Their Little Girl

CHAPTER ONE

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.