Teen Ink

Zada>>Ten

Today is a really special day for me because it’s my birthday. I am now ten years old. And when it’s your birthday, you’re supposed to celebrate it with your family. Well guess who I get to spend it with. My babysitter, Annie. My adoption parents are always too busy for me, so I hardly ever see them. They haven’t even said happy birthday to me yet or made me a card or anything! Nothing! I get nothing on my tenth birthday! I don’t even get to see my parents on my birthday. This is terrible! But spending my birthday with Annie isn’t so bad. Annie’s cool. She took me out to the movies, and we bought lots of snacks, and played games, and went to a restaurant for lunch and dinner, and had lots of fun! But Annie promised me we would get to stay up really late tonight and watch movies and eat lots candy. So we got to go on a field trip to the store.
“Zada, let’s go on a field trip to the store and the post office. I need to check my mail and we can check yours too.” Whenever we go somewhere, Annie says “field trip” instead of car ride. Even though I am seven, I like how she treats me because it makes me feel special.
“Ok Annie! I’ll be down in a minute. I’m gonna go put my sockies on!” I scream. My room is upstairs because my parents don’t like to bother me when I’m sleeping when they get home at night. So they put me upstairs. I hate how I never get to see my adoption parents anymore like I used to the first couple weeks. It’s like I wasn’t even adopted. It seems like I’m still at the foster home except there the adults actually took care of me like real parents at the foster home.
First we went to the store. We walked around and got lots of stuff. Once we left the store, we went to the post office. Annie let me go inside with her. The post office was always so big when I walked in there. It seemed like it was a thousand feet tall. We walked in to the post office, went to Annie’s and my postal box, and grabbed the mail out of both of them. But when she was grabbing the mail out of ours, she told me there was a letter for me.
“Well look at this.” Annie said
“What?” I asked.
“There is a letter for you. It’s from someone with the name Monica. Who is that honey?” Monica?! As in my sister Monica?! Oh my gosh!! How did she get my address?!
“Monica!!!!! That’s my older sister!!”
“You have an older sister?”
“Yes! I’m a foster kid! My parents aren’t my real parents! They are my adoption parents!” I started to cry because that reminded me of how my parents died in their crash.
“Oh my gosh…I’m so sorry Zada.” She seemed upset to see me start to cry because I was adopted.
“It’s ok...What did Monica say?” Annie opened up the letter and started to read out loud what it said.