by:

Cassidy's life has been lonely and full of heartache. Abandoned as an infant, bounced from foster home to foster home. He's never found a place where he's belonged. Then one summer as his life starts to turn around, something happens that changes everything...

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Author's Note I did say in a blog last week that something new was coming. I'm sad to say this is not the continuation of A Starlight Summer that I'm sure some people wanted nor is this a sequel to Hello. This is a new story, something quick and light for the summer. I'm actually not sure how long its going to be but I'm currently writing Ch.5. I actually started developing the idea of this story months ago but kept putting it off for one reason or another. I have a pretty good idea where I want to take so I hope everyone enjoys the journey. Once again I'd like to thank Nyssa for taking on the job of Editor once again :) PS: This story is NOT realistic in the least, set in a world alternate to ours and NOT connected to ANY of my other stories in ANY way.

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1.

It was raining. I should have been scared of the rain, but I wasn’t. There was something tranquil about it. I liked to sit in my room like now, staring out the window at it. It was coming down pretty hard today. My little room overlooked the parking lot, but it was hard to see the cars today. That didn’t stop me from staring though. It was a good time to think too. To think about where it all seemed to go wrong.

It was the water.

It was ALWAYS the water.

I can’t remember the first time I was in the water. I’m sure it was when I was a baby, probably during some swim school or some such nonsense. Trying to remember that was just as hard though. Like the faces of my parents. It was all just one blur. That’s how memories were sometimes. My first true memory of the water was when I was about five. My foster parents had this little kiddie pool in the backyard. It wasn’t very deep, but I almost drowned. It was Jimmy’s fault. He was my older foster brother. He liked to roughhouse a lot. He took pleasure in pushing me around. No one was around, but I was certain he was the one who pushed my head under water. He was also the one who held it there.

I left that place after that.

There were other times though.

Other incidents.

None of them ever ended the right way.

I learned early on it was just easier to stay away from it. As long as I didn’t go near the water then it couldn’t hurt me. Everything was fine until elementary school ended. In middle school, PE class changed. There were locker rooms and showers. Bathing never bothered me though. I could take a shower easy. It was the same for the rain. Getting into a bath was a problem though. Pools were a big problem. There was something about a pool of water that terrified me. The idea of not having ground under my feet was a scary thought. The idea of putting my head under was even more terrifying. I’d like to blame Jimmy but I know it wasn’t him. I was scared to go into that pool long before he dunked me.

It was called aquaphobia.

The fear of water.

Well, more specifically, the fear of harm in water.

After Jimmy nearly drowned me and I left that foster family, I ended back with the State. Scared and not sure what to do, my Case Worker sent me to a shrink. He diagnosed me fairly quickly. He was certain it was the near death by drowning that caused me such trauma. I’d like to say that’s what caused my fear but I’m not honestly sure. I think it was always there. I know I couldn’t remember it but there was something about the water that unsettled me. Every time I looked at it, I felt abandoned. I tried to explain that to a shrink but they kept chalking it up to deflection. There were a lot of shrinks over the years. Each one always had the same theory. I was afraid about drowning again so I kept coming up with excuses to stay out of the water.

They tried to help me.

They tried exposure therapy first. Many of them were convinced that if they exposed me to water that I might be able to conquer my fear of it. Little by little they introduced me to it. They started small with things like glasses and buckets, then kept moving up. The smaller things didn’t bother me. It was when they brought me to a tub full of water. I would freeze up and start to tremble. I started to sweat and couldn’t breathe. A few times I even passed out. After that, I was usually moved on to a new shrink. Then they’d try it all over again. It was a vicious never-ending cycle.

It wasn’t the only thing they tried though.

Their second favorite thing was cognitive therapy. The power of thought. If I challenged my mind to conquer the water then I’d succeed. At least that’s how it was supposed to work. I guess my fear was stronger than my rational thought. That didn’t stop them from trying though. Just like with the exposure therapy, most of the shrinks kept pressuring me with it. They were convinced I wasn’t trying hard enough. It was all pretty damn stupid.

In the end, I stopped going to shrinks altogether.

I was thirteen when the foster homes stopped too.

They were always happy to get me at first. They were nice enough people, but the water thing always beat them. In the end, I think the State stopped trying. It was just as well. I didn’t mind the group homes much. I’d been in a few. They were all pretty much the same. Some of them even let me have my own private room. I was bounced around them a lot though. Over the last three years, I think I’d been in at least six. Now that I was sixteen, I always got my own room. There were very few kids my age and none of them older. In two years, I’d be an adult in the eyes of the State. I’d be able to leave and start my life on my own.

Not that that was any different than usual.

I was always alone.

I was used to it now.

A gentle knock on my door broke me from my thoughts. I didn’t turn away from the window though.

I didn’t have to because I knew who was there.

A second later, I heard the door open and someone step inside. It was Mrs. Price, my current caseworker. She was a nice lady, but she wore too much perfume. I smelled her before she got to the door. It was like the woman bathed in it. Like a little blue-haired lady but I knew she was only in her thirties.

“Cassidy, are you all right?”

I sighed.

I never knew my parents. I’m told they dropped me off on the steps of a church when I was a baby. I was wrapped in a blanket and had nothing else. Except a note. It was a simple note. It told the nuns to take care of their precious child, Cassidy, and let him grow to be a fine, strong boy. Of course, whoever brought me into this world had a sick sense of humor because they spelled my name wrong, they wrote, “Cassidae”. I looked it up years later, it was actually the name of a snail. More specifically, it was the family name for the large helmet or bonnet snail. The irony was not lost on me. My parents named their son after a water creature.

Of course, the nuns thought it was a misspelling too because they called me Cassidy. They gave me the last name of Parker, it was the name of the street. I never really liked either name, to be honest. So I gave myself a new name when I was ten. It stopped the other kids from picking on me so much.

“Bo,” I said with a bit of annoyance. “My name is Bo.”

Hey, it sounded cool at the time.

Bo Parker definitely sounded a lot better than Cassidy that’s for sure.

When kids asked me about it, I told them it was my middle name. They never questioned it. The only ones whoever called me Cassidy these days were my teachers and of course my various social workers.

Mrs. Price being the current one.

Her heels clicked as she walked further into the room. I turned and smiled at her. Mrs. Price was a woman that took good care of herself. It was clear that she ate healthily and exercised regularly. I overheard her once talking to another social worker about how she and her husband ran a mile every morning. Though she always dressed in a professional pants suit, I could definitely see that she had a toned figure underneath. I’d overheard other things about her too. Mainly boys younger than me fantasizing about her, wanting to do things to her that I would never repeat.

“Cassidy,” she said, emphasizing my real name. “I have some great news. There’s someone here who’d like to meet you.”

I sighed.

Here we go again.

I gave up on foster homes a long time ago. I’d been in quite a few over the years, none of them lasting more than a few months at a time. My longest had been when I was ten. They were called the Mitchells. They had a daughter Tori who was a year younger than me. I was with them for over a year. Everyone thought for sure that it would stick. My case worker at the time was Mrs. Glenn, an older woman who didn’t smile much. She was nice enough in her own right I suppose. She’d placed Tori with them a few years before. The Mitchells adopted her a year before I arrived. They were nice people. They lived in a large brick house with a white picket fence and had a great big pool in their backyard.

That’s where it happened.

It was all innocent enough at first. I’d been avoiding the pool most of that summer. The Mitchells were well aware of my fear of water. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop a group of neighbor boys. They weren’t cruel by any means but they were insistent. They wanted to use our pool. I knew them from school but I wasn’t really friends with them. The kid in charge of the group was named Tommy. He was a bit on the pushy side. His parents were rich so he always got his way. Well, one thing led to another and all of us were sitting around the pool deck. It was the closest to the water that my phobia would allow. The other boys jumped right in though. Tommy lingered back with me, trying to coax me into the water with him.

I wouldn’t call him a bully. Tommy wasn’t a bad kid. There were just a few misconceptions about me that Tommy, like a lot of people, made.
I’ve always been a bit on the dainty side. Not just in size either. My hair was silky smooth, the gold of spun gold as I’ve been told. My eyes were a bright blue, brighter than most people. It tended to draw a lot of attention. Even at age ten, it was hard for me to go unnoticed. It didn’t help at the time I liked to wear my hair a bit on the long side, generally at my shoulders. Most people mistook me for a girl at first glance. It didn’t help that Tori liked to braid my hair whenever she could. She used to say I was too pretty to be a brother so she treated me like a sister. I never protested because honestly, I liked the attention. She was the first person my age who was nice to me. I didn’t care if she wanted me to be her “sister”.

I never blamed Tori for what happened after.

Many thought I did.

Tommy started to tease me like boys his age did with girls. One thing led to another and the next thing I knew, he was trying to push me into the water. I panicked and reacted. Mrs. Mitchell wasn’t fast enough to stop what happened next. I shoved Tommy backward as hard as I could. He stumbled over the deck chair and hit his head on the corner of the railing. I didn’t kill him, thank god, but he got a nice gash. There was a lot of blood. He ended up in the hospital, had to have stitches. Shortly after that, his parents sued. There was a lot of back and forth for a bit between lawyers, but I was told later they settled out of court. It didn’t matter though, the Mitchells sent me back.

Unwanted again.

Tori told me later that she found the adoption papers. They were going to make it official. She bawled for three days after. We still kept in touch, usually through email and social media. She still called me her “sister” which of course the two of us laughed about. I missed her a lot though. We no longer lived in the same state anymore. Her father got a promotion two years ago and they moved. We never told her parents we kept in touch. I think it was all too painful.

Not just for them either.

I stopped caring after that.

I was in three or four more places after that, but none of them stuck.

Here it was nearing my sixteenth birthday, I wasn’t expecting much.

Now, this.

“I’m not interested.”

She sighed.

This wasn’t the first time she and I had had this conversation. She kept pushing these new people on me and I deliberately kept scaring them away. I was getting pretty good at it too. I had this emo act down pat now. It helped that I sold it with a few more piercings than usual and some dark eye makeup. I wore my hair in a typical emo fashion, cut with a lot in front to hide my eyes. I occasionally dyed it different colors too. Currently, it was black with a green streak. I topped the look off with some dark clothes, enough to make me look like I didn’t care.

It was an act that worked.

It was an act though.

One that she saw through all the time.

“We’ve been through this, Cassidy, you have to give someone a chance.”

We had been through this.

Many times.

It was starting to become a broken record.

“I don’t want to give someone a chance. I want to be left alone until the state throws me out.”

“This lady is different.”

I’d heard that before. She said that about the Mitchells. I was stupid enough to believe her too. They were good people. I was hoping they wanted me in their lives for the rest of mine. Then Tommy Kincaid ruined all that for me. It never stopped either. Tommy was still around, a little older but definitely not wiser. Of course, he and I didn’t travel in the same social circles. I was that dangerous loner, he turned into the jock. Big surprise there. For a while after the incident though, he and his buddies went out of their way to “bump” into me at recess. He seemed to think that I somehow tricked him into thinking I was a girl. It had nothing to do with me laying him out.

The bullying thankfully stopped when we got into middle school. He got a girlfriend and the novelty of me wore off. There were other bullies though. Thankfully my emo act scared them away too. It is, after all, hard to bully someone who doesn’t react at all to your taunts. Even pushing me around in the hall got tiresome to them. So in school just like life, I was all but ignored.

Except by Mrs. Price.

I sighed and jogged her memory. “That’s what you’ve said about all the others.”

“You didn’t give those…” She rubbed her temples. “No, I’m not going to get into this right now. What I am going to do is tell you to meet with this couple. They’ve come a long way and she asked for you specifically.”

Wait, what?

“What do you mean they asked for me?”

Mrs. Price shrugged. “They said they were looking for a boy named Cassidae.”

Cassidae?

“Cassidae and not Cassidy?”

Mrs. Price smiled. “I thought that might pique your interest. It certainly piqued mine. She’s waiting in Mr. Fraser’s office, would you like to meet her?”

I bit my lip.

Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.

Someone was asking for me. Someone who knew my name.

How could that be?

Mr. Fraser was the head of the Social Services department in our sleepy little hamlet. Grover wasn’t exactly a hamlet, more like a small village. It was so small that it rarely appeared on maps. Most of the older residents preferred it that way but a lot of the younger ones were racing to leave. Not me though. I liked it here. It was where the Mitchells lived, the only true place I ever called home. Sure they were gone now but that didn’t stop me from feeling close to them. I made a detour every day after school to walk by “our” house. There was a new family living there now, but the place still looked the same. I know it was brutal to do, reminding myself every day of what I could have had, but they still felt like my family.

No one else ever got close.

Not the kids here.

Not Mrs. Price.

Definitely NOT Mr. Fraser.

When we knocked on his door, we heard a grumble that told us to enter. Fraser was sitting behind his desk. He gave me a look when we entered. I knew that look all too well. The man didn’t like me. The feeling was mutual too. He’d called me an ungrateful punk more than once. He more than likely said a lot worse things behind my back. I know I did. Fraser was a fat, bald jackass. A pompous windbag who did his job half ass and half-cocked. He cared more about his quotas than he actually did about placing kids in the proper foster environments.

Looking around the room, I rolled my eyes at all his “awards” and certificates.

He was such a tool.

“Parker” he grumbled, not looking up from my rather thick file. “I see you’re back here again."

That’s how much he knew.

I grunted. “I never left.”

“Well yes, I meant this office of course...”

I shared a look with Mrs. Price, she returned a weak smile.

“Mr. Fraser, we’re here about the couple that showed interest in Cassidy?”

He looked at my file then to me. “Oh yes, right.”

He pressed the intercom on his desk, asking his secretary to send in the Spencers.

The Spencers.

A thousand thoughts were rolling around in my head right now. If they knew my name, my real one, could it be that they really knew me? Maybe they were distant relatives or even better, maybe… No, I wasn’t going to let myself get my hopes worked up. I gave up on my parents a long time ago. They abandoned me on the steps of a church. They weren’t coming back. I was going to have to accept it once and for all and move on. No, whoever these people were, they were strangers.

A moment later, the door opened.

I held my breath.

I was surprised at how normal they looked. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but the couple that walked through the door looked like nice people. Both middle class, dressed in button-downs and khakis. They appeared to be in their mid-thirties, in good health. In fact, in great shape. The husband looked like he could run marathons. He hid it well behind the buttondown shirt and black frame glasses. I watched them carefully, wondering what their deal was. They took seats on the opposite side of the room, near the door. They looked around the office before their eyes fell on me. I still held my breath, waiting for the reaction.

It was the Emo disguise.

It always got them.

When the wife looked at me though, she smiled.

Well, that’s a first.

“This is him?” she asked, Mr. Fraser nodded.

Then the professional took over.

Mrs. Price cleared her throat. “Cassidy, this is Mr. and Mrs. Spencer, they’re from Richmond.”

“That’s nice,” I said, all part of the act.

I discovered if I acted how I looked it scared them away too.

I watched and waited.

Mrs. Spencer stared at me. I watched and waited. I was expecting it to come any minute.

The look of disgust.

Her reaction came fast.

It was not what I was expecting.

She was crying.

Wait, what was going on?

“He looks like her.”

She started to wipe her eyes with the handkerchief her husband handed her. He apologized as he started to rub her back. Me, I was surprised by this new turn of events. What was going on? Why was she crying? Who did I look like?

I was waiting for her to answer, but instead, she got up and rushed out of the room.

I didn’t know what to do.

Mr. Spencer was standing up to go after his wife but Mrs. Price waved him down. She got up and quickly followed the fleeing woman from the room.

Mr. Fraser grunted.

A lot of help he was going to be.

Mr. Spencer, for his part, looked at me. Then he gave me a weak smile. “So I suppose I should explain some things...”

That would be nice.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He fidgeted a bit. He was definitely nervous.“You see, my wife had a younger sister.” He took another deep breath and let it out faster this time. As he did, he burst right into speaking. “She ran away from home about twenty years ago. Christy was only sixteen at the time. Her parents did the whole search thing. The police got involved. After about a year, they stopped looking. Most figured she had run off with some guy.”

He bit his lip. “There was some bad blood between her and her folks.”

At this point, Mrs. Price came back into the room. “Mrs. Spencer needs a moment.”

Her husband nodded then continued his story. “Christy was a good girl but rebellious. I guess most teenagers are.” He chuckled, looking awkward. I wanted to roll my eyes but didn’t. I wanted to know. No, I needed to know. “Dawn never stopped looking though. She and her sister talked about everything. She was upset and felt responsible that Christy never told her about running away. Then one day out of the blue, she got a letter from Christy. It talked about how she made a mistake...”

I’m not sure I liked where this was going.

Mr. Spencer sensed it. “Now, son, I’m not saying you were a mistake. I’m merely stating the facts as I was told them. Your mother got involved with a man she shouldn’t have. When he found out about it, he wanted her to have an abortion. She openly agreed with him but secretly wanted no part in it. You see, he was married and had children of his own. She hid the pregnancy from him. When it was time to give birth, she did it in secret. Afterward, she made a rash decision.”

Now I was starting to understand.

“So you’re saying...”

“We believe so,” said Mr. Spencer with a sigh. “It took us some time and a lot of arm twisting. I’m a lawyer by trade. I had to call in quite a few favors. The only thing we had to go on was a relative age, an approximate date of birth and, of course, your name.”

I scoffed. “That took nearly sixteen years?”

“We didn’t have much to go on son,” he said as if it explained everything. “We weren’t even sure if your mother was telling the truth.”

My mother.

You know I’d been waiting sixteen years for answers. Sometimes waiting is enough because the truth can be even worse.

“So what happened to her?”

He lowered his head. “She’s dead son.”

Wow.

I think I always knew. Deep in the back of my mind, I had an idea. I tried to find her myself once. Of course, I didn’t even have a name. Mr. Spencer had a lot more to go on. He had the resources too. That didn’t mean it stung less. There were really only a few kinds of kids in places like this. Ones that were orphans, ones that were abandoned by their folks and ones that had parents who had to give them up for one reason or another. I always dreamed I was the latter but it turns out I was like the former. My mother got scared, couldn’t deal and threw me away. It was the story of my life.

I held back the tears. “What happened to her?”

“She had her demons,” said a voice from beside me.

I hadn’t realized that Mrs. Spencer came back into the room.

She sat in the chair next to me. She reached for my hand but I pulled away. This woman might be related to me but I wasn’t that desperate. She started to cry again, but she nodded, moving out of the chair and back into the one next to her husband.

“We finally caught up with Christy a few years ago,” continued Mr. Spencer, holding his wife’s hand. “By that point, she was a different person. An ex-boyfriend got her hooked on drugs. She’s been in and out of jail and the hospital several times. We tried to get her clean, but it never stuck. A few days after her last stint in rehab, the police found her in a motel...”

He didn’t need to fill in the blanks.

Mrs. Spencer openly cried on his shoulder.

So there it was.

Now I knew.

Well, part of it anyway.

‘What about my father?” I asked bitterly.

Mr. Spencer shook his head. “She never said. She told us it was in the past and to leave it alone so we didn’t press her.”

The room fell into silence after that.

Mr. Spencer let his wife cry it out some more.

Mr. Fraser looked disinterested.

Only Mrs. Price seem to care. She reached over and took my hand. I didn’t stop her. She gave it a good squeeze. She was the only one in this room that I could rely on. No offense to the Spencers of course. They seemed like nice people. I suppose they were family. I looked over at them. I looked from husband to wife. I stared a lot at Mrs. Spencer. I tried to see myself in her but it was hard. Sure we had the same blonde hair and her eyes were blue but I’m not sure I saw myself. Staring at her though, it was clear where I got some of my features from.

Did my mother look like her?

It was finally Mrs. Price who broke the silence.

“So Cassidy, are there any more questions you’d like to ask your au...I mean, Mrs. Spencer?”

I sighed.

Actually they never really answered my first one.

“Why did you wait so long then?”

Finally, it was Mrs. Spencers turn. She wiped her tears and took a deep breath. “When I finally found my sister, she was in rough shape. We got her clean, helped her get on the mend. Up to that point, we weren’t even sure if you existed. But then she started talking about wanting to find you again. We agreed to help. She gave us your name and the name of the church where she dropped you off. We followed the trail as far as we could, then it went cold.”

Mrs. Price filled in the blanks. “The church closed about five years ago. Any records they had were lost.Your official state file wasn't made until you were brought to us about a year after your arrival there”

She pointed to the file currently sitting on Mr. Fraser’s desk.

The dumbass was using it as a coaster right now.

Mrs. Spencer nodded. “It took us nearly a year to get that far. By the time we found the church, your mother gave up. She went back to the drugs...”

I didn’t need to know anymore.

They found me.

Now what?

It was clear what these people wanted. Why else would they track me down after all? It was a shock, to say the least though. Here I was planning to spend the rest of my life here until I was eighteen. It was the only true plan I had. I was counting down the days. Ok, so not literally because that would be nuts, but I knew it wouldn’t be long. I never really thought about family. Not since the Mitchells. I NEVER thought that my parents might have any family out there. Well, at least not in a long time. I just figured if there was any family out there, they would have come for me by now. They were stupid kid dreams though. I realized later that there was no true way for them to find me.

I guess I was wrong.

There was a long silence again.

It was finally Mr. Fraser who broke it:

“So, you want me to start the paperwork then?”

“What?” asked both the Spencers.

The large man chuckled. “Well, you spent all this time looking for the pu...I mean boy. I just assumed you wanted to take him home with you?”

I watched their expressions.

First shock, then surprise.

They smiled, held hands and finally nodded.

So that was it after all.

“Well,” Mrs. Spencer finally said. “We had hoped that Cassidae might consider it?”

All eyes were on me.

Great.

I bit my lip, looking from one face to another.

They didn’t expect me to answer now, did they?

I sighed. “Can I think about it?”

A family.

My real one.

This is NOT how I expected this day to go.

Author’s note: As I’m sure all of you know, comments are life blood to an author. I’m not begging or demanding, but I certainly would appreciate anything you have to say (or ask). It doesn’t have to be long and involved, just give me your reaction to the story. Anything critical you have to say, PLEASE do so in a PM. Pointing out people's flaws or mistakes in a comment is hurtful and NOT appreciated.Thanks in advance...EOF