room afterwards, mattress on the floor, with a terrible, anxious stomach, pacing to distract myself. I thought I was the only kid that felt this spiraling away from me until I heard that contrasting voice of Daniel Johns', all raspy, and young, and hungry, saying that he felt the pain it caused just like I did. Thats song became my partner in battle, it was freakin' Patton. It took me years to be ok with eating out, and months to stop my diet of lettuce with salt and pepper, but I did it... me and that song did it.

The coat of many kittens.

Once upon a time, there was an overweight, asthmatic 7th grader. Well, thats every 7th

grader now-days, but back in my day, that was a bit of an oddity. I went to a small school in a

small town. I was already 5'8 and towered above just about everyone except for a 6' girl named

Rachel Ledmeyer. I wore the same Eeyore hoodie ever day of my life... this should say volumes

about how awesome I was. Rachelle Tedmeyer was also a big girl, and she danced ballet, and

always showed her 'dancers calves' to anyone who'd look. And in ageless playground tradition

she got made fun of, a lot. And in ageless I-went-to-a-school-surrounded- by-cornfields-and-yet-

here-I-am-writing-a-book tradition, I too got made of, a lot. The difference between Rachelle

Tedmeyer and I was that she did not have a big mouth. It might have been because she had a

bigger brain. Various kids ranging from jocks to... All we had was jocks, and later a lot of

pregnant chicks, but now just jocks. Followed her 6' frame around the halls making Chewbaca

noises and calling her the Yeti. She wasn't that hairy and I'm pretty sure she had never been to

the Himalayas, let alone lived with indigenous wildlife in subzero temperatures, but alas, I

defended her. We had each others backs in the way that only true outcasts can, buy standing up

for one another, but never actually associating.

One day, the Yeti and I were headed off to lunch. Now, let me preface this buy asking you a

few questions 1. Have you ever been fat? 2. If you answered yes to number one, ya know that

gap in the back of your jeans when you sit down? Its not an obscene gap, but it's there. That

one? Yeah well I got pop poured down it while eating lunch with the Yeti. I was sitting there

eating what was probably pizza because it's only digestible thing we had at school, and I felt it. I

sat up and turned around to face Josh Noore, some douche bag wannabe skater, who I had

never talked to EVER for more than five minutes. He had bleached hair, and his skin was red all

over punctuating his now smiling blue eyes. I was astonished. I didn't know what to do. I think he

said something about how he was just joking, and I, crying at this point, probably spat a few

choice words out.

The Yeti walked me out of the lunchroom and into the hallway repeatedly asking if I wanted

her to go to the office with me to call my mom. I was livid and definitely not calling my mom so

she let me borrow her jacket to wrap around my waist. Which would've been really sweet and all

if she didn't (unbeknownst to me at this point) happen own a hoard of cats. Cats that I was, and

still am, severely allergic to.

I was sitting in math class when my eyes started to water and itch. Not just like oh, my eyes

are tired and itchy, like oh my God, do you have a spoon for gauging? itchy. My nose also

started to run like I myself couldn't. And then... I felt that distinct, this is a big one, breath

shortage. This wasn't a 'Oh where's my inhaler?' asthma attack. This was 'Oh is that an

ambulance?' asthma attack. I can't think of anything that triggered it. I wasn't in a dire, fight or

flight situation in the past few hours. Flight had always been the known route of handling the pop

down the pants situation. I hadn't ran into any chain smokers in the bathroom, and I hadn't had

any physical exertion in a good half hour. However, while contemplating raising my hand for

medical assistance, I looked down and saw hundreds HUNDREDS of little, tiny, cat hairs. I

suddenly found myself in math class wearing a coat of kittens, which sound awesome. It isn't. I

figured if I got the coat off I would maybe feel better. So I got up to go to the bathroom and gave

Rachel her coat back in study hall, wet pants be damned. I handed it to her and asked if she

perhaps, maybe, possibly owned a cat. She enthusiastically replied that she had 'ohmygosh,

like 12'. And a few minutes of agonizing breathlessness later, I was on the phone to mom

attempting to relay my epic story of defeat between baited breaths.