"Get your lazy ass up brat!" my foster mother Gwen yells at me and slams my door shut. Ugh, I so don't want to get up I think to myself. I sit up in my bed, a single size mattress that sits on the floor of my room in the attic of my current foster home. In the four years since the accident, I have been in 8 foster homes. Pathetic, really. To say my life has been a fucking cluster fuck is an understatement. I use to be this bright and cheery person, now I am just a shell of my former self. I get up out of bed and stretch my tired limbs up in the air to get out some of the kinks I have from laying on that sad excuse of a mattress. One more year, I think to myself, one more year till I am out of this hellhole. Some of the foster families I spent my time with weren't all bad but they just weren't my family.
I think back to that day when I was rescued from the car wreck. After I had blacked out, I woke up in a hospital bed, clean, white and sterile, connected to a bunch of wire. When I opened my eyes, I was a little confused until the memory of the accident came to the forefront of my mind, and I started to have a panic attack. My heart monitor started going crazy and a nurse and doctor came rushing in to calm me down. My doctor was nice. He asked me a bunch of questions, how are you feeling? What do you remember? Do you know where you are? etc.... After checking my vitals, he explained that I had a concussion, a fractured collarbone and a broken arm, which was wrapped in a plain, white cast. He said he would check on me a little bit and left. Two police officers came in after that to ask me a few questions and to give me the bad news, but I already knew what they were going to say, " I am very sorry ma'am but your mother, father and sister didn't make it." It didn't hurt any less but still tears came strolling down my face. I just felt numb, empty, broken. The next few days was a blur of action, doctors, nurses, child services, counselors, the works. After about 4 days in the hospital, I was taken to a foster family with just 2 suitcases and a duffel bag with all my worldly possessions. The Petersons' were probably the most normal of all my fosters, but couldn't really handle a teen with severe depression, plus they had 3 other kids to look after. They tried to help but when I started lashing out, angry at the world and everyone in it for taking my family from me, they just couldn't handle me anymore and gave me back to find a home more suited for my type of teen. After that, I changed foster homes every few months. After awhile, I calmed down and have been numb, never speaking to anyone,kept to myself. I've been with my current foster family for over a year, and it is the worst place they could have put me, ever. Unfortunately, my worker is overloaded with cases, that mine has been on the bottom of the pile. My foster father, Tom is a drunk. He hates me, no, loathes my very existence. In his mind, I needed to be taught a lesson for my rude behavior on a constant bases, even when I didn't do anything wrong. He always made sure to hit where the bruises didn't show, threatening to kill me if I ever told anyone. The violence gets worse everyday. Gwen, his wife, is just as much as a piece of shit as her husband, constantly yelling at me, telling me how lazy, ugly, stupid whore I was and if she could she would toss me on the street like the trash she thinks I am.
"I told you to hurry up and get going to school you little bitch. You better not be late today or I will blister your ass so hard, you won't be able to sit down for a week." Gwen's yelling pulls me out of my head. I sigh, gather my second hand T-shirt and ripped jeans out of my little dresser in the corner and get dressed. I go to the bathroom to brush my teeth and pull my hair up in a messy bun. I gaze at myself in the mirror, my dull, brown hair lays limply on my head, my blue eyes which use to be bright, now are lifeless with dark circles under them from lack of sleep. My skin is pale, my body too thin since the only time I am allowed to eat is when I am at school. "Well Karlie, first day of senior year, 9 months till graduation. I just have to make it till then." With a sigh, I step out of the bathroom grab my tattered bookbag, and quietly exit the house, and make my 3 mile walk to school.