Jezzabel by By Misha Kroon (accelerated reader books txt) 📕

Prologue

Date: 25th January 1996
Place: Canterbury, Kent, UK
Weather: Cold, Windy, Rainy. Crap.

In the early hours of the 25th of January 1996 the whole house was woken up by the sound of a loud banging at the door. Myself and Joey, a member of my staff, took a torch and a frying pan and began unlocking the many dead bolts of the main doors. The rain was heavy and falling in sheets, every so often a blinding flash of lightning lit up the black sky. We could not think of anyone who would voluntarily be out in this sort of weather.

We wrenched the old, heavy door open and stood ready for someone to attack or jump out at us. But there was no one there, I sighed and began closing the door.

“Wait,” Joey put her hand on the door to stop it, “I heard a kid crying out there.” I opened the door again and stuck my head out into the rain. There was still nothing, I began to bring my head in when I spotted a movement on the door step. I crouched down and looked. There was a white waterlogged bundle left heaped on the door step. I poked it, the bundle moved. Gaping I picked up the bundle and brought in inside.

“What the hell is that?” Joey was confused. I moved the swales of sopping blanket around until a small red-ish nose peaked out. “Shit. Who’d live their kid out in that at this time of night?” I smiled grimly and carried the kid into the kitchen where the radiators were clacking to life on their timer.

I put the kid on the table and began peeling the swathes of blanket from it’s now shivering body. It was a girl. She sneezed and was pinky-red in the face. Dressed in only a pale pink dress she was very cold.

“Joe, get me a spare dress, yeah, and a thick blanket.” Joey left the room. I began cooing at the tiny girl, stroking her cold face with a finger. She giggled as Joey came back in the room. “Oh yeah get me a towel too.” She sighed at me and left the room a second time. I had begun unzipping her dress and shimmying her out of it by the time Joey returned again. She threw the towel over the table at me, which I caught and began towel drying the baby.

Once she was dry I dressed her in a baby grow, and wrapped the blanket around her. When I looked at the time it was nearly 6, in half an hour I would begin waking up the rest of the children. Joey wadded the white blanket and was about to throw it in the washing basket when she heard a rustling from in the blanket. She searched through the sodden mess until she pulled out a damp, folded piece of card. Tossing the blanket into the washing basket she came back to the table, unfolding the card. She read it aloud,

Dear who takes my baby,
I know that it was irresponsible of me to leave my daughter on your doorstep at this hour in this weather, but I had no other choice.
Please, call her Poppy- Sue Ream. Her real name is Jezzabel Jeckson, but she must never know.
In entrusting you with Jez I may be putting you in danger but I had no other option, I wish no harm to befall to her.
Do not tell her I am still alive, I don’t want to bring her false hope that one day I may come back for her, because I do not know, and because if she were to know she would be in worse peril than she would’ve been had I kept her with me.
Once she adopts her new name she will be protected, but if she ever finds out who she really is, there will be people after her, bad people.
I wish I could be there to see her grow up, but alas I cannot.
Look after my baby.
Please.

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“Well, blow me down and call me a picket fence. That's a strange letter if ever I heard one.” I leant back in my chair. “I supposed we’d better get her on file as what was it? Poppy-Sue!” Joey nodded and went to the filing cabinet we had stored in the dining area. She pulled out a blank file and began filling in the new form. “We’ll call the social at 10 and see if we can keep hold of her. Oh and we’ll call the doctor in as soon as the surgery is open, we need to get her checked over and assessed, seeing as she’s had a cold night.”

I am Paula Nickel’s. I am head care worker at an orphanage in Canterbury, and this is the story of Poppy-Sue Ream, otherwise called Jezzabel Jeckson. As from her view.

Welcome to the eyes of a fifteen year old girl. Who doesn't know who she really is.

Date: 24th January 2011
Place: Canterbury, Kent
Weather: Sunny, Misty, Frosty

My name is Poppy, Poppy-Sue Ream. And today I am fifteen. I have been told that I have been here since I was less than two days old and that I was left on the door step, of this orphanage, in the middle of a thunder storm, and no body knows why. I also know that when I came here I was too young to stay, but Joey and Paula argued with the Social to let me stay, and I don’t know why.

Up until I was nearly 5 Joey was like my mother. She fed me, bathed me, and made sure I was okay. Then one day she just wasn’t there ant more. I was 5 and I cried for her, but no one told me where she had gone and why. I soon began to realise that people left all the time.

As soon as I could talk I made friends with Noah, he was nearly the same age as me, except I was two weeks older. We promised we’d be friends forever, and we’d walk around every where together holding hands. We’d help each other up and down the stairs when they were too high for us and we had to climb them, we’d each dinner opposite each other and play footsies under the table and sit there giggling to ourselves because we thought no one else could work out what we were doing, even though we were kicking everyone else while we were playing.

When I woke up in July when I was about four, I looked over at Noah’s bed and I was empty. I was confused because neither of us got up before the big hand on the clock was at the 9 we weren’t allowed; it was nearly at the 7 so he was up too early. I got out of my bed and started walking around the house looking for him. When I got to the office, he was sitting outside wearing his favourite t-shirt and shorts and a coat, with all his clothes in a brown suitcase. I sat next to him on the bench.

“Where are you going Noah?” I asked him. He looked at me, and smiled just like he did when we were playing footsies at dinner.

“I'm moving.” He said. We’d heard big people say it on the TV; he said it like he was all grown up. I giggled.

“Where are you going? When are you coming back?” I asked him. He shrugged. We sat together in silence for what felt like forever, holding hands, when in reality it was less than ten minutes. Joey came out of the office, and when she saw me she lifted me on to her back and ran making aeroplane noises into the kitchen.

“Lets make you breakfast then!” she said, as she sat me on a stall. I crossed my arms. “What's wrong with Mrs Grumpy?” she asked in a funny voice.

“Where is Noah going?” I asked her. She looked at me, not sure of what to say. She bit her lip.

“Pop, do you know what happens in an orphanage?” I shook my head, “This is where kids are put when their parents can’t look after them; and if we know that they’re going to be here a while, we find them a new family to live with. And Noah’s parents died when he was very small, so he has no where else to go, so we’ve got him a new family.” I looked at her,

“Is he coming back?” I asked her. She shook her head,
“It’s not likely, honey.” She said to me. I cried, right there and then. When I could finally see through my tears a slipped off of my stall, and ran down the hall to the office. Noah wasn’t sitting outside it, so I opened to office door. There was three people in there I’d never seen before, two of them were sitting either side of Noah holding his hand. He looked lost. The other was stood next to Paula, I didn't know it at the time but this was Noah's Social Worker. Paula looked at me,

“Is everything okay there deary?” she asked me smiling. I ran towards Noah and pulled myself on the bench next to him pushing the stranger lady out of my way. “Pops you shouldn’t be in here.” Paula said.

I put my arms around Noah,
“Jojo just said you’re going and you’re never going to come back!” I cried to him. Paula sighed.

“When will Joey learn?” she said. She stood up and lifted me gently off the bench, away from Noah. “Go find Joey; she’ll give you a bath. Okay Poppy.” She gave me light push towards the door I’d left open. I turned back and glared at her but did as I was told, because I’d seen her shouting at the big children and she was scary when she shouted.

I was 4 and I never saw Noah again. After that, it seemed all my new friends we’re given new families, there was Helena, Zoey, Jack, Tobias and Emma; they all left me to go with another family. By the time I was 13 I had given up on making friends in the Home.

And now I'm 15 years old. I’m getting ready for school. At my secondary school, I do have friends, they all know that I live in a home and they’re cool with it. We’re all into the same sort of music and we’ve all helped each other through any crap we needed to face. My best