Adopted

Chapter 5

"Our room is just down at the end of the hall," Sarah said, pointing out the door.

"Now, young lady, there's something that you did not tell us before we left the orphanage," Brendon said.

"What?" I asked. What hadn't they been told?

"It's your birthday!" he said. "You didn't tell us it's your birthday! We should celebrate! We'll go out for dinner. How does that sound?"

"Fine, I guess," I said.

"Well, let's go downstairs and talk some more. Get to know each other, and figure out dinner, and whatever else.

I followed them out of the room - my room and down the stairs. We sat in the living room. Sarah offered me a Coke, which I took and thanked her. Brendon had a beer and she had a sparkling water.

"So, Jessica, do you prefer 'Jess', 'Jessie' or 'Jessica'?" Brendon asked.

"I don't actually care. I'll answer to all three."

"Just don't call you late for dinner, huh?" he laughed. I raised my eyebrow at him. What did that even mean?

"Old joke. Crap. I'm already doing dad jokes and I've been a dad for five whole minutes."

Sarah laughed.

"Okay, bedtime. What time did you go to bed at the orphanage?" Sarah asked.

"Curfew was eight. I could have my light on until ten."

"Okay, so ten o'clock bedtime seems fair. Lights out at ten though, okay?"

"Sure."

"Although it's summer break, so maybe we'll be a little more relaxed about that?" Brendon said.

"Do you have any allergies we need to know about?" Sarah asked.

"I'm deathly allergic to gross foods like liver and eggplant." I said, with a straight face.

Brendon laughed.

"What about Brussels sprouts?" he asked.

"Especially Brussels sprouts." I grimaced. "In fact, I'm actually on a strict ice cream and chocolate diet. It's very important to my health."

"I tend to be on that diet a lot," Brendon said.

"That reminds me, Monday we'd better find you a doctor." Sarah said.

"I have a doctor at LA Children's," I said.

"Okay. Well, we'll figure that all out," she said, flipping through the packet of papers from the orphanage. "I guess we're lucky, you came with an instruction book."

Brendon laughed. I smiled. That was pretty funny.

"Alright, I have a list here of all your medications. Do you have them all? Or do we need to get refills?"

"I'm good. I think I have an appointment with Dr. Roberts at the hospital coming up, though."

"Yep," Sarah said, pulling out a piece of paper. "On... oh, this Monday. At three. Okay. No problem."

"What else do we absolutely need to know?" Brendon asked.

"Ummm, well. Sometimes I have a cough. I mean, I always have a cough, but it's sometimes worse. I'll let you know when it's a bad thing. I'm also allergic to raw potatoes."

"Raw potatoes?" Sarah asked.

"Yeah. Like, I can eat potatoes as long as they're cooked, but I can't peel potatoes or eat raw potatoes."

"Who eats raw potatoes?" Brendon asked.

"Like you'd never do that on a dare?" Sarah asked him, her eyebrow raised.

"What happens if you have a raw potato?"

"I could go into anaphylactic shock. I don't have an epi-pen for it because it's pretty easy to avoid raw potatoes."

"How on earth did you find out you were allergic to raw potatoes?" Brendon asked.

"I was helping my mom peel potatoes when I was, like, seven. And some of the juice, I guess, got in my eye. And it swelled up right away and got itchy. So my mom took me to the doctor, obviously, and he did allergy tests and voila. Allergic to some protein or something that is not in cooked potatoes, but is in the raw potato. It's very weird."

"That is unusual. Okay, so, potatoes are out if they're raw, and if you're helping with dinner, you are not on potato duty. Got it." Sarah said.

"What else is essential for us to know?"

"I don't know. What else to you want to know? I read, a lot. That library cart Matron was reloading - I've read every one of those books. Twice. Some of them more than that. She's always complaining that she can't keep books to keep me entertained. I pretty much live at the library."

"Okay, books. I can get behind that," Brendon said.

"Ummm, I love English class, don't really like math, but I'm okay at it. Music is one of my favourite classes and so is science. I hate gym, but I was on my school's swim and baseball teams. So I get gym credit for that."

"No issues with sports?"

"I have to be careful, obviously, and the coaches all knew, so no. No problem with sports."

"I'm not great at sports," Brendon said. "So you'll probably show me up."

"So, what do I need to know about you guys?" I asked. "How come you don't have kids of your own?"

"Well, we do now, don't we?" Sarah smiled at me. "Brendon's work is important to him, and he works hard, and travels a lot. So we put off having kids until we decided adoption would work much better for us. And that an older child, like we said at the orphanage, would probably fit into our lifestyle much easier than a baby."

"Okay. But why so much travel?"

"Wait," Brendon said. "You said you like music, right?"

"Yeah. I can play the piano and I was going to try the guitar in school next year."

"What music to you like to listen to?"

"Ummm, I don't know. Whatever's on. I'm a huge fan of Yo Gabba Gabba and the Octonauts." I smirked.

"I take it you got a lot of children's music because of the little kids, huh?" he asked.

"Yeah. But my friends at school would play music on their phones. So whatever they were into, that's pretty much what I've listened to. They liked Fall Out Boy, they're pretty cool. And, um, TwentyOne Pilots, Panic! At The Disco, um... Linkin Park, Taylor Swift, I guess. I mean, I didn't have my own phone or mp3 player or anything, so I guess my tastes are all over the place."

"That's pretty cool," Brendon said. "Sometimes the best way to find what you really like is to listen to everything. And have I got a bit of a surprise for you."