This is a new story I’ve been working on. It’s set during the nineteenth century. Hope you like it!

———————————————————————————————————————
I woke up again to find myself in the same old orphanage I’d been living in for the past eleven years of my life. My back was sore from the hard mattress I’d slept on during the night, and it took all of my will to get myself out of bed. It wasn’t as if I had a choice, otherwise I could’ve gotten beaten by Ms. Aker.

Ms. Aker was the lady who ran the orphanage. She was short, thin, and as worn out as a cloth. Her hair was always tied up in a tight bun that stretched her eyes out even further, and she always had this deathly scowl on her face, as if her life was bitter and she was forced to watch over us orphans. She was forced to watch over us, but her life wasn’t as bitter as ours. For one thing she had family (although I’m surprised they’re still alive); I’d seen them visit before. They were all as bitter as she was—apart from Fernanda. Fernanda was one of Ms. Aker’s distant cousins, and they were nothing alike. She was plump, round and kind, and always had her hair down and topped it with brightly colored hats to match her dresses. Fernanda would sometimes sneak a biscuit to a lucky orphan, whom she seemed to pity more than the rest. We all hated the pity, but if it got us food that hadn’t gone bad or wasn’t stale, we accepted it gladly.

I walked over to the small cupboard beside my bed. Everyone here at the orphanage kept their most prized possessions or memories from before the orphanage, but I didn’t. I didn’t have any. I wasn’t left by my parents at the orphanage saying that they’d come back for me one day, leaving me with false hope. No, I was brought by the fire department when I was four because both of my parents had died in a fire. Tragic, really, but I feel no emotion when I think back on it. I was too young to remember my parents, so I didn’t feel any emotion when I thought back on them.

I pulled out a small biscuit I stole from the kitchen. I nibbled on it ever so slightly, and then placed it back in the cupboard. I needed to make it last. The food here wasn’t so great, but we all understood why. No matter how great of a town Cheshire was, orphanages didn’t get much sympathy when it came to economic terms. Nobody really had the money for grand feasts that were heard of in fairytales, so they weren’t told as often. They would just make a person’s mouth water.

I dressed myself in the thin white petticoat and dark grey dress that every girl wore in the orphanage. The dresses were all the same because Ms. Aker said we were all supposed to be equals and nobody should have a better dress than the other, but we all know that there’s hierarchy amongst the children of the orphanage, and that even Ms. Aker had her favorites – and I was not one of them.

I stepped out of the small nursery (if that’s what you’d like to call it. It was more of a large dorm with only beds and cupboards) and went down the old stairs and into the dining hall. I sat in one of the seats that were placed by the long wooden table and ate my lumpy porridge in silence. Every other person talked amongst themselves, about how they dreaded having to work after going to school. I never complain about these things, though. I consider myself to be lucky to get some sort of education, and cleaning around the orphanage isn’t as hard. There are children who have to work in coal mines or sweep chimneys to survive, and they don’t even get paid that much for it. We don’t get paid at all for our service, but having a warm place to sleep is enough for me.

“I heard she was looking to adopt a child”, I heard the girl next to me whisper loudly.

“She’s probably just another of Ms. Aker’s snotty relatives”, the girl on the other side of me said.

“She didn’t look like Ms. Aker at all”, someone else whispered.

“Fernanda isn’t like Ms. Aker either, but she’s related to her.”

When people visited the orphanage, it always put the children’s hopes at a high level. Often, they were people who used to come to the orphanage, and they wanted to see how much things had changed (although I can’t possibly understand how they would want to come back) and rarely someone was actually adopted. Every family had enough children and didn’t want more.

Ms. Aker entered the dining room and everybody stood up. She collected all of our plates and placed them in the sink, where the person who was on kitchen duty would have to clean them later.
Instead of sending us to the nursery to get our things for school, she told us to line up against the wall in the study room. We all did as we were told.

When we entered the study room we were all surprised to see a woman sitting in the rocking chair beside the fireplace. She was tall and lean, her dark purple dress showing off her perfect figure. Her auburn hair was hidden behind a pink bonnet and her eyes studied us through her glasses. She continued to study us as we lined up against the wall and only drew her eyes away when Ms. Aker entered the room.

She asked us questions one by one, about our interests and what we all wanted to be when we grew up. The younger girls often answered that they wanted to be princesses, and the older girls said that they wanted to be famous actresses and perform in the most important theaters of the world.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”, she asked when she came up to me.

“If I could learn and practice more things, I would set my heart on being something more than what I am now. But since I can’t, I want to be able to.” I replied. She and the other girls looked at me with a look of surprise plastered on their faces. Nobody ever answered this question with an answer like this, but why should I live up to their expectations? The woman just simply nodded and carried on with the girl who was beside me.

After everyone had gone through the interview, Ms. Aker and the lady went into the office. We all just stood there, not knowing what to do. Ms. Aker ran this place as if it were a military base; we did what we were told or we didn’t do anything at all. About fifteen minutes later, Ms. Aker came back into the room, but without the lady.

“Brooke, pack your things.’ She said in her usual fierce voice.

“May I ask why?” I asked. Did I do something wrong? Had I made her orphanage seem like a cruel place for children to stay in?

“You’re being adopted.” She replied.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
So, what do you think? I’m sorry if it’s a bit depressing, but everything get’s happier soon!

Copyright © 2014 guasoni.net