Tales of a Neverland Lost Girl

Unhappy Cycle

                  

In which a sixteen-year-old girl named Sierra talks to her ex-stepmother, Emma, about society and being a teenager. Emma was married to Sierra's father but they divorced when Sierra was thirteen. Emma is Sierra's father's second wife. Sierra still visits Emma because that was the only mother she's ever known. Her real mother is around but Sierra has a better relationship with Emma. Emma lets Sierra drink with her so that's why she is drinking wine. Emma never had any of her own children. She is going to be forty and the only child she ever had was Sierra but that wasn't even her blood. Emma is taking foster parent classes and that's how the conversation starts.

-------------

(both having a glass of wine, in the kitchen, chilling on the floor)

Emma: Well, I've been taking foster parent classes.

Sierra: Oh my God, Emma! That's great! Do you like it?

Emma: Oh, I love it. I'm so excited to take care of a kid again. I really miss it now that you're all grown up now.

Sierra: I'm not that grown up. I still need to be raised.

(they both laugh)

Sierra: What age group do you think you'll take?

Emma: I don't know yet. I'm leaning more toward the younger kids. I love children. I do want to take on a teenager though. But everyone in the class says I shouldn't.

Sierra: Why not?

Emma: Everyone says that it's easier to take on a little kid because you can sill control them. They say teenagers are just too much. They are trouble and they are stubborn. They say that they can't be helped and won't be able to understand the world. They say the whole fourteen to eighteen category is just a mess and I should stay away from it.

(Sierra is taken back by this, she knits her eyebrows together and is almost disgusted by the thought)

Sierra: That's awful. If you don't take those kids then no one will. I don't get it.

Emma: Don't get what?

(Sierra took a deep breath, she pours more wine into her glass and gulps it down)

Emma: You okay?

Sierra: I don't get why in this society, in this world, teenagers get this reputation. We are pegged as insubordinate and rebellious and that we don't know what we're talking about. Well of course we don't know what we're talking about. We expect an answer from our authority but all they do is push us down.

(Sierra starts to shake her legs, she's getting hyped up)

Sierra: People say that teenagers don't know anything about the real world but in reality we have to make the biggest decision of our life between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. We have to decide what we are going to be when we get older, where we want to go to college, what we are going to study when we get to college, what friends we should have, what parties we should attend, when we should have sex, if we should smoke a cigarette, if we should drink, if we should talk to our parents about that bad thing that we did or will they yell at us because we're teenagers and we should be more responsible. News flash! Most kids in eighth grade get dropped off to school. Most kids in eighth grade are enjoying their last years of freedom and they don't even know it yet.