Foster Jacobsen

The easy S T U F F . . .

Name: Foster Bradley Jacobsen
Nickname: Sugar Lips
Age: Twenty-six
Member Group: Other staff member / Counselor
Power(s): Biological Manipulation
Play By: Brant Daugherty

Let it F L O W . . .

CHAPTER ONE: THE GREATEST GIFT OF ALL

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jacobsen, you and your husband just missed the cut.”

Pam had heard those words all too many times in her and her husband’s search for a child to take in to their home. She knew she was meant to be a mother and had dreamed of reading books with and telling stories to her future children. But ever since she found out that she was biologically unable to have children, her view on the world had dramatically changed. Getting a license to care for foster children had shed some light on her dream, but every time the phone rang with another state representative saying “you just missed the cut,” she was pulled back under the dark cloud that had formed at the hospital when she was given the doctor’s unfortunate news.

It was March 3rd, 1986, when she had come from the grocery store to a message on the answering machine. “Hello, I’m trying to reach Pamela and Bradley Jacobsen. This is Mark from Riverside County Family and Social Services. It turns out that we may have a match for you! Please call me back soon.” A male child was born to a young woman who claimed that she was not yet able to take care of a child. She had left the hospital as soon as she was able to leave.

The child came home to the Jacobsens without a name -- only a certificate that read “Unnamed Male Child” -- but Pam and Brad did not love him any less. They cared for the baby for two weeks, and just like in Pam’s original dream, she was able to read all the stories she wanted to the child -- Goodnight Moon, Cat in the Hat, and Strega Nona. Pam and Brad ended up being asked to adopt the child since Social Services couldn’t locate any of the birth mother’s family members in the area. Since Pam and Brad had considered their time with the child as his foster parents to be such a gift, they named the baby Foster. He was their gift and the person who had so drastically changed their lives for the better.

CHAPTER TWO: CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT?

“No more gummy bears, okay, Brad? I don’t want him to get sick,” Pam called from the kitchen. “Okay, dear!” Brad called back from the couch in the family room. Foster had just turned eight, and he was watching 3 Ninjas with his dad while eating a humongous bowl of gummy bears. Well, Foster was picking out all the orange ones because those were his favorite. Brad put a finger to his lips to tell Foster to be quiet; he nodded and brought the bowl back from the table in between him and his son. Foster giggled as he took a big handful of gummy bears.

In addition to a few new clothes for the springtime, the coffee table held brand-new chapter books and even some comic books, because Foster had begged his mother for them. Like his mother, he had developed a great love for reading and telling stories. The comic books were mostly just for fun, but what he liked the best was the beautiful colors. It was a nice change from the black-and-white plain text in chapter books. And it seemed like, every day, Foster came home from school with a new, beautiful, and intricate story about what happened in class or on the playground. His teachers had noted that he was a quiet, well-behaved child, but when given questions to answer, he could talk extensively. “A great thinker,” most of them said.

“Papa?”

“Yes, baby?”

Foster sighed as he pulled his knees up to his chest, the position that he found most comfortable. “Did my real mama give me up because...she didn’t love me?”

As if out of reflex, Bradley squeezed his son’s shoulder. He never wanted his son to feel unloved or given up on, but this was one question that he didn’t have the answer to. Foster knew just as much about his mother as Bradley did. But today was birthday -- there was plenty of time for the truth later. “Well...it’s very complicated. Your mama knew that you were the most important person in the whole world to her. But sometimes people have to do things that they don’t want to do, even though they have to. So the people who work at the state offices gave you to us because they knew your mama wanted you to have the best life that you could.” Bradley began to pet the hair on Foster’s head as he said, “Believe me, kiddo, your mama loved you very, very much.”

Mama Pam then came in with a white-frosted cake that had eight lit candles on it, and she and Brad started singing “Happy Birthday.”

“Make a wish, sweetie,” Pam said.

Find mama one day.

CHAPTER THREE: A FATHER’S DAY SURPRISE

Foster had quickly turned into a candyman, both at home and at school -- one who was always munching on some kind of sweet or sour gummy treat. And he was known for being generous with his candy, especially at school. He didn’t think it was fair that he got to eat a whole bag while nobody else got to have a taste. He often came home from school with his pockets filled with empty bags of gummy worms.

The day before father’s day was no different. He was twelve and developing a lot more responsibility around the house and with his family. In fact, it was his idea to make oatmeal raisin cookies as a father’s day present. “Could you hand me that stick of butter, honey?”

“Here you go, mom,” Foster said, opening up the box and pulling out a pre-wrapped stick. He then went to the fridge to get out the bag of raisins, but then he heard his mother yelp and say, “Ouch!”

Foster gasped and said, “Are you okay?!” He didn’t like it when people were in pain. Whenever anyone got hurt on the playground, he was always the first to run for a band-aid or a teacher.

“Yeah, I’m okay, just a little cut.”

Foster ran over to her and, upon seeing the wound, his eyes grew wide. “Mom, that looks really bad.” He put his hand on her wrist and said, “Are you sure you’re-- OW!”

Suddenly, a cut appeared on Foster’s finger in the exact same place where his mother’s cut was. “Oh...sweetie, did you cut yourself, too?” Pam took Foster’s hand within hers and then noticed that her original cut had now healed and disappeared, as if it was never even there.

She was speechless as she wiped away the blood and placed a band-aid on the cut. Foster didn’t know what to say either.

“Don’t tell your father about this, okay?”

Foster had no idea how to react, so he just nodded. “Did... did this happen to my birth mom, too?”

Pam paused, conflicted on what to say, but then she realized that her son was old enough to know now. “I don’t know, Foster, I really don’t. We didn’t even get to talk to her.” Foster’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “So that means...you don’t know why she gave me up either?”

Pam’s eyes filled with helpless tears. She shook her head lightly. “I wish I knew, honey. I really wish I knew.”

CHAPTER FIVE: THE BREATH OF LIFE

“Pam, could you come down here for a minute?”

“Yeah -- what’s wrong, is Foster okay?” She hurried down the stairs and saw Brad standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Is everything okay?”

“For the most part, yes...except I came home from work today wearing this around my wrist.” He held up a brown bandage that had been rolled into a ball. Pam furrowed her brown in confusion as she looked at it. “Where’d that come from?”

“Well, I hurt my wrist today at work. Doctor said it was sprained. So he wrapped me up in these bandages.”

Pam was still not sure where Brad was going with this. “So...you took it off. Okay. Doesn’t it hurt still if you just hurt it today?”

“You’d think so,” Brad said. “But as soon as I came home, and I hugged Foster, all the pain went away. See?” He moved his wrist back and forth, and in odd formations to show that it was perfectly fine now. And Pam was starting to think that maybe she had been caught red-handed. Did Foster tell him about what happened in the kitchen?

“Oh...”

“Next thing I know, Foster’s blacked out on the floor and I’m trying to give him mouth to mouth.”

“What?! Is he okay? Where is he?”

Brad put his hands on her shoulders and said, “He’s fine, he’s fine. He’s resting right now. ...I did some checking around, and...”

Brad took a deep breath and said, in the same manner as a doctor might reveal the news to a cancer patient: “Pam, I think Foster is a metahuman. ...And I think one of his real parents was probably one, too.”

Clearly in shock, Pam blinked several times before she could catch her breath and speak again. “Muh...muh...what? Metahuman...?” She looked down at the floor. Then, when she realized what the word meant, she looked back at Brad in horror. “You mean those...those people with the...the freaky abilities, the ones back east?! No...not my baby...” She was so distraught, so upset, that she began to cry. Bradley put each of his hands on her cheeks and held her head up.

“Pam...”

“No, Brad! You don’t understand...they’ll... they’ll make fun of him at school, we’ll have to take him out, he won’t get a job, he won’t-- they’ll tear him apart...not my baby. Not my little boy. We went through so much to get him... Why me... why us?” She spoke through a curtain of tears, hysterical at best, and Brad could hardly understand her.

“Pam, don’t say that. Please...” He wiped her tears away with his thumbs, shaking his head. “Don’t even think like that. You know we’ve taught him better than that. He is not going to fail. He gets good grades in school, his teachers adore him... And most of all, he is our son. He is our baby. And we won’t let that happen to him. Right?”

Pam nodded, and through her tears, she managed to say, “‘Cause he’s our little Foster.” She cried into his chest for a few moments before the babbling started again. “What do we do, Brad...what do we do... How do I support...our metahuman son?”

In the calmest, most put-together voice, Brad replied, “We are going to love him and make sure that he knows he will succeed. And that we will be there for him every step of the way.” Pam nodded, but the reassurance from her husband did nothing to stop her sobs. She pressed her crying face back into Brad’s chest and wrapped her arms around him. If she didn’t hold onto something, she felt, she might just fall away. “I don’t know if I can do this...”

“Don’t worry, honey, we’ll figure it out. We will.”

Foster was hiding at the top of the staircase during the whole conversation, and he had cried twice as many tears as his mother did.

CHAPTER SIX: THE ACCIDENT

“Be careful on your walk home, Foster, it looks like rain.”

Pulling the hood of his thin cotton jacket over his head, Foster replied, “I will, Miss Jones, and thank you!”

“No, honey, thank you.”

Upon stepping into the school parking lot, Foster removed the hood to give his hair some air. In spite of the impending rain, it was still somewhat warm. He had lived in California all his life now and had walked home by himself for close to seven years. He knew to be careful and not to talk to strangers. But he also knew California weather pretty well. Whenever it “looked like rain,” it always burned off eventually. From what he could remember, it never rained in Riverside.

With his turtle backpack on, and a bag of gummy worms in hand, Foster walked through the parking lot and made his way home via the neighborhood near the school. It was peculiarly quiet today, but in the midst of his soft singing, he had hardly noticed. “Na na na, say it ain’t so, I will not go...turn the lights off, carry me home.” He then hummed through the rest of the chorus as he came to a long dirt road next to the biggest field of grass he had ever seen. Sometimes, his dad would take him there to play frisbee or just to have a picnic with mom. He usually stopped there for a few minutes after school to read a book, but tutoring the seventh-graders after school had kept him late. He knew his mom would freak out if he didn’t come home straight away.

“That’s a first,” Foster mumbled to himself as he watched a humongous SUV barrel down the dirt road, producing large dust clouds in its tracks. He continued to sing and walk down the road, heading towards the next neighborhood over and thinking nothing of it. He didn’t even look back until after the scream and the sound of the horn.

Gasping for air and trying to see through all the dust, which had covered the road in a blinding fog, Foster ran back to the scene to see if everyone was okay, maybe if there was something he could do. Maybe he could run back to school and get someone? As he sprinted towards the black mass that was the car, he really had no idea what he was doing, but he knew he couldn’t just pretend he hadn’t noticed it.

The car had broken through the wooden fence that separated the dirt road from the grass, and the person in the driver seat had been pushed back by an airbag. When he looked in through the front window, he saw that the person’s eyes were closed, but they were still breathing. Foster ran around the other side of the car and through the fence to go check on the person who got hit -- it was a woman jogger who was bleeding profusely, having been thrown onto some rocks. “Hello? Hello, can you hear me?!” He put his hand on the woman’s arm, but then everything gradually went black.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“Pam! Pam, I came as soon as I could, is he okay?” Brad sprinted across the waiting room to his wife, who quickly put her arms around him. “He’s fine, he’s okay.” For once, she was holding in her tears, but her body was shaking so much in fear that she sat back down as quickly as she got up. “They said he got hit by a car and was thrown into a fence. They’re checking for internal injuries. But...but I don’t know if that’s true.” She gestured towards a television screen. “It’s been all over the news. When they found him, they found him right next to another woman who had absolutely no injuries.”

Brad squinted as he looked at the television, studying the nine o’clock news story. As he looked at the video recording of the scene, he pointed at different parts of the television. “That’s his backpack...and that’s his candy!” The disbelief exploded onto his face as he listened to the news anchor. “...Police are saying this young child was walking home from school when he was hit by an SUV going forty-five miles an hour in a zone marked twenty-five. But what’s stumping everyone at the scene was a twenty-eight-year-old woman found directly next to the victim with not a single scratch on her. Police are still investigating this mysterious accident. Kurt, back to you.”

Brad was so shocked that he couldn’t move from his position. He didn’t blink. He could hardly breathe.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” said a man’s voice. “The things our children can do.” Brad turned to look at the man, and when he did, he noticed that the waiting room was now completely empty. “Can I help you?” Brad asked.

“Actually, yes, you can. I’m from the Hammel Institute. I’m here to talk to you about your son. Foster, right?”

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE PRICE OF PROGRESS

Dear mom and dad,

I can’t even tell you how much I miss you out here. I think about you every day, and sometimes it’s really hard to sleep at night. Hammel doesn’t offer any driver’s ed classes, so I’ll have to wait until I come back home after graduation to learn how to drive.

But until then, sixteen hasn’t been as sweet as I thought it would be. Speaking of sweets, though, thank you again for the shipment of the gummy candies. I can’t stop eating them! I’ve already finished two bags. Thanks again, dad, for picking out all the orange ones for me and setting them aside. I end up eating all of them, though, because it reminds of me of when we used to stay up late and eat gummy bears together while having a movie marathon.

The people in my classes are struggling a lot though -- to control their powers as well as their emotions. They don’t talk about it very much, but I can tell that some of them miss home as much as I do, maybe even more. Yesterday, one of my new friends -- she has a water power -- accidentally made it look like she peed her pants, even though it was just water. I gave her a hug and told her to ignore the funny looks and remarks.

It seems that I’m slowly becoming everybody’s shoulder to cry on. In the past few months, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say, “Foster, I came to you because I knew you’d understand.” It’s nice to know that people can rely on me. It makes me feel like a lot less of a freak, you know? I mean, the more time I spend here, the more I feel like I’ve found someplace that I belong. I miss you guys a lot, but after learning about who I am, I really feel like I’m just a normal kid here. And it’s really nice being able to talk to other metahumans...like adults. People who have gone through this before and know our struggles.

Now that I’ve been here for so long -- so long, what am I saying? I haven’t even been here for a solid five years yet. But in the time that I have been here, I can say that I’ve developed a lot more respect for myself. Sometimes it’s hard to go all the way to self-love, because I still feel like I make stupid mistakes a lot. But I’m not afraid of who I am anymore, or of what I can do. It may not be a tool for social advancement, but they teach us how to control our powers, how to live with them. Hey! I’ve only blacked out twice this year! I am definitely making progress.

I still haven’t found my birth mom yet. I think about her all the time: where she is, who she is, what she might be doing. Sometimes I think it’s silly for me to have so much love for a person that I don’t know. Sometimes, I fantasize that she’s a beautiful Broadway star or an ambassador to a foreign country who is respected all over the world. Is it crazy to think about her like that? I don’t ever call her my “real” mom, because you’re my real mom. Is that bad? Do you think she would consider that disrespectful? Sometimes, I don’t know.

I hope I get my wish.

Love always,
Foster

CHAPTER EIGHT: HOME AGAIN

Foster graduated from Hammel about five years ago, when he was twenty-one years old. He returned home promptly to spend as much time with his family as he possibly could. After an extremely emotional reunion, Foster told them that he had been accepted to the University of Southern California to pursue a degree in counseling. He spent the next five years of his life reconnecting with his family and finishing out his education. Per his mother’s request, he took driver training lessons and got his own driver’s license. This caused him to turn into his mother’s chauffeur, but of course, he is much too kind to object to this.

Since the time of the accident, Pam had gotten well over her fear of and insecurities over metahumans, and for the first time in their relationship together, she and Foster bonded extremely well through Pam’s weekly book-club meetings. Together, they shared literature with other members of the neighborhood. At one particularly heavy and emotional meaning, they had decided to discuss the nonfiction work Prayers for Bobby. It was during this, one of their longest sessions, that Foster came out with his sexual preference, and he said he had felt many of the things that Bobby had felt before in this book -- fear, isolation, confusion. And after she heard it, Pam hugged her child close to her. Crying, emotional as she was, she whispered, “I’m sorry. ...I’m sorry you felt you had to keep this from me for so long.” And the group erupted in tearful applause to show their support. Book club was never the same after that.

Upon completion of his studies at USC, Foster made a great change in his life and decided to go back to Hammel for a counseling position. He agreed to fulfill his mother’s wishes to come visit as often as possible, but he felt that his talents and experiences would be most useful back at Hammel. Hammel had given him a lot, and he felt that it was his duty to return the favor.

Behind the M A S K . . .

Name: Anthony, or Ant(h).
Age: Twenty-two.
RP Experience: I’ve been roleplaying for ten years.
How did you find us?: An ad on rpbuzz.

Show your S K I L L S . . .

Tap, tap, tap went Jeremiah's fingertips on top of the plastic lid. This was his fourth cup of Dr. Pepper since he arrived, and that was less than twenty minutes ago. He wanted to give Zachary a special graduation present, but he was completely wired today, and things were eating at him more than usual. By now, the AP Calculus exam was completely out of his mind, and he didn't even really care about his test scores at this point. Other things were bugging him -- family things, personal things, things that could not be talked about with most people. In fact, they were things he wasn't even sure he could ever talk about with anyone. It was unthinkable, and if everything he had been brought up with was true, he was destined for a painful fate in hell.

Jeremiah would have chosen to meet Zachary at Ma's Diner. Since his sister worked there, she'd probably give them free drinks and maybe half off a stack of pancakes or something. But if anything unintended came out of his mouth, Jeremiah certainly did not want his sister or any member of his family within a ten-mile radius. Plus, with his state of anxiety, he didn't want to answer the same question every five minutes. Are you okay? Yes. Are you sure? YES! The McDonald's seemed like the most neutral place to go. It was clean, crowded, and had no member of his family working there. Plus, it wasn't Clement's -- he didn't want Zachary to think they were going out on a hot date or something. Oh god, it's starting. The gayness.

With the most uncomfortable, bouncing legs, Jeremiah sat at a table in a corner behind a huge row of plants. Next to him was a gift, and on the table in front of him were some cold chicken nuggets that he was far too anxious to eat. By now, he was just trying to control the rhythm of his breathing -- and make sure that he actually wasbreathing. He hoped that spending some time with a close friend would help take his mind off of his insecurities, his failures, and (most importantly) his sins. He wondered if, somehow, God was just sitting up there getting a huge kick out of all this. At least I'm good for something, Jeremiah thought to himself. At least something good could come of this misery.