My name is Sally. I was born June 7, 1993. My mother and father were 20 years old and could not keep a child. So, they dropped me off at a creaky, old orphanage. I remember the orphanage vividly. It was an old, two-story brick building. The porch was a calming baby blue.

My favorite part of the porch was the crawl space. I had found it one day when I was exploring. I was looking for our cat, Whiskers. He had run off in pursuit of a wind-up toy mouse. I saw him dart behind the staircase, so I followed him. There I found a small wooded door. Upon opening it, I found a crawl space that went under the kitchen. I would often crawl under here to eavesdrop on visitors and the older children.

I often played practical jokes on the younger children. I would crawl under the kitchen and act as if I was a ghost or a monster coming to get them. I was quite the devious child. Later on, as I went deeper into the crawl space, I found out it went straight to the porch. I liked to sit there and watch the wildlife. It was quite pleasant.

There were three stairs that led up to the porch. Whenever anybody climbed up them, they creaked loudly. We children always knew when there was a visitor. It was often a middle aged woman named Mary-Sue. We all loved Mary-sue tremendously. She always took us on splendid trips. My favorite of those many trips had always been the ones to her log cabin which was located deep within the woods. We had tons of endless fun there. We would zigzag in and out of the woods in a game of tag. Or we would swim like fish in the large pond behind the cabin.

My absolute favorite part of the day would have to be the glorious bonfires we had every night we stayed there. We would roast marshmallows and make S’mores. We never got to do that at the orphanage. The workers there do not like us to have any fun at all. They thought children should work from dawn to dusk. We were not allowed to speak while we worked. If you ask me working silently all day is quite boring.

I really did love that orphanage. However, it had its share of mysteries. There would always be a strange mad who would come to visit at eight and stay until midnight. He and the head of the orphanage, Mrs. Finkle, would often argue. They thought we could not hear, and they were sort of right. We could not hear most of the words spoken in these conversations, but we felt the tension from them. Occasionally I would sneak down into the crawl space and go under the kitchen just to hear what was being said.

“Melinda, it needs to be done. If it is not done when I return, there will be dire consequences!” a man had spoken.

“Gordon, I am sorry. It will be done soon. I promise you!” Mrs. Finkle said.

Children would also go missing, and it had not been adoption. If it had been an adoption there would have been many meetings held the week earlier. There would also be a celebration so we could say our goodbyes and wish him or her well. I always had a feeling something bad had happened to the child as Mary-sue would often be sad in the day following the incident. I had no idea how bad in actually was.