Writings

11:11

Ever since I could remember, I made wishes. In the car, at school, in my bed late at night, even at falling stars.

My dad was in and out of mine and my mom's life. He hadn't been in our life for a while. I didn't even remember the last time I had seen him.

Maybe once, when I was seven. A distinct memory replays over and over in my mind. Halloween night, 2007. I dressed up as a cat.

Mom and Dad were dating again after a very messy divorce four years prior. Dad and Mom coordinated outfits; she was a pirate princess and he was the captain. Of course, I was the cute cat.

Everything was going okay. Dad was laughing, Mom was smiling, and I had just been told that Grandma was getting me a puppy for Christmas. Even the trick-or-treaters that came to the door seemed more cheerful.

As the night ended and the children went home, the atmosphere changed. Dad started arguing with Mom. Loud yelling echoed through our home as I hid in my closet. Tears marked my face as I begged God to make it stop.

Glass shattered downstairs and the front door slammed shut. I knew Dad had left. He always left mad after he had a fight with Mom.

I crept downstairs, my cat whiskers I had drawn on myself smudged from crying. My costume was wrinkled and fear pitted in my stomach. I didn't know what I was about to see.

Mom was trembling as she crouched down on the floor to clean up the shattered glass cup. Whiskey marked the tile and I knew then that Dad was drunk.

When Mom finally turned and saw me standing on the platform, a bruise was forming under her eye. Before I could say anything or offer to get the dustpan and broom out, Dad came back inside and ordered me to go back upstairs.

Over the years, the closet became my hiding place. Mom and Dad's dating life after the divorce when I was three ended when I turned thirteen. He had cheated on her and then left in the middle of the night.

After he left, Mom took a turn for the worse. Boyfriends were in and out of our lives. Mom lowered her standards; she allowed these men to walk all over her.

By the time I turned fourteen, she was addicted to drugs and I became a ward of the state. My own parents had given up on me.

By the time I turned fifteen, I met this guy who was also in foster care, Dallas. He was older at seventeen years old, just six months away from turning eighteen.

In those six months, I snuck out of my foster homes, went to parties, hung out with Dallas in his super cool Mustang way past my curfew.

I felt loved by him. For once in my life, things were looking up. Oh, and the dog I was supposed to get for Christmas when I was seven? My grandma died a week before Christmas and my Dad wouldn't buy the puppy. He said I wasn't ready for that responsibility.

Now I wished I had the dog. It was Dallas's birthday. He was eighteen today, finally aged out of the system.

He took me to the pharmacy, bought me a pregnancy test and him a pack of cigarettes with a fake ID. The cashier looked at his very obvious fake ID and shook his head, refusing to sell him the cigarettes. So, in normal Dallas fashion, he punched the guy and had the cops called on him.

While he spent the night in a jail cell, I spent the night huddled in the pharmacy bathroom, holding a very positive pregnancy test and sobbing.

Dallas still had his phone so I texted him. He said the kid wasn't his and he was breaking up with me.

So here I was, a ward of the state with a track record of sneaking out late, pregnant at sixteen with no future plans to attend college or make a name for myself.