Italics - Rue's perspective
Aaliyah had always been a good girl. Ever since she was young her parents were truly in love with her.
She was an only child so she was spoiled and had her parents' attention most of the time. The only time she didn't was when they worked.
Her mother was an entrepreneur for her own clothing brand and her father was a banker so they both earned a respectable amount of money. They spent most of it on dance lessons for Aaliyah.
Her parents were a beautiful couple and they would get compliments everywhere they went. It was clear that their daughter would be beautiful too.
She was a talented young dancer and she had dreams of dancing on stage in The Nutcracker and Swan Lake but that all changed when she started high school.
When she was 14, she met Maddy and Cassie who were totally different from her. The three girls would have sleepovers and do all of the other typical things teenage girls do.
They convinced Aaliyah that hot boys and expensive clothes were the only way of surviving high school.
Aaliyah didn't want to disappoint her new friends so she decided to change herself a little.
Instead of wearing pretty dresses that stopped underneath her knees, she wore crop tops and short skirts that barely fit her properly.
She was shy at first. She didn't really feel the need to wear revealing clothes but she did it anyway.
Although, when she received compliments from boys and girls, she started to get gain more confidence and she didn't care about what others thought about her.
This obviously caught the eyes of many horny boys at school but one boy didn't like this new version of her. Nate Jacobs.
Nate Jacobs had been best friends with Aaliyah since she was 10 and the two were inseparable.
They became friends when Nate accidentally kicked a soccer ball in her face in the playground. He took her to the nurses office and they immediately became close.
Aaliyah still hung out with him in High School because he was probably the only guy at school who didn't want to get with her.
Nate was always protective of her and when Nate started to date Maddy, the two girls got even closer.
Even though Aaliyah spent most of her time with Nate, Maddy was never jealous of that.
She knew that Aaliyah was loyal because the two girls had plenty of secrets that they kept between them.
One of them being that Maddy didn't actually loose her virginity to Nate. He didn't like how Aaliyah started to change her outfits to please others.
Every time he was with her outside of school cars would pass by and he would notice older boys looking at her ass. He would deal with it though, just like he did with Maddy.
He tried to tell her to stop wearing revealing outfits but she refused. She was very naive and so she continued to go against him.
The only problem with Aaliyah's life is that she had lost her ambition to dance and her parents noticed this. They argued all the time and Aaliyah wasn't used to it.
Her parents decided to stop her from going to Ballet lessons which was a shame because she was very talented. She would still dance in her room when her parents weren't watching.
They hadn't even tried to throw away her pointe shoes so she sometimes would sneak into her old dance studio and dance at the bar.
That was the only thing that kept her happy at that point.
When she reached 15, she told her friends that she lost her virginity to a guy at a party and that she never got his name but they were the same age.
She always talked about wanting her first time to be special but she didn't care anymore.
She didn't have trouble with boys but she wanted to find one that liked her for the person she was and not because of the way that she looked.
At 16, Aaliyah started to get into drugs which was a mistake because she could barely hold her alcohol.
She was a dark place because her cousin Kennedy was taken to a Psychiatric hospital because she was an extreme alcoholic.
Aaliyah was really close to her so she would come to me for help to cope. That was a big mistake.
I introduced her to Fezco and the first time they met she was immediately intrigued by him. She would go back weekly to his store.
Sometimes she wouldn't even need drugs, she just wanted to talk to Fez. She just wanted someone to listen to her...and he did.
Aaliyah didn't care that he was a drug dealer. He understood her more than anyone and that's why she liked him so much.
She knew that her parents wouldn't approve of her talking to a drug dealer but she didn't care. All she wanted was someone to care for her...and he did. A lot.