Enjoy:
Chapter Sixteen
Three Little Packets
I entered the van with a smile. I had finally told someone Carl did it. It wasn’t like when Kristie and Anya found out. My two newest friends found out my deepest secret without me wanting them to, and I truly wanted to tell Peter. I felt wonderful, like I was on top of the world… like any obstacle that came to me, I could overcome… and then they started asking questions.
“Who was that young man Isabelle?” Elizabeth asked.
“He was cute, even when he was mad, can I get his number?” one voice from behind me asked.
“So, you the whore of your high school or somethin’?” asked another.
“Isabelle, who was that?” Kristie asked. The small white van was roaring with questions about who Peter was and how I knew him. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Shut up!” I yelled to everyone. The van went silent. “Elizabeth,” I politely said, “that young man was my friend from school, Peter. Kristie, yes he was my boyfriend. And to whoever called me a whore, no I was not the whore of my high school, just things didn’t go as planned for me.”
“It didn’t go as planned for any of us, not just you,” Rochelle mumbled. The rest of the van murmured agreements.
“He’s not the father of your child?” Elizabeth asked.
“No, Elizabeth, Peter would never do that.”
“Then who was it?” Rochelle asked. I grew silent and my cheeks turned red.
“Hey, Rochelle, what is this? Twenty Questions?” Anya asked. Rochelle made a confused face. “Then shut up.”
I smiled in thanks to Anya and watched the snow covered trees pass by. It was January and Venetta was still covered in snow. I counted on my fingers the months I had been in the shelter. Five months. I had been pregnant for five months? Time is elusive sometimes. It travels so slowly and yet so quickly at the same time. In four short months, my baby would be in the world, with another family to love and care for her. I couldn’t wrap my mind around that concept. A beautiful, blushing, baby girl would be introduced to the world in four months. In four months I would lose her. I rested my hands on my stomach, trying to hug her through my skin, whispering over and over in my head “I love you, I love you.”
“So, Elizabeth, what’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” Kristie asked. I looked at the back of Elizabeth’s head, waiting for the answer, still clutching my stomach.
“The only one who has anything scheduled is Isabelle,” Elizabeth replied in her soft voice.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“The men and women of the board at the Shelter have chosen three candidates to adopt your baby, and this is your chance to meet with them and choose who you want to adopt your little girl.”
“Oh,” I breathed. “So soon?”
“Yes, dear, adoption is a lengthy process.” I slightly nodded my head, and looked out the window again. “Isabelle, when we get back to the shelter, go to the main office to pick up some papers on the three candidates we have chosen for you.”
The adoption process at the shelter was mainly controlled by the administration. They went through the applications and chose the three best candidates for the mother to choose from. I didn’t want to go through a bunch of people begging for a kid and having to reject them. The way the shelter handled the process was okay with me.
When I got to the main office, the woman with gaudy makeup that greeted me the first day I got here handed me some papers in a manila folder. Without as much as an explanation, she ushered me from the office so she could answer the phone. I waddled back to my room with the folder in my hand. It felt as if I was holding the whole world between my fingertips. Which in a sense, I was. I was deciding the whole way my baby’s life would turn out. But then, what could a piece of paper tell me about the potential parents. They could say that they’re excellent people, that they would never hurt a child and that they have a six figure salary, but it’s just a piece of paper. I had to decide the whole life of my child from one meeting and a piece of paper.
I opened the folder there were three packets of paper. Each included a colored photo of a couple with a story of their married life, then black and white photos of each of the potential parents with a biography of their lives. At the back of the packet was a list of their financial means, place of residence and hopes for their potential new child. With a heavy sigh, I sat down on my bed and chose the first packet.
Paper clipped to the front page was a photo of two middle aged people who called themselves Maura and Geoffrey Smith. They were under an ark of white roses, she was wearing a long wedding dress and he was in a black tuxedo. The date in the corner of the photograph said the picture was taken four years ago. I unclipped the picture and stared at the first page. The answers to the questions were written in elegant cursive. The couple had just recently moved to Venetta, only around a year ago, and was looking for a child. They had tried for the whole duration of their marriage to conceive a baby, but were unsuccessful. They decided to consider adoption two months before I became pregnant. I flipped to the next page.
Maura Alice Smith was forty three years old. She had a doctorate in psychology and was the head psychiatrist for a nearby mental hospital. She has no diseases or conditions, and says she doesn’t smoke. She only drinks Champaign at special occasions. She’s a smart, safe woman. She seemed like a great option on paper. She’s smart, a good influence, and definitely had the financial means to take care of my baby girl. But she was a psychiatrist. Did I really want my kid to be psychoanalyzed everyday by a woman who believed she knew all there is to know about the workings of a teenager’s mind? With another great sigh, I turned to Geoffrey’s page.
He was a lawyer, a smart man of the law, who posed for his picture while he was behind a desk pretending to work. His head was bent down over a stack of papers, revealing a shiny bald spot at the crown of his head. I looked down at his age, he was forty four. I dropped the papers and added sixteen to each of their ages. Geoffrey would be sixty when my girl was sixteen, Maura would be fifty nine. I immediately pushed their papers aside; I didn’t want my baby to have older parents who could possibly die from old age at her senior prom.
The second packet was written in big printed letters in a thick black felt-tipped pen. The i’s weren’t dotted but the t’s were crossed. The two people’s names were Kira and Adam Davison. Their photograph was of the two people sitting on a large, red flannel blanket. The woman’s head was resting on the man’s shoulder and his arm was protectively wrapped around her. They had been married for three years, and had been trying to adopt for the whole length of their married life. They had lived in Venetta their whole lives, and were high school sweethearts.
The second page of their packet was of Adam. He was wearing thin wire-framed glasses and had an old camera hanging from his neck. He was an independent photographer for the biggest paper in the state and earned a pretty hefty salary for a photographer. He was thirty years old. He had never been arrested, and went to RISD art school in Rhode Island.
Kira’s photo was black and white. She had a daffodil in her hair and a soft smile on her lips. She’s a second grade teacher at the local public school, the same one I went to. My girl would get a good education from her adoptive mother, and get an arts education from her adoptive father. She was twenty nine. They were the perfect age for my baby. They lived in a small house in the center of town with a backyard for my girl to play in. I carefully placed the pictures back into the packet and placed it to my side with a smile.
The last packet had a huge, ten by eleven portrait of the two lovebirds looking very stern in business suits. I looked at the man’s face and immediately recognized him. He was my dad’s secretary at work, Mr. Henderson. Without looking at Mr. and Mrs. Henderson’s information I placed the packet back in the folder.
I walked to the Rec Room, trying not to think of the fact that I would see Mr. Henderson tomorrow. I instead thought of names for my baby and whether I wanted an open or closed adoption. Both of the candidates were offering an open adoption, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to accept. I don’t think I would be able to see my little girl on holidays or even in a picture every year, and be able to cope with the fact that she was calling another woman “mommy” with me right there. It should be a closed adoption, I decided. Cut it off like a band-aid… maybe cut it off like the umbilical cord? I thought with a smirk.
I decided I would call her Adrian. Even if the parents didn’t want me to name her. She would always be my little Adrian. A cute little cherubic baby, that’s how I would remember her forever.
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Thanks for reading! Critiques are always appreciated!
~Dommy
You also really know how to write cliffhangers... every single one kept me going on to the next one. Like jessie said, you might want to go back and revise the times and months your story takes place in, but i understand your backtracking. I had to do that to one of my stories, too. Your story is super awesome and you should write the next one... PM when you do!!! 
Though there are a few errors and typos, they are pretty seldom and the whole thing is so engaging that it more than makes up for them.
