Their Little Girl

The last six months of my life had been difficult to say the least. Since it was my senior year of high school, I’d been working my ass off trying to pass all my tests just so I could keep my grade point average up in hopes of landing a scholarship. Unlike most teenage girls, I didn’t date or hang out with girlfriends. I hadn’t even been to a high school party or dance, and prom was the furthest thing from my mind. Much to my displeasure, I wasn’t one of those brainy kids either, the ones that always seemed to know all the answers. Grades didn’t come easy. I had to work hard for them studying non-stop if I even wanted to be considered for those coveted college scholarships. I wasn’t under any delusions about my chances, either. If I didn’t get one, I’d end up having to spend the next several months working at the local fast food chain or the mall just to save up enough money for a semester’s worth of classes. Our family wasn’t destitute or anything, but I knew Mark, my stepdad, just hadn’t planned on paying the tuition of a second child after sending my stepbrother David off to university just three years earlier. The flake that she was, my mother hadn’t planned for my education at all. To be honest, I would have been highly surprised if she gave a damn whether I graduated high school much less attended college. For a while, I’d been thinking that it felt like she no longer cared about me or our family, and she ended up proving my theory true when she abandoned us to run off with some rich old man a mere three months into my senior year. I didn’t think I’d ever understand how a mother could just run away from her family like that, but then maybe I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was when my own mother left. She gave no excuse, no reassurance that she loved me or wanted me to leave with her.