Rotten Tomatoes

       I used to be normal. I used to be the average American Dream kid. I lived in Florida with my mom, my dad, and my older sister Sharon. I had pretty summer dresses, a house by the sea, gorgeous friends, and the picture perfect radio-show host mother. Boys wanted me, and girls wanted to be like me. But then my dad decided that smoking would be the proper habit to fill the void that his dead brother left behind. That started it all.
One cigarette.
He got hooked on smoking, then started staying out all night in bars with his buddies. One of his fellow smokers gave him some of their pot, so my dad turned himself into a druggie. It was rare to see him twice in the same week. That wasn't even the worst of it. The idiot that used to be a man I called my father left a lit cigarette in my mom's car. When she got in to go to work, she didn't see the already forming flame. Five minutes later, and the fire was bigger than her car. The flame ate her up, and no one ever mentioned it. There was no law suit because there was no one except for a 13 year old left to defend her. She didn't even have a funeral. That was the same summer that Sharon had her first baby. She moved to some ranch to bond with her son and boyfriend, leaving me basically alone in a house full of ghosts. The ghosts of my lovely mother, my joking father that was always home, and my single, independent sister that believed she would never need a man. For a year and a half, I basically raised myself. Sharon came home once a month with her constantly adding family to tell me how much she missed me. Not enough to take me with her, I guess. Every single time she came to visit, she stared straight into my fiery hazel eyes and told me that I was loved. My father did come home sometimes, but it wasn't something to look forward to anymore. He was always wasted, and only came home to drop off a few bucks from gambling to keep him safe from possible jail time. I walked the four blocks to the store twice a week to pick up the cheapest things I could find to keep me just healthy enough. I ate every day, so getting food down wasn't the problem. It was keeping it down. Six months after my mom died and everyone who hadn't already left me finally did, I developed a form of Anorexia. I just couldn't handle the way things were going in my excuse for a home. It wasn't that I thought I was fat or anything, I just felt too useless to take care of myself. If no one else wanted me, then why should I want myself? So I stopped building up my nutrition and made myself into a 13 year old girl who weighed 80 pounds and forced herself to throw up the only things that were keeping her human enough to be alive.
Nineteen months after the biggest downfall of my life, I woke up on a Saturday morning to find a blonde woman sitting by my coffee table crafted out of cardboard. She was typing furiously fast on a small handheld computer. Her ironed blouse and rip-free pants felt more than out of place in this part of Florida. I was, of course, terrified, but when I glanced at her made-up face and shiny hair, I saw traces of my mother.
"Aunt Ruby?" My voice croakily broke open the silence, and the woman looked up. I remembered a younger version of this woman holding my hand as I stepped into the cold waves and blowing me a kiss as she turned out the lights when she came to visit. I wondered how she got into the house, but I didn't really care. Someone was here for me.
"Charity!" She put down her device and stood up, gracefully sweeping herself over to me.
"W-what are you d-doing here?" I didn't want to sound like a scared little kid, but I was. For a fourteen year old girl raising herself, I was a lot more scared of basic things than I should've been.
"Sharon called," her face and voice were laced with empathy as she put her hands on my shoulders and studied my own face, "And I was shocked to hear that you were living all alone in this ghostly house. You deserve so much more than that. What on Earth have you been doing for food? Bills? Education?" I explained that my father dropped off food money, and that Sharon sent in checks to pay the bills. Mostly all of the furniture had been sold to neighbors, with only a mattress, a table, and some cardboard left. As far as education goes, I didn't have money for school supplies or nice clothes, so I just read my mother's old books and avoided situations requiring math or science.
"Well then, I've got good news. My old friend, Ana, is feeling a little lonely, then I heard about your situation, and I thought: Charity can live in Cleveland with Ana! Won't that be great?" Won't it be? Did I really want to have constant human interaction?
"Um, okay. Can't I come live with you?" She laughed a little bit for no apparent reason, and explained that she was a "very busy woman" who "didn't have any time for babysitting." Aunt Ruby was seeming less and less like a beautiful, kind hero and more like my father: Making excuses for me to go anywhere but with them. I was 14 now. I was too old to be tossed around like a hot potato. Yet, all these thoughts stayed inside me as I spent the next two weeks awaiting June 24th. The day finally came, and I was more than sure that I would regret it.