Pink Magnolias

All Characters are over 18.

No meteorites were harmed in the writing of this story.

Author has never played D&D or any other D20 game so that stuff will likely be wildly inaccurate. Please remember that it is just a story.

*****

Here's the short version of what happened. My parents died when I was nine. After that I was put in foster care while the government tried to figure out what to do with the money and house and cars and all the other stuff my parents owned. Then my older brother who was a full 20 years older than me shows up to try to claim all of it even though my dad had cut him out of his will and there was so much resentment between them that I had actually never even heard that I had a brother at all. There was a court hearing and stuff happened but I didn't understand any of it. All I knew was that I had lost my parents and everyone seemed to care more about who was going to get to drive my dad's car than me. That fact was very powerfully brought home to me when the judge asked my older brother if he wanted to take me in and without even looking in my direction he flat out told the judge the he didn't want to have anything to do with me. All he cared about was getting to the property part so he could find out how much he could take home with him.

So I grew up in an orphanage. The particular orphanage I grew up in housed not only orphans with no parents but also juvenile delinquents. That meant that they treated all of us like criminals because the home staff couldn't tell us apart. So life sucked. Also it was funny that only white delinquents came to the orphanage while black delinquents went to adult prison. Don't blame me, I'm against that system as much as anyone. Let all the delinquents go to prison I say and only have actual orphans in the place called an orphanage so then they can let up on security and treat us like normal kids.

I spent a year going to the fake school in the orphanage where we weren't taught anything, we were just told to self study at our desks for six or seven hours a day. You have no idea how boring that was. All the other kids just started to pass the time making noise or walking in circles and all that. Amazingly I remembered enough about those days at the courthouse before being sent to the orphanage to address a letter to the judge in my case and the letter actually made it to her. I told her how I had remembered her saying I was supposed to be in public school but that wasn't happening. I didn't get a letter reply back from her. Instead I got yelled at by the home staff not to go causing trouble. And then things were arranged for me to actually go to public school which meant leaving the orphanage during school hours and interacting with people outside the facility just as soon as I signed a non disclosure agreement promising not to tell anyone about what happened inside the home.

Going to public school also meant that I was going to go to public school high school. Everything was going well but there was a problem on the horizon. See for the other kids in the orphanage who went to the fake school, they were issued a diploma when they turned 18 and then kicked out. But I didn't go to their fake school. So when I turned 18 the summer before senior year due to the hours in the fake school not counting towards my real academic record we had a clash or rules. The orphanage had to put me out so that meant that I would be homeless. Some of the home staff were sympathetic but others thought that it served me right for messing with the system and causing more work for them.

Now if I was a normal kid nobody would care if I was forced to drop out because I didn't have a place to live. But I wasn't a normal kid. If they took me out of that school then the test score average of the school and also the town would go down. The local government couldn't have that. So politicians were interested in making sure that I continued and finished high school. I had already taken the SATs, ACTs, ASVAB, and even the LSATs (just to try it out). Sure I had to take the SAT twice so that my combined score would be a perfect 1600 but you get the idea of the type of academic student I was. Sure I wasn't the star football player nor was I the most popular guy at school but I had my area of excellence. I already had colleges calling me at school telling me I was guaranteed entry if I would just apply (please!). I had full tuition covered no matter where I wanted to go.

One of the older teachers at my school said she'd let me stay in her guest room but after they looked into it that would be highly illegal. There were too many cases of teachers sexually abusing students back in the day so anything like that was out of the question.

Eventually there was an arrangement made with a rehab center. I know man, I can't make this stuff up. A rehab center! For drug users. I was just standing there when my social worker was telling me about it listening to her and I'm sure the expression on my face was telling her "really, you've got to be fucking kidding me man". Why couldn't they just let me sleep in a hotel? Or rent a cheap room? I was 18, I didn't need a guardian. Oh, but it gets worse. That rehab center had this system of closing, as in fully locking the doors and shutting down completely, a full three consecutive days every month over one weekend. When that happened I would go to school on Friday morning, and then I'd have to find somewhere else to sleep for Friday night and Saturday night. I couldn't get back to the little room they gave me until Sunday evening. Ok, maybe that's not a full three days. I'm not in charge of making the schedule ok.

So, what to do about those shut down weekends? It was going to be a problem and I heard talk about the host family that housed the international student agreeing to letting me stay there just for those weekends. That would be sweet. That international girl was so hot and she was over 18 so I wouldn't get in trouble if I took her out now that the social workers were no longer doing full background checks on every girl I wanted to date. But someone came along to ruin it. You'll never guess who. My social workers tracked down my old brother and asked him if he could put me up for those weekends and amazingly enough he apparently agreed. I can't say I was thrilled to see him again.

In order to get to my brother's house I had to catch the bus after school and ride to the big bus center and then get on the highway bus. The state had to pay for all of that because my brother was not going to pay for any of it. Once I was one city over he was supposed to come and pick me up.

"This is Dale." my brother answered.

"Hi. I'm here."

"You're outside?"

"I'm at the bus stop."

"Ok. You should be able to get here in about two hours then."

"Two hours? Oh, ok. I'll wait."

"What are you talking about? No no no. I mean, you can sleep there at the bus stop if you want and come walk in the morning. It's up to you."

"You want me to walk."

"How else you going to get here? I'm not a taxi. Plus it's late. You think I want to leave my house at this hour?"

"I don't know where you live."

"You got the address, right?"

"Yeah."

"There you go. You're supposed to be smart and all that. Figure it out."

So ok. I started walking. It was not fun. But oh well.

After about 30 minutes a car pulled up behind me as I was walking. In the dark of the night the headlights were too bright for me to see much. A woman called out my name so I cautiously went to the driver's side window.

"Hey, you're Jim, right."

"Yeah."

"Get in. I'm your ride."

I just nodded ok cause I didn't know who this person was supposed to be. She was a blonde who looked like she could be Lilly Labeau's sister. She also couldn't have been much older than me. That was odd because my older brother was supposed to be pushing 40. I didn't know when exactly his birthday was or even how old he was but I had thought it was supposed to be something like that.

"I can't park here all night. Come on!" she said.

I went around to the passenger's side and put my stuff in the backseat. I was going to get in the back too but she was talking like she wanted me in the front seat so I closed the back door and went to sit next to her. The car got moving and I was really hoping I had not just made a huge mistake.

"It must be great to get out of that place, huh."

"It is. Say, you have me at a disadvantage."

"A what?"

"I don't know who you are."

"Dale didn't tell you about me?"

I shook my head.

"I'm Brook."

"Nice to meet you. Are we related?"

She scrunched up her nose at that question. "No. That would be weird."

"Ok. Your name is Brook but I still don't know who you are."

"I'm your sister in law."

"Oh. Ok. My brother's wife."

"Yeah. And what was the big idea skipping our wedding?"

"I didn't know my brother was married."

"Really. He told me he told you."

"I didn't hear about it."

"I'm going to kill him. Do you at least know about Kate?"

"Kate?"

"Seriously!" she said.

"Who's Kate?" was all I could respond.

Brook was shaking her head in disbelief and then informed me that Kate was my niece. Ok, so the story was starting to make sense.

"You're not allowed to ask that." she responded when I inquired as to her age. But she didn't sound angry about it. It was more joking. "I'm 24. I know the age difference between me and Dale is something people don't like."

"I didn't say anything. I'm just trying to learn more about you."

"That's fine. I know. But tell me about you. You must be so happy to get a break from reform school."

"Ah, what? I'm not in reform school."

"Dale told me you were."

"I was in an orphanage that had a reform school on campus."

"Well, there you go."

It looked like it would take just as long for me to explain who I was. We didn't have time for it though cause we arrived at the house in no time. And there parked outside was something that I remembered well. It was my dad's boat. It's ok. No big deal. Don't get angry.

I looked away from the boat and my eye for some reason went right to Brook's ass. She was walking in front of me and it was then that I was able to fully appreciate her figure. Hubba hubba. I was smiling and probably looked pretty stupid like that when we entered the house. That good mood did not last long.

"$20 please." my older brother said instead of just greeting me.

"Huh?" I responded.

"Gas money." he explained.

"HUH?"

"Don't tease him." Brook said.

"Who's teasing? He called us, boo hoo I needs me a ride. So we came and got cha. Now you owe us gas money."

"I don't have any money."

"Then how are you going to get back to school?"

"I have a voucher."

The audible mouth smack that sounded out from my brother made his disappointment clear. "So you don't have any money for food or anything either then?"

"No."

There was no hiding his annoyance but Brook spoke up again to tell him to stop teasing me. Dale put on a smile and said he was just playing but then in a low voice that Brook could not hear he reiterated that he was going to need some gas money.

Anyway, Brook showed me to the space I would be using. I say space instead of room because there was no room or bed for me to sleep in. The actual plan was for me to sleep on the sofa. But me sleeping would have to wait because Dale was in the middle of watching something.

Ok, fine, beggars can't be choosers and all that but I just want to go on record that sharing house with the cute European girl would have been my preference.

Midnight came, Dale and Brook retired for the night, and I was able to ball up on the sofa and try to sleep.

Of course I didn't just fall asleep as soon as my head went down. My mind was racing with all the things I had seen that day and wondering why my brother acted the way he did.

Ok, so see I had assumed that Kate was my brother's daughter. This assumption was correct. However, I had also assumed that Kate was Brook's child as well. Considering Brook's age I figure Kate was probably in infant which was why I was not introduced to her with such a late arrival time. It also explained why Dale would not want to leave the house with a sleeping baby to care for.

But no. Kate was not a baby. This was made clear to me when she was pushing me off of the sofa so she could sit down and watch something. At first I thought she was Brook except she had brown hair. Then I got the sleep out of my eyes and saw it was this new person I had not met yet. For just a moment I thought I was dreaming about Nickey Huntsman again but no.

"Hi."

"Hello." she said with annoyance and without looking over at me.

"Um, I'm Jim."

"I know."

Right. Ok. "Nice to meet you."

"Shut up." she answered.

Ok, so I was officially confused.

"Kate was from my first marriage." Dale explained as he volunteered me to help him with various laborious tasks around his house. "I was getting divorced back when mom and dad died so that was why I couldn't be there for you back then. I know it was hard on you growing up like that but you know it was hard on me when dad kicked me out."

I thought about Dale's logic and I was pretty much ready to call bullshit except that I needed a place to stay.

"Oh, that reminds me." Dale added. "See, I was put in charge of the inheritance for you and I was going to watch over it until you became 18."

"Inheritance?"

"Oh, you ain't know about it? There wasn't that much but I mean there was about 3000 dollars left over for you. I was going to just keep it in the bank but then I figured investing it would be better. Maybe I could get it up to like five or six thousand by the time you came of age. But unfortunately, I'm sorry man. It's all gone."

"Well, look." I was going to be angry but then I remembered the bigger picture. This wasn't my home. I didn't live here. Dale could spout bullshit all he wanted but I was going to go to college and then have a good life. "It's ok. You did your best right?"

"Yeah, of course. I wanted to be there for you. I did. But you know the government has all these rules. I'm not a lawyer."

That evening I had dinner with Brook and Dale. Kate, who still had yet to talk to me, was already out with her friends to enjoy Saturday night. At the beginning of the meal Dale handed me a burger from the dollar menu and said that was my dinner. Brook again jumped on him about teasing me. Dale started laughing again because of the look on my face. Brook served me a plate of some real dinner.

It was late when Kate returned. I was alerted that something was up from the loud music coming from the car that was dropping her off. She came into the house and popped the light on.

"They seem like fun." I commented.

"Don't ask."

I stood up from the sofa and calmly approached as she was going towards the kitchen.

"Don't ask what?"

"You don't get to meet my friends."

"Fair enough. You don't get to meet mine either."

"That's a laugh."

"How you figure that?"

"Don't they keep you in a cell? You going to introduce me to your jail house husband?"

"Wow, you are really misinformed."

"I don't care. You don't get to meet my friends. I have enough problems without having to explain that my cousin is a convict."

"I'm not a convict and I'm not your cousin."

"You live at a reform school one step away from juve and you're younger than me so you don't get to be called uncle. Cousin is the best you're going to get ... if that."

"I don't live in a reform school."

Her eyes went wide and then she threw up her hands. "I don't care. Now move."

She pushed herself right into me and marched down the hall to her room.

Anyway, the next morning I wasn't supposed to go get on the bus to go home until after lunch but pretty much from first light I was eager to get out the door and get back to my real life. First thing on Monday morning when I got to school I went to the counselor's office, asked her to call my social worker, and by lunchtime I was having a conference call where I let it be known that I did not want to go back to my brother's place. They asked me why of course and while I might have felt a bit bad relaying things that were said to be jokes the fact of the matter was my brother had asked me for money to stay there so really it was no better than a hotel anyway and in a hotel I would at least get to sleep in a bed. Now this isn't exactly what my brother had said but when I was pressed on if it was true that he asked me for money I fibbed a bit. I told them that he asked for the money because the 3000 dollars my mom had left me was all gone already.

I was then informed that the amount was not 3000 dollars. The amount was more like 100,000 dollars. My social worker was incredulous that it would actually all be gone so she said she'd look into it. In the meantime they were going to arrange for me to stay with the host family on long weekends. Why couldn't I just stay there the rest of the time instead of staying in a side room at a drug rehab center? I asked. I got no answer.

Two weeks later I was in the middle of asking a female student on a date; or rather she was in the middle of rejecting me, when I got called to the office. Once there I was informed of some bad news. There were rules and those rules basically said I could not stay at the host family's house. A hotel room would be ok but if that happened then they were going to make my older brother pay for it. They looked into how he had managed the money left to me and it turned out that he was perfectly capable of turning a profit on his own investments but when he did lose money he'd just sell the bad asset to me at a higher price than he had paid for it. He did that for years until his own portfolio was creeping up to half a million dollars and I was left with nothing. My social worker was saying that my brother was claiming that he had no choice but to manage things that way because he was obeying a judge's order from his divorce. That was obviously bullshit because he had no rights under the law to touch any of that money in the first place so there was a good chance that he was going to be forced to pay it all back to me, beginning with paying for a hotel on long weekends.

I didn't know which hotel they were going to put me in. I left that to them. It was only two nights anyway. I told my friend Teth, with a T and not a B, about it and she asked if we could have a party at the hotel room. Well, why not? That got others interested and my popularity at the school was suddenly on the rise. That girl Amanda who was rejecting me earlier suddenly started to come around and see that I wasn't such a bad choice. Even the international girl was throwing eyes at me. My life was about to get good. I mean, it had been getting better for a while but now I thought it was going to get really good. I could never date a girl and bring her back to the orphanage or to the rehab center. This hotel thing was going to be a huge step forward for me.

In my life I had been in situations that perhaps others would find too horrible to be true or too good to be true. I've experienced both so I'm not used to the idea of keeping my hopes down when something great would be about to happen. Everyone else was telling me to keep that in check because obviously something else would have to come to ruin it. And that is exactly what happened in this case. Behind my back my older brother was insisting to the social workers that he had no money to pay for a hotel because his exwife had taken all of it. They called him on his bullshit because the social workers knew how to do their jobs so my brother backtracked and said he didn't need to pay for a hotel cause he was perfectly happy to let me stay at his house. Unfortunately for me the rules were on my brother's side. As long as he was technically opening his doors to me there would be no official need for a hotel. You can imagine my extreme disappointment when I heard about this. But I had plan B.