LOVE IN DISTRESS

Sometimes, one moment is all you need for your life to change completely. It can be a good change or a bad one, and it all depends on what happens in that moment. As for me, I was about to experience both at the same time. ******** My name is Annabelle, and I am 19 years old. Before I became a student at Sterling Heights University, I was just a cleaner’s daughter. My mother, Sarah Williams, had worked as a cleaner at the school for many years. Every night, after the students and teachers had gone home, we would return to the school with our old cart. On it were a mop, a bucket, soap, water, and worn out rags. The school was huge and eerily quiet at night. The halls were dark, and the only sound was the echo of our footsteps against the marble floors. We always started in the Administration Building, cleaning offices, bathrooms, and long hallways until my arms ached from pushing the mop. I didn’t like the work, but I never refused. I did it for my mother. We needed the money for rent, for food, and for electricity. Most days, I went to my own school exhausted, but I never told anyone why. To my classmates, I was just the quiet girl who sat in the back. I never imagined I would one day be a student at Sterling Heights University. That school wasn’t for people like me. It was for rich kids with expensive cars, new phones, and fresh clothes every day while my mother and I cleaned their desks after they left. Then one night changed everything. It was a cold Tuesday in winter. The school had turned down the heat, and we could see our breath in the air. My mother was sick that night. She had a bad cough, her face was pale, and she moved slowly. I felt a sharp pain in my chest watching her struggle. “Mom, please sit down. You’re sick. You need to rest,” I said. “No, Annabelle. If we don’t finish the work, Mr Johnson will fire us. Then we will have nothing to eat,” she replied. So we kept working. We were on our hands and knees in the main hallway of the Administration Building, scrubbing a black shoe mark off the white marble floor. It wouldn’t come off easily, and we had to scrub hard. While we were there, a tall, thin man walked past us. He wore glasses and a dark suit and was speaking on his phone. I recognized him immediately, Mr Harrison, the Dean of the school. As he walked, something slipped from his coat pocket and fell to the floor with a soft sound. He didn’t notice. He kept walking, turned the corner, and disappeared. I looked down. Beside my red bucket was a stack of money held together with a silver clip. I picked it up with my wet hand and counted quickly. Four hundred dollars. “We can keep it, Mom. No one saw, and he won’t even miss it,” I said. My mother placed her cold hand on my arm and shook her head. She looked tired, but her eyes were firm. She took the money from me and held it tightly. “Annabelle, if we take this money, we are thieves. And we are not thieves. We may be poor, but we are not bad people. God sees everything, even when no one else is watching. Being honest matters more than having a full stomach for one night. We must do what is right,” she said softly. I wanted to argue, but deep down, I knew she was right. She had taught me honesty all my life. So I nodded. We left our tools behind and walked to the campus security office. My mother handed the money to the officer at the desk. What we didn’t know was that a security camera had captured everything from the moment the money fell to the moment we returned it. **_ One week later, a man from the local news knocked on our apartment door with a camera. The school had told his station about what my mother had done. Two days after that, our story was in the newspaper. That same night, our faces appeared on television under the headline: “Poor Cleaner Teaches Whole City About Honesty.” Not long after, Mr Harrison called my mother and asked her to come to his office. She was terrified. She thought she was going to lose her job. I went with her. When we entered his office, he was smiling. “Mrs Williams, I dropped that money on purpose,” he said. “Every year, I test the cleaning staff to see who is honest when no one is watching.” He explained that many people in the past had kept the money, and he had to fire them. My mother was the first person in ten years to return it. Then he turned to me. He asked about my grades. I told him the truth, they were very good. He slid a paper across the desk. At the top, it read: “Full Scholarship Award.” “You can attend Sterling Heights University for free,” he said. “Tuition, books, everything is covered for four years.” “Is this real, sir?” I asked, barely able to breathe. “Yes, Annabelle. It is real. You earned this,” he replied. My hands trembled as I read the paper again and again. My mother began to cry, thanking him over and over. Just like that, everything changed. That morning, I was a cleaner’s daughter. By afternoon, I was a university student. Now, I live between two worlds. During the day, I sat in classrooms beside the rich students, at desks I once cleaned. And at night, I returned to those same classrooms with a mop in my hand, working beside my mother. All this was enjoyable, but for a while. I met with two people who suddenly determined my stay in the school.