The next day Starla stood up with a sharp pain on the right side of her head, and a huge cramp on her stomach followed short afterwards. She felt sick, tired and not to mention hungry. The basement's door opened up to reveal a bodybuilder, in a tank top and sweatpants, with a water bottle in his hands.

"Great, you're awake." Mr. McPherson said, taking a short sip of his drink. "Come, you need to have your morning breakfast." Mr. McPherson was a man of few words, and emotion. He always had a stern look on his face, never smiling, and if he should smile, only the corners would move upwards. He needn't to tell Starla twice about eating, because she quickly rose to her feet in her night dress, and ran towards the stairs. "Starla." He said shortly, with the same abstract expression she had seen for three years. Starla stopped, and looked up towards the man. "Make your bed, and get dressed, don't forget the rules and respect." With that Mr. McPherson turned around and trotted off further down the house, until Starla heard the front door close.

The breakfast was a feast of colourants and flavour, inside of Starla's mouth, and on her tongue. It was totally the opposite of the meals she got at Miss Dew, before she left that afternoon, when the McPherson household adopted her. Before Starla was adopted, she was born into a loving family, where her mother and father equally loved her. Her father was her role model in a family, but as time progressed, and she got older, the weirder their relationship became, until it turned towards disaster.

Her mother lost her job as a bank secretary and had to find concealment in the waitressing business. Her mother then turned out to be a hardworking waitress, who was absent most of the times, because she worked the double shift, to earn money, especially over the Christmas month. Starla followed the instructions Kim told her last night, and after Mr. McPherson went for his morning jog, he too sat alongside his wife in the main living room of the small house. "Why did you call us here child?" Mr. McPherson asked, as he looked on his watch.

"Hush, Conrad, the girl wants to tell us something important, and now you're so rude." She looked at Starla and her red lips curled. "How does that make her feel?" Mr. McPherson stayed silent, with only a grunt escaping his throat. "Darling, please proceed."

"Mom and dad..." Starla started, but looked at Mr. McPherson, and the thought of her own father, made a shrill go up and down her spine. After her mother began to waitress at the local diner, her father resigned his job and he traded the working life for the life of a couch potato. He usually came home, drunk, falling from wall to wall. When he was like this he told Starla that he loved her, and then he would sexually abuse his own daughter, but she didn't knew what it was until her fifth birthday, when it happened again. "I'm lonely."

"Hell Rebecca!" Mr. McPherson said, throwing his hands up in the air. "We've been through this, two years ago, and today we need to talk about it again?"

"Conrad, I'm tired of you chipping in when others are talking." Ms. McPherson shook her head, crossing her arms tight to her bosom. "Continue, Starla child." Mrs. McPherson said.

Starla nodded and cleaned her throat. "I don't want a phone, don't get me wrong." Starla explained, when she saw Mr. McPherson tight frown. "The phone helps me a lot to communicate with friends, but I need to have a real conversation, with real people."

"You mean, you want friends over... well we can make that happen."

Starla shook her head. She also remembered the words Kim told her last night - 'you should add these words, which would pull the trigger: I want a brother, or sister...' – "No, I don't want that, I see them to many times during my school year..."

"Then this conversation is over, because three months will be enough to rewind on your friendships." Mr. McPherson said, standing up.

"Conrad sit!"

"Rebecca, I'm not your child." Mr. McPherson said, as he took his seat anyway.

"I want a brother." Starla said, catching the two adults off-guard.

"Excuse me?" Mrs. McPherson said with some words still trapped between her tongue and the roof of her mouth.

"Mom, dad, I want a brother." – The trigger, the bullet, the blood!

Mr. and Mrs. McPherson looked at each other wide-eyed, no words came out either of their mouths. "Well..." Mr. McPherson chocked on his words. "That's... uh... that's sudden."

"Starla, my child, are you sure?"

"Definitely, Ms. Mc... mom." Starla said. She was still getting used to the idea of calling a woman her mother, which wasn't even linked in her bloodlines.

Mrs. McPherson smiled - They seemed great, at the foster home they couldn't stop faffing about how beautiful she was, and that they would do so many great stuff together. All of those were only promises, and when it came to the surname McPherson, looks were, indeed, deceiving. "Okay, we'll see what we can do."

"What? You're not seriously going to even argue about it?" Instead of being happy about it, her negativity kicked in. Her father created her that way, and she was stuck with the scars, and not to mention that it went haywire, after the first Christmas she had with her new parents – Mr. and Mrs. McPherson held Christmas in a twisted way than it was done in Madam Dew, as well as her six years in her old home. There were no gifts to give, happiness and joy were the only things to share that festive season. It actually felt good to give, instead of to take and just to say "Thank you."

"Why are you so negative about it?" Mr. McPherson said, his uni-brow's right side, slowly touching his forelock.

"No... uh... I like the idea, but I thought you would actually go against it." Starla explained.

The McPherson's looked at each other and then back to their daughter. "Well, child, you see..." Ms. McPherson started. "We actually wanted to adopt a new youngling. We planned it out since last year, because we went for tests again, and the doctors confirmed that I still won't have children. Something about my body rejecting the baby, or something"

"Yeah, that's why we have decided to adopt another one."