Romance Fan Fiction / Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ The way It would Have Been ❯ chapter 2 ( Chapter 2 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

I’d grown up my whole life with only my Aunt and cousin. I’d never met my mother or my father, or any of my brothers or sisters, and according to my Aunt, I had many. I didn’t understand why I didn’t live with my family while the rest of my siblings did. It was unfair. I didn’t understand why I had left the city, and maybe I shouldn’t have bugged my Aunt endlessly until she got a hold of my mom and sent me back to the place that had been the reason I lived with my Aunt in the first place.
I fit in finely at my school. It was a public school, and a very nice one at that. Everyone in school loved me and loved to be around me. They hated it when I was absent or late for school, but what would happen if I left in the middle of the day and never came back or stayed in contact with them?
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should go back to the beginning and explain things.
……………………… ………........
I felt out of place when I was a child because my cousin, Tracy, always called Aunt Josie mom, but I had to call her Aunt Josie. It wasn’t until I was about three and I started watching TV that I noticed something was wrong.
Almost all the kids on the shows I watched had parents and lived with a loving family. I had always had the loving family, but I wanted to know what it was like to be loved from your parents. I felt rejected after Aunt Josie explained to me that my mother had sent my across the country from the day I was born because it wasn’t safe for me there.
How could it not be safe? If it was safe enough for all my other brothers and sisters, how could it not be safe for me? Instead of taking the time to worry about all of this, I just focused on other things and put it out of my mind for a while.
It was when I turned thirteen when I started asking questions. All of my friends had parents, but I didn’t and I felt funny saying I didn’t even know mine. It was as if I was adopted, but I wasn’t. I was temporarily detached from my family.
I’d sit in class and feel on top of the world, like none of my troubles existed at all. All the teachers looked at me with pride and all of my friends with admiration.
“So, Diane, did you hear about Manny and her brother?” Stephanie Ranolds, one of my best friends, asked me that day at lunch.
“Yah, her brother was stealing stuff from stores and Manny sold it at school. The principal caught her and both of them were put in juvenile detention for it.” I answered proudly.
“Didn’t you try to stop her so she wouldn’t get in trouble?” Jane Daniels, just some girl that always sat with me at lunch, grinned at me like I were some pop star.
“Yes, I did, but she didn’t listen to me.” I sighed and stood and waved at the group of boys who were all staring at me at the next table as the bell rang to end the lunch period.
Everybody always wanted my attention, and it was tiring. It wasn’t my fault I was pretty, and I was happy I was, but I was also tired of everyone drooling over me. Sometimes I enjoyed waving at a group of guys and then listening to them argue about whom I waved to in particular.
Stephanie and I walked down the hall together, with Jane and some other girls following behind us.
Stephanie was a little taller than me. She looked like a super model with full lips and long, wavy blond hair that fell almost to her waist. She had a perfect complexion and dark blue eyes.
I was hardly five foot six. I also had long wavy hair, but mine barely went halfway down my back and was a light brown. My eyes were green and as Aunt Josie calls them, hypnotic. According to everyone, I wasn’t just supermodel pretty, I was drop dead gorgeous.
Stephanie and I laughed at almost nothing the whole way down the hall to our next class. When we were walking past the administration office, someone called my name.
I turned and saw Aunt Josie retreating from the main office. She had a look on her face that suggested I come over to her, but also suggested that something was slightly wrong.
“I have to go, Stephanie. I’ll be here tomorrow if I’m not staying.” I hugged her and waved and headed over to my Aunt.
“Yes? What is it?” I asked her.
“Go and get your things you’re going home.” She said in a tone that made me turn and hurry up to the third floor to grab my things. I left only the schoolbooks at the bottom for the strangest reason.
“Come on,” She pulled me off of the schoolyard and into her car.
“Aunt Josie, where are we going?” I wondered. It wasn’t like her to pull me out of school in the middle of the day.
She didn’t answer me until we got to her house. “There are a bunch of boxes in your room. Go and pack them up with as much stuff as possible.” She ordered.
I did as she said and packed most of my stuff into the ten huge boxes that were on my bed. I put everything else into my two duffel bags.
Aunt Josie came into the room and helped me carry all my boxes out to her car.
All the while, I wondered what was going on. Why did I have to pack up all my things? I didn’t get anytime to stop and before I knew it, I was being driven to the airport.
Someone came up to our car and placed all of my stuff onto a cart and wheeled it off.
“Come with me,” Aunt Josie pulled me through the airport and stopped us in front of a private gate, for private jets and stuff.
“Just go through there and someone will give you further instructions.” She looked into my eyes, her own full of tears, “I’m going to miss you Diane.”
What did she mean? I stared at her, dumbstruck.
“Diane, I talked with your mother this morning. You’re going to live with her and you’re family.”
The whole situation rushed at me all at once. I was never going to be able to see Stephanie again or attend my school, or maybe never even see real snow, because I knew I wasn’t flying anywhere in Michigan. I was going to someplace that seemed better, but deep down, actually wasn’t.