Keith pov

We spent that entire day unpacking. We arrived at the new house around 9 am and I'm surprised I was up and functioning that early. I like my sleep. I get very grumpy

In the evening the house was a mess of boxes and items scattered around. The living room furniture was all pushed to one side of the living room and all the boxes were being unloaded into the other half for collection.
When you walked in, the living room was to the left and was in a circular kind of shape. The kitchen was further up ahead across from the living room. The large staircase was set in between the two rooms but the rooms were maybe 20 feet away from each other. With a large walkway in between which lead to the stairs. I hope that makes sense?? Then there was another living room across from the kitchen. I don't know why a house needs two living rooms on the same floor.

We had almost all the windows in the house open up and 5 fans set in different areas.
"When will my car be here?" I asked Christine while helping her unload the oh so sacred dishes into the white cabinets.
"It should be here tomorrow along with the van" She said.
I do have a car. It's a 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt to be exact, royal blue. It isn't the best but it was the average kind of car high school kids have. Small, used with a few chips in the windshield, a few spots of rust and mine unfortunately has a faded "Don't mess with Texas" bumper sticker from the previous owner. It's so cheesy but I've grown to like it ironically but hey it's a car and better than nothing.
I found out me and Christine's vehicles were brought up in a trailer (bringing two vehicles from two states over is very expensive and almost as bad as the moving trucks)

It was the evening and the table, living room furniture and everything for the bedrooms and we had decided to call it quits.

I wasn't done yet.
I have minor ocd and I had to unpack my boxes. The Internet rotor (wifi rotor, just rotor???) wasn't hooked up yet so I had nothing to do other than this. I was neatly folding my clothes and putting some in my dresser and some in the closet when Christine knocked on my door. I could tell it was her because of the special knock she does whenever she's asking to come in. 4 quick taps. I chuckled and smiled. "Come in" I laughed.
"How's it going?" She asked opening the door and leaning against the frame. "Good, I can't leave my boxes just lying around because it's pissing me off" I said. "He said a bad word!" Cole yelled with a mouthful of toothpaste running down the long hallway until he reached my room. He was wearing his Pokemon pyjamas and had a toothbrush sticking out from the corner of his mouth. He then ran back.
"He's got ears like a hawk" I said.
Christine laughed and came over and sat on the edge of my bed looking at me from across the room.
"You're worried about me aren't you?" I mumbled hanging up one of my many t-shirts up in the closet. I could tell she had something to say.
"Yes I am worried. I don't want the kids at school to tease you, I know that's something you'd say to a kid Meenah's age but I am legitimately worried because of what happened last semester..."
"If I don't tell anyone nobody will find out" I said.
"That is true but I'm just afraid" She said.

Last semester I told a girl who I considered a friend about my sexuality and she told everyone she knew and soon enough it spread like wildfire and I was harassed constantly for months on end.
This was Texas and many people are horribly homophobic and religious.
I like boys and that's okay. But then a few weeks of the harassing, Christine got a call from the principal. Some asshole had taped a pamphlet about "The danger of AIDS" On my locker.
I was a pussy and told the principal.
The guy was never caught.
The news died down and I had lost all of the friends remotely close to me. Thankfully I didn't have too many. They were mostly acquaintances I met in my classes. I never opened up to them much about anything really. Sure I had a few common interests with them but I never told them anything.
They didn't even know I was foster kid. Most people would be depressed but I kept my head up and pulled through another semester. It was pretty hard I'll say that.
Anyone would feel depressed if people would whisper about you and give you dirty looks in the halls, refusing to sit next to you or even work with you in projects. I became the virus of the school that nobody wanted to go near. It was like I had some really contagious disease like aura around me constantly, and people would keep away in fear of whatever the oh so terrible consequences that could occur if you were to even make eye contact with the little gay boy.
I'd taught myself to be my own best friend and that I didn't need friends to be happy. I have never taken anything for granted and I've appreciated every little thing someone would do for me. That's why I'm so happy to be with my family.
Things could be so much worse and I'm the luckiest guy in the world to have my family treat me like an actual person and not a virus.
I learned lots about myself that semester from all the time I spent alone.
I discovered parts about myself and my past I never knew. My third or fourth set of foster parents told me bits of my past.
I learned much more from Dane. Christine couldn't bring herself to talk to me about anything remotely related to my past and that's why she got Dane to do it. She was crying and holding my hand as he told me every little detail.
My history.
Oh man now this is a wild ride.
I'm not going to get into everything because it's not something I enjoy talking or even thinking about.
So this is going to be an attempt at making a very, very long story short.

When I was born my biological mother instantly did not want me. She just simply wanted a girl. She wanted the gender to be a surprise and a surprise was what she got.
She did heroine a few times when she was pregnant with me. All I can think of is how Courtney Love did that too.
My mother was abused by her father (my grandpa) was a drunk and was typical wife beater portrayed in movies. She had a rough life growing up but she was small and tough just like me.

My father on the other hand truly wanted a son, he wanted me and I was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
This was written in a journal of his.
That's one of the things that has clung to me for years.
My father throughout his life was not in the best mental state. He had bipolar disorder and depression.
Maybe that's why he did what he did.

My parents were high school sweethearts and got married when they were both 18 and had me just two years later.
My mother was a drug addict and a runaway in her teenage years.
I do not remember her at all. I only have a few photos of her but my favourite one with the most meaning is of the three of us the day I was brought home from the hospital. They got our neighbours to take it.
They looked so happy.
The picture is a Polaroid. I've kept it with me for as long as I can remember. There is a few pictures I have of her and my dad. She was a rocker kinda girl and I admire that.
She had a taste for rebellion and the rock and roll lifestyle.
It hurts to know what they went through after I was born.
It's my fault they're dead.
Everything was my fault.
My mother accidentally overdosed on heroine in the bathroom with me laying on the floor in the next room crying my eyes out when I was only a few months old.
How do you accidentally overdose on heroine? She was not in the right mind set and did not want to die but took more than she knew her own frail and sick body could handle.
She almost died while giving birth to me and that's maybe another reason why she hated me.
When my dad got home from work that day he found my mother long dead on the cold tile floor and me in the next room with big swollen eyes from crying for hours on end.
Obviously my father did not know what to do with his life after that point. His wife was dead, he had his newborn son to take care of at only age 20.
He couldn't handle it.
He was selfish.
Just like me.
I know much more about my father as I have his journal. He wrote everything in the tattered leather bound thing.
I got 90% of my traits from my dad. I barely remember him.
He moved out of Austin where we lived and literally built a fucking shack of a house on a small plot of land.
Sure there we had neighbours from what I was told later on but our houses were spread apart.
He was in the middle of a crisis.
He wanted a small place to raise his son and teach him how life works and that shit.
He wanted the best for me and in his opinion "the best" was a life without him. He knew he would hurt me and not mean it. So maybe he made the decision.
My father killed himself, not long after my mother.
I was found by neighbours in the small house clinging to life after 5 days of being by myself with my dead father in the living room.
They had noticed my father had not been outside working in the back garden or playing with me like he usually did. For days they noticed this but yet his car was still in the driveway. They knew something was up.
I was in my crib, starving and suffering from mild heat stroke from being stuck in the tiny house. 5 days of not eating could kill a baby but somehow I miraculously survived.
My grandparents on my moms side refused to take me because they kicked my mother out when she was 16 because of her life choices. They were not legally obligated to take me because they wanted no part in her life.
My father had no contact with his parents since he got married and had me.
It's like they died almost.
They hated my mother and they didn't even attend his wedding. It's almost like they dropped off the face of the earth. Nobody could get any information about them.
Not a single word.
Sounds like a tragic love story but it was my reality.

The neighbours instantly took me too a hospital. They found out about my mothers death and the grandparents situation. I was put into foster care and I was a goddamn terrible kid.
I grew up picking fights with other kids over anything.
I'd punch or kick other kids if they got in my way.
I was sent to so many foster families.
I lost count after 12 by the time I was 8.
Sounds like I'm exaggerating but I'm truly not.
I have a piece of paper with all of the families I've been with.
Nobody wanted an angry kid who attacked anything that moved.
Yup I was that bad.
People who think they could turn my behaviour around all failed miserably. All of this is so vague and boring but I honestly can't remember the details. I shut most of them out.
That's when Christine and Dane found me. I was 13 or 14 I think. They were drawn to me.
I did not have emotions.
All I felt was pain, sadness and anger. It's all I had ever felt.
Ever since I found out happened to my parents I decided to instantly hate them for being so selfish, especially my father.
I have all of his traits so I'm just like him.
I want to run from my past but I can't.
Christine and Dane taught me everything valuable, the things I was never taught.
Me and Christine have a special bond. She's the one who would hold me when I would get night terrors and when I would wake up from sleep paralysis in the middle of the night and wake up screaming in terror.
That's a really dark thing for a kid to go through.
Like I've said, Christine gave me the maternal protection I never got growing up.
I changed.
They have taught me such important lessons and what to value the most in life.
Now I am here.