24 Hours Changed Me

Chapter 1

Whoever would have named a girl Danni? I guess it was my real parents, but what were they thinking? I wish I could ask them. You know when I am introduced to someone as “Danni,” the other person looks around for a boy. Or when people just say the name, “Danni,” they don’t expect me to respond. Every year on the first day of school, the teacher calls out my name and looks at the desk in front or behind me—and, of course, the kids always snicker, knowing that this new teacher is confused. I snicker, too, because I don’t want the kids to know how embarrassed I really am because of my name. But I don’t just feel bad because of my name, I feel really embarrassed because most of the kids know that I come from the “Home” and that’s not just from any home. The “Home” is where kids live around here who don’t have a real home or who don’t have parents. I just don’t happen to have either.
I have lived at the Home from since before I could remember. I have known lots of “house moms” who work for a short time and then move on. None of them ever seem to want to get to know us kids too well, because they know they won’t be here for long. I wish that I wasn’t here for long. But I have been. I am eleven now and I have lived here before I was two, they tell me. I sometimes try to get them to tell me about my parents and how I came to be here. That, I found out, is a topic that everyone dodges. Sometimes the person I asked will make an excuse that there is something in the kitchen that is burning. Sometimes people may say that their cell phones are on mute and ringing in their pocket, when I know for sure that they always have it on ring. So, I just have to keep on wondering who I am and where I came from. I could handle whatever happened. It makes a kid tough living here. I probably wouldn’t even cry if I heard the truth, even though everyone tells me that I am too sensitive about things. I just wish I knew. What I wish even more was that I had new parents. “There is no use crying or worrying over the past” (like one of the house moms told me), so I want to move on—but I’m not moving anywhere here. It seems like each day is pretty much like the next and then I have a birthday which means anyone around sings “Happy Birthday”, I get cake and a pretty cheap gift from the Home. The gifts are ones that churches collect and put in our storage closet. The house mom in charge picks out just the “right one” for whosever birthday it is. They don’t know that I would love to have a coupon for a riding lesson or a bow and arrow set or a Nerf gun, all of which would scare me to death.
Most of all, which could never, ever happen, I would love to have a puppy—something active to do or something special to care for. Instead, every year I get a doll, those drink and wet dolls (that I could at least pretend I was caring for) when I was younger and now just grown-up dolls or high school dolls that don’t do a blessed thing! Back to the new parents I hope for. I’m sure they would get to know me at least a little, and get me something off my wish list for my birthday.
The problem here is that everyone wants parents or parent, a single parent would be fine, in fact, wonderful—sure better than nothing. A single father would be better than a single mother though. I have had a bunch of house moms, zero house fathers. But only the youngest kids get picked now. And I was always so shy when I was little that I wouldn’t even give eye contact to the visitors, so that is why I was never chosen back then. In fact, not too many grown-ups ever come through the doors anymore. I’m told they want babies, so they go to some foreign country where they can find one that they can raise from the get-go. The older boys here are pretty much resigned to living here until they are eighteen. They say things like, “Who wants a family anyhow? They usually hit their kids as soon as the adoption goes through.” I never knew if that was true or if the boys just said that to cover up not being chosen. If parents did hit their kids then that was a scary thought to me and probably the only reason that I might not want to be adopted.
The thing I like best here is the kid’s choir. We practice every Wednesday right after dinner for thirty minutes. The leader is cool. She comes over from the church across the way. The house moms keep telling us we have to be good for her, because she is just giving of her time for free. But who wouldn’t want to be good for her? She picks the neatest songs, and helps us to have a lot of fun—more fun than the chorus class at school, that is for sure. She even lets us have solo parts once in a while. That is my very favorite! Of course, my voice quivers because I am so scared, but it makes me feel like I am finally doing something worthwhile for the world—though I don’t know what a quivering voice does. It just makes me feel good, like I am somebody special. I guess, for now, you could say that music is my life.