Sofía

A week later

February 14th, 2010. Sunday, New York City, NY.

Today I'm going to see Scarlett again. When she talked with Ms. Edith last week, what she was doing was asking for her contact so she could get more info on me, and well she did cause she is supposed to pick me up in about 30 minutes, and I'm nervous, I wanna see her but at the same time I don't, I wanna stay alone in my bed like always. Right now I'm packing my backpack, putting the three books I have to return to the library today, Marble, Scarlett's bracelet and the key to the apparment cause I bet my foster parent is not gonna be here later tonight when I get back.
I have no idea of what are we gonna do and I don't know why Scarlett is spending today with me, cause I'm pretty sure today is lovers day or something like that, so she should be with someone else than me, but anyways I'm gonna go sit on the fire scape and wait for her.

There are not a lot of cars in the street today, but I bet the city is going crazy (as usual), so when I see a car stopping in front of the building I know it's her, and I confirme it when I see a blonde woman stepping out of it. I get back in the apparment and grab my stuff, going to the kids room, where one of the older kids is, he is around 13 or 14, I just knock on the door to grab his attention and then wave my hand to tell him goodbye whitout having to speak, he does the same. I quickly grab a piece of bread from the kitchen and get out of the apparment, going downstairs a bit fast making sure I don't trip and injure myself as always. When I get to the front door of the building I see her waiting for me, I open the door and say hi with my hand.

~ Hi Sofía, are you ready to go? ~  I nod, she extends her hand for me and I give her my backpack while saying a small ~ Wait ~ she nods kinda confused cause I got back inside the bulding, but not going upstairs, instead going to the back of the stairs leaving the piece of bread on the floor near the hole Bruno, the rat of the bulding, comes out from, and I know it may sound gross, but ever since I saw him I've been leaving food for him to eat, so what can I say, rats are like the NYC mascots. I get back out and Scarlett already has the back door of the car open for me, and I see she has a booster seat for me, cause I'm very small for being 6 so I definetly need it, but the point is did she bought one just for me? She helps me getting insida the car.
~ What did you leave on the floor back there? Under the stairs ~ she asks getting on the drivers sit ~Bread for Bruno, the rat~ I very quietly said, but she did heard me.
~ You feed the rat of your building? Mhm, that's nice of you, but be careful cause maybe it will bring some of it's friends, and you won't have enough bread to feed them all ~ I nod my head and look out the window thinking how rare is it that someone doesn't find it weird that I do that or doesn't say something gross and hurtful about it. She is nice, I'm starting to like her.

After some minutes I realize I don't know where this woman is taking me and I start to freak out, which she notices and tells me that we are going to her house/apparment, and it's not that far away but the traffic is not helping us get there fast, so I calm down once she tells me this.
20 more miuntes of silence, not uncomfortable one, and me staring at the window seeing the city and all the people walking with heart shapped things, we finally arrive to a big fancy building and go inside the garage of it. Scarlett gets out of the car and she comes to open my door while I'm taking my seatbelt off and grabing my backpack, she offeres her hand for me to take but I'm to shy to take it so I just don't. We go inside an elevator, and it feels a bit weird cause I don't think I've ever been in one but I didn't hate it. I saw Scarlett clicked the button that says 18, and the door opens and it shows this very big living room with big windows that show the city, and I can kinda see the central park from here, it's crazy, this place is like 5 times bigger than my foster home, my mouth and eyes are wide open.

~ You like the view? The sunsets and sunrises look great from up here~  I just say nothing cause I don't know what to say, so I just sit next to one of the windows and stay there for a couples of minutes, Scarlett is sitting on her couch.

~ So what do you want to do? We can do whatever you want to?~  I shrug my shoulders, maybe I want to read or color, but I don't know. ~ What are the things you like to do? Or do you maybe have homework I can help you with?~  I think for another second, I don't have homework I finished it on friday on after school detention cause i once again made my eacher angry in purpose, I like being i the library alone, just with the librarian; but there is something I would like to try that I have never done, I'm not sure if I should tell her or not. ~ I know you thought on something to do, just tell me and we can do it~ ~ Mhm, bake~  I finally say hoping she agrees with that. ~ We can do that, what do you wanna bake?~ Shrug my shoulders again ~What if we look at the recipes I have and we decide?~ I smile and nod.

We go to the kitchen and Scarlett takes out this book that has a bunch of recipes in it, she looks for the dessert ones and finally finds them. I see 'chocolate chips cookies', 'carrot cake', 'hazelnut pie' and many other that looks delicius but there is one that caughts my eye, the babka one, I point to that one. ~You want to make babka? You know what that is?~  I nod my head very excited, I'm never like this, but I love babka.
I used to eat it a lot when I was 4, cause my foster home at that moment was in Williamsburg, next to a jewish bakery, and the family there used to let me sit inside all afternoon, sometimes they would even let me go to the kitchen, and I could watch them making all sort of sweets like babka, rugelash, chocolate challah, lekach, hamantaschen, sufganiyah, rainbow cookies and even sweet kugel sometimes. I also celebrated hannukah with them that year, they invited me. I didn't like that foster home at all, that's why I spent so much time with the jewish family, I didn't like been near my foster parent, he was not nice. But that's why I'm excited about babka, and Scarlett agrees with me about baking that.

~ Great choice Sofía, I'm not sure I have all the ingredintes tho, I'm pretty sure I don't have yeast and we need that, so why don't we go buy them and then we come back and bake it?~ I nod my head and I remember about the library books, should I tell her? ~ C-an, mhm, library? ~ those were all the words that came out of my mouth. ~ You wanna go to the library? We can do that as well ~  I got to my backpack to show her the three books, hoping she somehow figures out that I have to take this back. ~ Those books, do you have to return them?~ she asks very unsure but hoping she is right, and I just nod my head while giving a little shy smile.

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We went to the library first, I returned the books and took three out, two that I haven't read before and one of my favorite books, Matilda by Roald Dalh, so I can read it again. We then went to the store, and before going in Scarlett put on a hat and some sunglasses for a reason I don't really know, but there was a lot of people there, and that freaked me out a bit to much that I ended up grabbing Scarlett's hand, it felt weird and kinda wrong, but also comfortable and safe, so I kept holding her hand until we got back to the car. Back on her apparment we baked chocolate babka with a streusel topping, Scarlet's grandmother recipe, cause guess what?! she is jewish! Afterwards I was going to start washing the dishes until Scarlett told me I didn't have to but I'm used to doing them at my foster home all the time, otherwise, if we don't clean, we get yelled at, and my foster parent can be scary, so we just do what he says.
The rest of the afternoon we spent it eating and watching movies, we watched the Lorax and Beauty and the beast; I still didn't actually talk and I was very shy and akward, but I did say a few words which is way more than what I speak on a daily basis, so I'm proud of myself for that cause I've always been told to speak a bit more and I'm finally doing it with at least one person. I think we were starting to watch Toy story when I fell asleep on the couch, and I felt someone carring me and putting me down on a bed.
I was supposed to go back to my foster home cause I had school today at 8am, but I didn't. Today Scarlett woke me up earlier then when I usualy wake up at and tooked me to my foster home, we said goodbye after I remember to give her the bracelet and then I changed my clothes and grab my school stuff, school was same as always, I ended up wanting to get out of there and then I cried once I got to the apparment.

I don't know when I'm gonna be able to see her again, she said she'll try to see me next weekend or sometime this week after school but that she didn't know cause she has a lot of work, she mentioned something about a theatre but I didn't fully understood what she does there, so I'm not getting my hopes up, also I still don't know why she is choosing to see me, I like it, but I don't get why she cares about me.

Hope you liked this chapter, is a very long one I would say, around 1700 words, but I can't seem to be able to write shorter ones lol.
Hope you all are doing great as well <3