6 months to live

Uninvited guests

There were some signs that stuck out about Chelsea which I was quick to bring up and she was quick to dismkss. Her life was a mystery and she wanted it that way.

Chelsea never talked about her family. I knew nothing about whether she had siblings, or where she lived. She always shut me down when I asked her about her life after school. Everything about her personal life was disclosed. Knowing Chelsea Evans meant I had to live with her secrets. I could never discuss them, or try to find out....but what I never expected was her secrets to come find me.

I was home alone with Santiago since my mother had run off to work. The house was quiet except for the television and Santiago washing dishes. I was doing my homework, more like staring at my homework in confusion, when someone started knocking loudly on the door.

Since I really had nothing to do, I raced to the door. I had to hold my wig in fear of it falling off.

"Are you Maya Perales?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Although Santiago was trying to hide it, I knew he was eavesdropping on my conversation with Chelsea's parents.

"Did you hear about what happened to our daughter?" Chelsea's mother blew her nose into a tissue.

I shook my head. "Not the true story, only rumors."

"She was found out cold in the bathroom of one of the brothels two states away from here."

My jaw dropped. "Chelsea?"

The father put his wife's head on her chest. "We never would have guessed that she would work in an environment like that either. She never discussed anything with us but we trusted her."

The mother then started talking. "Chelsea is the second oldest of our children—"

"How many children do you have?"

"We have six kids," her mother answered. "We understand that Chelsea had big dreams growing up. She didn't want to grow up like us. Her fantasy was that she wanted to live in a huge mansion, be famous, and have no kids...she always talked about that when she was growing up."

I furrowed my brows. "You're...not...rich?"

"We live in a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment."

I turned my head to the side as I scratched the back of my neck. Chelsea was a fraud. I was disgusted to know that her whole life had been a circle of lies.

"As Chelsea started her second year of school, we became homeless. We had two kids at that time, her and her sister. Since kindergarten, Chelsea has had her perfect world set up for her. More than anything in this life, she wanted to be rich. The only obstacle in her way...was us." Her mother paused for a couple of seconds to wipe her tears. "We couldn't afford her idea of a perfect life. A relative of mine whom I trusted told me that he would take Chelsea in and make all of her dreams come true."

It felt like someone had punched me in the gut. That sounded like a recipe for disaster. "What happened?"

Chelsea's mother started crying more. Her husband had to continue for her. "We really don't know. Chelsea came back to us even more worse than before. We had managed to find ourselves a tiny apartment with one room, and that's where we stayed until our fourth child." Her father embraced his wife was she cried into his arms. "She was never 'an out there,'" he used hand quotes, "kind of girl, but when she came back....it was like....she was a stranger to me. Chelsea refused to eat, she didn't talk, and she was enraged when her mother fell pregnant with our third child."

I scratched the back of my neck again. I wanted to curl into a ball and then roll down a hill.

"She became abusive to her siblings. She would hit them and call them nasty words. We had never expected that behavior from her.
Chelsea was extremely bright, so bright that her teachers would constantly bother us, telling us to bump her up a grade. She was so driven to become successful in this world, and she worked brutally hard for it. Then one day she changed....it was like a miracle happened and she started finally understanding the beauty of this world."

What? I wanted to laugh.

"Chelsea started getting to know her siblings more, and then for the first time in forever she told us that she loved us. It was so creepy to us that it felt surreal. She started talking about a girl named Maya Perales and how much people liked her. Maya was rich, talented, smart, stunning beautiful, everything she wanted to be. As her parents, we were upset of course because she was belittling herself so we told her everything we thought about her."

I smiled a little. It felt like an honor that Chelsea thought of me like that. The exact way she thought of me...I thought of her back.

"We found out a couple of days after her passing about her many secrets that she hid."

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This chapter was getting too long so I had to end it there.

Be completely honest! What's your opinion on Chelsea?
Since Chelsea is a part of me, lol, I love her to bits. It's understandable where she's coming from but still...I think that she should have AT LEAST gotten help.
If she were my friend I wouldn't care how she gets her money, I'd be understanding and I wouldn't judge. I would just be there to advise her and keep a close eye on her if things get suspicious. Me and Maya are NOT the same by a mile so I really don't know how she would react.

I'm so weird for acting like this because these people aren't real >_<. I just really like feeling my characters. I like putting myself in their place so I can tell the story from their side.

I kind of feel like making a Chelsea story...