Page 42 of Dollhouse

“I told you not to come back. You never did know how to listen,” he says with a small but pained grin.

Instantly, memories of the first time we met flood my mind.

* * *

“This will be your room,sweetie. Go ahead and unpack your bags, then wash up and come downstairs for lunch,” the woman said with a smile, giving me a tight hug. I waited until she left my new bedroom before I sat down on the bed beside my suitcase and let out a sigh. I pulled out my notebook from my backpack and wrote her name down.

Andrea—foster mother number four.

This was my fourth foster home in two years.

My dad decided to decorate the walls of our tiny apartment with his brains right in front of me, and since then, I’ve been in foster care.

Andrea seemed to be nicer than all the others. I hoped that she would always be nice and willing to keep me.

I was ten now, and the older I got, the more I become unwanted. No one wanted to adopt older kids. Everyone wanted babies.

I was sitting on my new bed when the door creaked open, and a green-eyed boy entered. He looked older than me, but his eyes were kind and I thought we could become friends. It would be nice to have a friend for a change. I was never at the other homes long enough to have a friend, neither were the other kids.

“Hi, I’m Rowen. How old are you?” he said with a smile as he walked further into my room. “You’re new here?” I nodded.

“I’m Lee and I’m ten. How long have you lived here?” He didn’t look like Andrea, so I assumed she wasn’t his real mother, and he, too, must be a foster kid like me.

He sat down on the floor in front of me. “Two weeks. There are no other kids, it’s just us here. I’m thirteen, but I guess we could be friends.”

“What does it matter how old I am?”

“Because I don’t want a baby as a friend,” he deadpanned.

I rolled my eyes. “Well, you didn’t have a friend at all before me. So, you’re welcome,” I said, crossing my arms across my chest.

He laughed and pulled out a granola bar from his pocket and opened it, breaking it in half and holding half out toward me.

“Make sure that you sneak some food at dinner for later. We only get one meal a day, so take what you can get. This house is hell, but I’ll protect you.”His honest words sent shivers down my spine.

Andrea seemed nice enough, but I knew by now that looks could be deceiving. My other foster parents seemed nice too, and then they became mean.

My mom looked nice when she was alive, but drugs made her mean. My daddy was nice too, until mom died.

I missed my parents. They had problems, but they wanted me sometimes. Isn’t being wanted sometimes better than never being wanted?

Looking into Rowen’s kind but rare green eyes, I knew he was telling the truth.

Rowen would protect me, and he’d be my very first friend.

* * *

Tears rollfreely down my cheeks. Rowen catches them with the pads of his thumbs as he cups my face in his hands. “Why did you come back here, Lee?”

“Don’t call me that. Lee’s dead,” I whisper. He nods weakly in understanding.

His question is valid. I, too, had questioned it myself many times over the last few months why I came here instead of running anywhere else.

I grew up in this city, and there’s nothing good to remember here.

Thirteen years ago, I witnessed Rowen commit his first murder, and I promised him I’d run and never return to this city.

I’d run away from the hell, only to plunge deeper when I met Sebastian. I escaped his dollhouse of hell, and here I am again.

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