Chapter 1
I took off my headphones and looked up to see my History teacher standing right in front of my desk. Without looking too closely I could already tell she had tons of makeup caked on. Definitely not something an almost-fifty-year-old teacher should do.
"Miss Thompson," Ms. Harrison, the History teacher, said. "Are you paying attention?"
"Of course I am."
She smirked at me like she usually does when she thinks she can embarrass me or get me into trouble. "Then you wouldn't mind telling the class three of the United States' allies from World War II?"
"Does Britain, France, and Australia work for you." I smiled innocently and put my headphones on again. Ms. Harrison's smirk fell off her face and returned to the front of the class. For the rest of the period I continued to listen to music and doodled in my notebook without being interrupted a second time.
The rest of my classes passes by in a blur, but I'd much rather stay in school longer than necessary instead of going home. It's not that I don't love my family, it's just that they aren't my true family.
About five years ago, my mother got remarried. I'm sure the man could have been some normal guy with a decent job and a stable life, but the guy my mother decided to marry happened to be the one and only Robert Maxwell, CEO of of a software company and richest man in the city.
He's a nice man, I have nothing against him. The thing that bugs me though, is that my mother got married to Robert only four months after my father had died.
And don't even get me started on Robert's daughter, Anna. She's the one I have a problem with, or rather, she has a problem with me. She acts like a total drama queen and treats me like I don't belong in the family, which is true but she's never made the effort to include me in anything that involves family issues or anything of that sort. My own mother would choose Anna over me any day, but then again, my mother was the one who sent my brother away to boarding school.
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"I'm home," I yell as I entered the mansion-like house. It seems like no one is home, but I doubt anyone would have answered if there was someone here.
I ran up the stairs with my backpack and entered my room.
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When my mother had first mentioned that we would have to move in with Robert after they got married, I had immediately refused. The idea of even leaving my childhood home behind scared me. My mother tried to force me to leave for the sake of her marriage, but it was my brother who eventually convinced me to move in. He said our father would want us to lead a more privileged life, and at the mention of our father I agreed to go.
When I did move in, Robert tried to buy my happiness by hiring a professional interior designer to decorate my room as a moving in present. My soon-to-be-room had been decorated with blindingly bright colors, frills, lace, and stuffed animals. In other words, it looked like a dress in the form of a nine year-old's room.
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By the time I had to go downstairs for dinner, I had long ago finished my homework and had spent the remainder of my time listening to music and daydreaming.
"Sabrina, it's time for dinner. You better not come down with those headphones of yours again," my mother yelled.
"Yes, Elaine," I yelled back, "because I'd much rather spend my time listening to you complain about everything I do instead."
"Don't call me Elaine!"
I rolled my eyes but headed downstairs anyways.
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Dinner is always the same: Elaine will call me down with a warning to keep my headphones away from her precious family dinner time, I'll head down with my headphones anyways, she'll look at me with disapproval and compare me to Ana, and then I sit down as far from everyone as I can and try to convince myself to eat whatever nonsense diet my mother is trying to force us into this time.
Today, however, my mother stopped me before I could reach the bottom of the stairs.
"Go back up to your room and put on a nice dress. We'll be having guests at dinner tonight."
This surprised me. Whenever Robert or my mother invite someone over for dinner, it usually ends up taking place at some really fancy and really expensive restaurant.
Not that I actually go with them. Anna has always convinced Robert and Elaine that it's for the best that I not go. I'm not complaining though. I'd much rather stay in my room all night than be criticized by a couple of strangers.
When I was sure my mother had left for the kitchen- most likely to make sure the kitchen staff had everything prepared- I walked downstairs wearing a black long-sleeved dress that reached just above my knees and a pair of combat boots. Of course I also brought my headphones. My outfit is everything my mother would hate and I love it for that. Just thinking of all the ways I can easily infuriate my mother makes me laugh. She cares so much about what other people think of her that she's willing to overlook my existence until I do something that can potentially ruin her image and that of this family's.
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Bad Reputation
Teen Fiction"Some people think reputations are everything. Then there's the people who couldn't care less what other people think." After her mother remarried to a wealthy businessman, Sabrina Thompson was suddenly sucked into a world she knew she could never b...
