I sat at the back of the big black jeep on my way to my brand new prison. There seemed to be no end to them, one after another I just kept getting transferred and no one seemed to care, except maybe my little sister. I glanced at her from the corner of my eye as she sat quietly a few inches away from me. Her face looked as grim and as dull as I felt, and my heart clenched at the obvious misery of the ten year old. I slowly reached out and squeezed her hand. “Hey,” I whispered “we’re gonna be okay.” She gave me a weak smile as she turned to stare glumly out of the window. I sighed knowing exactly how she felt; neither of us was looking forward to this.

“So…um, guys” stammered the middle aged woman sitting in the driver’s seat, as she tried to break the awkward silence. “Are you excited? Your new home…” she trailed off seeing the look I gave her from the rear-view mirror. She gave me a feeble smile trying in vain to chase off the pitch black thunderclouds hovering around the backseat, our obvious displeasure threatening to plunge the entire vehicle into a deep, dark state of gloom.

Even the tiny hula dancer on the dashboard seemed to be affected, its usually bright smile had been replaced by a plastic grin so wide and fake that I almost winced. It looked painful. Or maybe that was just me and my sour mood reflecting off of everything. Still, I sympathized with her. I mean, frantically wiggling her hips twenty four-seven couldn’t be an easy thing. She looked tired, almost as tired as I felt…I was so tired of all of this.

“Well,” said the woman in a defeated voice, “I’m sure you’ll love it,” and silence ensued as she resumed driving.

I let out another soft sigh, as I copied my sister and stared out of the window, watching the trees and houses rush past. “Home…” I whispered, what an alien word, “new home…” I let out a mental snort, Angie and I had had enough of those to last a lifetime.

My sister Angie and I had been on our own since she was five and I was eleven. Our parents had died out at sea, leaving us at the mercy of the cruel harsh reality of life, at a tender age where we could barely cope with it. We soon found out that nothing was as rosy as it seems in a child’s eyes. I discovered that the world was nothing like I expected it to be, and that most of the good habits, polite manners, kindness and compassion that we are taught when we are small, for some reason gets washed away with age. I discovered that money was the most coveted prize, and people would do anything to get at it…and I mean anything.

Since then I became the adult in our lives, my sister’s guardian and substitute mother, fighting to keep her shielded from the cold, bitter world I had experienced and trying to keep her childhood intact. I fought hard to keep us together as we went from foster home to foster home, never lasting that long at a single one of them.

An involuntary smile spread across my face as I remembered all the “incidents” that had forced us to change homes. Particularly the time they tried to separate us… I can proudly say that they failed miserably. It’s not like we went searching for trouble, but trouble was an old friend of ours, one that stayed faithfully by our side. The fact that we enjoyed causing mischief didn’t seem to help.

I snuck a glance at my new foster mum, ‘Mrs. Reid’, I recalled her name, and wondered how long she would last. Yes, the annoying woman driving this vehicle was my new foster mom, not some police officer with a bad sense of humour.. She was an American woman who had sensed a kinship with us, the two half American, half Korean kids who hadn’t fit in with the other dark haired, dark eyed Korean kids in the foster system and we weren’t on our way to a prison, not really but it felt that way. It had always felt that way. This woman didn’t seem all that bad, but as we had learned from past experiences, appearances could be deceiving.

I looked at Angie again, and the sight of her small form, huddled against the door, face pressed to the window as if she wished the pane of glass separating her from freedom would just disappear, filled my heart with pangs of regret.

Maybe I was wrong to drag her with me. Maybe if I hadn’t tried so hard to keep us together and just let her go, she would’ve been in a better pla