FREEDOM AT LAST

Chapter 1 In the Midwest of the United States, Columbus, Ohio, in a small town called Downtown, there lived a family of three. The father, whom people called Mr. Jerry, was a pastor of a church called Grace Fellowship Church. His wife, Tomi, was a nurse at their town hospital, and they had a beautiful daughter called Michelle. Michelle was a beautiful 16-year-old Black girl. She was tall and extraordinarily beautiful, with her long, black, straightened hair, deep brown eyes, long eyelashes, and perfect little curves. She was the envy of other girls around her. To everybody, she had everything: a beautiful family, a beautiful home, and the perfect life. But to her, the beautiful home that people admired was a like prison. She saw herself living in a prison because she had no say of her own. Her parents practically decided how her life should be. She didn’t make decisions of her own or do the things she liked like a normal teenage girl. Her life was far from normal. Her parents made the decisions—from the clothes she wore, the food she ate, and the hobbies they wanted her to like, rather than the hobbies she liked, to the classes and extra activities she participated in at school and even the friends she made or had. She had no private life or space. Everything she did or every move she made was closely monitored by her parents. Michelle’s life didn’t belong to her. It belonged to her parents. Watch out for Character 2.