CLEAN || Taylor Swift Adoption

FIFTEEN

"I can't talk to you when you're like this..."

~EVERLEIGH~

August 5, 2019

"Everleigh?" Ashley called my name, turning the corner to look for me. "Hey, are you done packing?"

I nodded, tying off the end of one of the braids that I had been doing in my hair. Now that I had new clothes, I wanted the foster family to think that I wasn't super hopeless, so I was wearing one of the smocked tops that I had gotten when I went shopping with Etta and Ava, as well as a pair of light wash jean shorts. My hair had been pulled back into two Dutch braids, and I added a bit of jewelry, as well as a pair of white Converse. Maybe this time, the parents wouldn't turn up their noses at me before they even took me home from the office.

I threw the remaining hairbrush into the garbage bag sitting on the wooden chair in the room I had been using to get ready. "I'm good now."

"Alright," Ashley said. "Well, you can follow me down to one of the visiting rooms. Your new foster mom is here to meet you and pick you up."

It didn't surprise me that only the foster mother had come, leaving the rest of the family at home. Most of the time, if I wasn't being dropped directly off at the house, one of the parents would come to pick me up, and the other one, as well as any kids, if they had those, would wait at home and I'd meet them once I got to the family's house.

Although come to think about it, I didn't know much about this placement, especially compared to the amount of information that I'd know about past placements before moving in. Most of the time, I'd find out the basics; how many parents, how many kids, and whether or not there were other foster kids. Sometimes I'd even find out whether the family had fostered before, but other times, that was the type of information that I'd be told from the parents. This time, all I knew was that the placement had foster kids before, but it had been a few years since any of them had been there.

Ashley led me down the hallway to a room that had a closed wooden door, much like the rest of the rooms that occupied the sides of the hallway we were in. She knocked on the door gently before pushing it open and holding it open for me so I could follow her into the room. The door closed behind me with a loud slam, and I jumped in surprise, not expecting it to be so loud.

Ashley smiled to herself for a second before she put her hands on my shoulders. "This is Everleigh Zander," she said, introducing me to the new foster mother.

I looked up from the ground for the first time since I had gotten into the room, and if I hadn't been clenching my jaw tightly out of anxiety, it would have dropped to the ground.

Sitting in a wooden chair and smiling at me was no other than Taylor Swift.

It was like everything froze, including me. It was worse than being at the Session and having no clue what to say to her. Now, I couldn't even fathom that we were in the same room again, not even twenty-four hours later, and she was being introduced to me as my foster mother?

It couldn't be real. It was so out-of-the-question for it to be real.

Plus, since when the hell did Taylor Swift, of all people, foster children? It just seemed unreal. Was she doing this to gain some sympathy in the public eye after everything went down before the release of Reputation? Or was this something else? How the hell did she just so happen to be a foster parent, and how the hell was I being placed with her? It wasn't like a foster parent could just choose their kid; they had to be given one that a social worker thought would be a good fit first.