Hollow

Chapter 1

Is it ready yet Ma'am-Ma'am?"

I bent over to check my ma'am's cookie cake. She sat in her rocking chair sipping a cup of tea.

"Stick a knife in it," she said.

I washed a knife that was left in the sink and stuck it in the cake. I took it back out and saw the melted chocolate left on it. I licked the knife.

I sighed. "Nope, not ready, but the chocolate tastes good."

I got back up. Ma'am-Ma'am was looking at me.

"What is it? What did I do wrong?"

"Nothing, sweet pea." She put down her cup of tea on the coffee table. "You're... You're just getting so big ... so beautiful."

"Oh ma'am," I said. "Don't make me blush." I tucked my hair behind my ear and sat at the table.

I'm Hollow Mabel (Halo for short), and for as long as I could remember, my grandmother has been taking care of, and teaching me things for my whole life. Showing me things everyday. Looking out for me when nobody did.

We went through thick and thin together, she was always there with me, and I.. was always with her.

I don't really know my parents, and Ma'am doesn't talk to them. And like my grandma says, she doesn't know my father anymore. She says she doesn't know the man he had become. And she would be

devastated if I had to move in with him if anything happened to her. My father never wanted to meet me, even when he had the chance. He doesn't care, and neither do I (maybe thats a lie). My grandma doesn't care either. She just asks him if he could see me just for my sake.

My mom, well I... I have never seen or heard of my mom. Whenever I try to ask Ma'am she immediately says she doesn't know and she never met her.

Anyways, I had a pretty normal childhood over that. The only thing is that my Ma'am is very big on manners, and life skills. She warns me that I will need it someday, when something happens to her. I don't tend to think on that side though. Nothing would or could happen to Ma'am-Ma'am, she's 77 years old and she is in a dang good shape for her age. Very healthy too.

Me though, I'm a pretty decent, well mannered and well behaved kid. I don't do much during the day. I cook, clean, go outside with Timmy, hang out with ma'am and watch T.V. You know normal kid stuff. Even though through the years I hated, and still hate this god awful boring, lame town we live in.. I learned to deal with it. I never really made any friends my age before, and I don't go out much. I love to draw and color in my coloring books, and I love gardening. I guess you can say I'm pretty much an old soul, I guess it was because I live with Ma'am, even the way I dress, I don't really pick out what I wear but most tops I have would have some flowers on them, with some bell bottom jeans. One thing I guess I can say I hate is the way Ma'am dresses me.

Since Ma'am-Ma'am always took care of me, I don't really understand why she had to teach me things so often. She always did most of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and more. But then, since I was older I took charge of those things. Ma'am usually guides me even more strictly now and gives me a look when I do something wrong. Sometimes I get annoyed with her about that too. She expects me to do stuff perfectly. I guess I could understand that, but at the same time I don't. Ma'am could always do those things for me. I guess not anymore since I'm fourteen but I guess she's just teaching me how to be a woman. 

Ma'am is the best person in my life... She homeschools me. And from that one word "homeschool" You could pretty much tell that I am a house mouse. Some things I didn't experience as a kid were amusement parks, waterparks, arcades, all that fun stuff. All me and Ma'am do is go to the garden, the supermarket, and the house. Sounds boring, but we made it fun. To be fair though, we live in those annoying places where we were surrounded by all trees and the supermarket was always like..20 minutes away. So I could understand why we can't go to many places. Ma'am used to be a teacher, so when she retired.. Her budget wasn't really that high. She couldn't spend her money foolishly. For extra money, she sold her cookie cake after she retired to make extra money to buy fun stuff, like toys,board games and eventually, a T.V.

'See, I never really had a phone... Ma'am was really old school so she never had a hand-held phone. And of course, since Ma'am was old school, I had to be too. But, It wasn't that bad where I was watching black and white colored movies.