THE CENTER

I hated my father even before my mother died. He was the most selfish man I had ever seen. My father was a bank manager, so that meant that he had a lot of money, but here is the funny part of the story, he would rather spend his money building a mansion than paying my school fees. He would rather buy you something useless than give you the money to buy something useful. When my mother died he became worse. He would leave the house for days sometimes even weeks and when he came back he would be drunk. Things only got worse from there, the new routine was he would come back drunk and beat me black and blue then when he is done he would pray for me. I would cry and beg him, scream but he never stopped. It started out small, I had no money to buy food and take care of my need so I started selling drugs, I would steal and beat people up and take their money. Things got so bad that I took the drugs to make me forget about my f****d up life and that asshole of a father. It slowly got worse for me as I took the drugs every time. I became somehow addicted to it, craving the freedom and escape from life it gave me. The drugs prevented me from thinking, it made my mind blank. It made me do thing that I would not normally do like defend myself when my father beat me, it gave me courage to think without consequences and I liked it. It was on that faithful day when I overdosed. I was found unconscious and half dead on the street. After been rushed to the hospital the doctor told my dad I that I need to to rehab and my asshole of a dad took that as an opportunity to get rid of me. Rehab lasted for three months, three months of being with other fuckups like me. It didn't help at all, if at all I felt empty and more dead on the inside, but I knew I needed to get out of that hellhole, so if it meant pretending to feel better, then that what I was going to do. For three months I did what they wanted and if they asked me questions I tell them the answers that they wanted to hear. To me they were stupid people who would want to believe any thing so they could get rid of us The day before I left rehab three police men came to the rehab. They looked somehow disgusted at the sight of us. They were two black men and one white man. They all look at us in pity as one of the black men walked up to the woman in charge of us. "Hello miss we are looking for Anna kings", the man said as the other police looked around for me. "Okay", she said as she looked for me, when she finally found me she called me to come over before looking back at the man. "Now that she is here what do you need her for?", she asked firmly as liked straight into the eyes of the police. "We would like to inform miss kings here that she is required to go to a school that is for troubled teenagers where she can continue her studies", he said turning to look at me. I was shocked at this realization and that was why I asked, " what if I don't want to go"?, I said challenging them. "Then, miss kings we have been informed that you sold drugs for a living and selling drugs could land you in prison for a minimum time of twenty years, so its your choice go to the school or go to jail for twenty years", he said calmly and void of any emotion. I looked at them for a few minutes to figure out if they were just bluffing but realised they were serious, so feeling defeated I ask, "what is the name of the school and when will I be going?" The police officers looked at each other for awhile and one of them said, "you will pack your things tonight because we are living first thing tomorrow morning". "And the name of the school is what?" I asked feeling irritated. The police officer looked at me and said one word that made freeze. 'THE CENTER'