My father died when I was just five years old. Strangely, I remember that day perfectly. He got an emergency call from work, but on his way there, a tractor-trailer crushed his truck and took my daddy with it. The news was heart-wrenching. Mamma and I, instead of opening Christmas presents, mourned my daddy. It was Christmas Eve when it happened. I would never find another daddy as beloved as my first, but then Mamma met Bailey. A hardworking individual, he worked for a factory company known as the Foster Co. The company has been in his family tree since the Industrial Revolution, so Bailey had a lot of ka-ching ka-ching in his pocket.
Mamma and I met him in the city. We crashed head-on into each other in the subway. I was seven, but even at such a young age, I knew that look Mamma and Bailey shared. Love. It was love at first sight. They dated for a year, and on my eighth birthday, they were walking down the aisle with wedding bells ringing.
“Well, that escalated quickly.”
I wasn’t sure about Bailey at first. When he wasn’t working for Foster Co., he was a cop, and cops scare me. He looked like the typical cop: a strong body build, a bald head, and a mustache. While cops usually do make me uncomfortable, Bailey was the rare exception. He grew used to my mother’s crazy lifestyle quickly, and before I knew it, both he and she bought me anything I wanted. With so much money on their hands, they spend about 80% of it on me, their little girl. Now, this was both a positive and a negative: positive because I could finally get that $1,000 dress I saw at the store, but negative because, since Mamma and Bailey are so busy with work and constantly buying things for me, they almost never spend time with me. For 90% of the day, they are on their phones and talking to work, and they only listen to me when I ask for something.
It’s always, “Serena, tell us what you want, and we’ll get it for you,” or “Oh, Serena, do you want that $3,000 dollhouse? No problem.” Sometimes I feel like Mamma and Bailey forget they even have a child.
When Daddy first died, Mamma and I were in a financial crisis, so Mamma had to work two full-time jobs. She was a businessperson, a teacher, and a part-time librarian. She got home every day around 3:30, fixed me dinner, and left an hour later for the library. When she got out of the library, around 9:00, she went straight to the office. She did not get home until 5:00 every morning. I do not know how people can handle that much stress. I call them “insane.”
Because Mamma was so busy with her three jobs, she couldn't take me to school, so I started homeschooling. Things did not get much better when she married Bailey. Sure, she quit her teaching and library job, but now she works for Bailey’s company. I have to struggle through school myself. They do not have time to help me with homework, study for a quiz or test, or write an essay. I am excessively independent for a twelve-year-old. Never in my life have I had a true friend. My only friend is our dog, Cooper. He is a four-year-old Golden Retriever. The main reason why Mamma and Bailey got him is so that there is at least one living form to keep me company throughout the day. We got Cooper when Mamma married Bailey. As the years passed, we grew closer, but I still wanted a human friend. Would I ever get one, though? I never thought I would; there was too much chaos in my life, but all that changed when we moved to the Midwest United States. As soon as we did, my life would never be the same again.
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