I never actually heard the sentence that was given to my sister. I was in too much of a daze. But I knew what is was as soon as I heard my mother start weeping next to me.
My sister was carried off to the penitentiary before we could even say goodbye.
I went home with my parents who, again, ignored me and went back to work.
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I do have to say that my family did have quite a bit of money. We weren't in the rich people class but we were a small ways above the middle class. I was even enrolled in a prestigious private high school called Jamison High.
But with all that has happened with Cleo our money was being stretched a bit thin.
I had also made the decision that I wanted a change of pace in my life.
So I decided to move schools.
I decided on a school about 20 minutes away from my neighborhood called Hawthorn High.
The place wasn't as new or nice as Jamison, but it was bigger and had more history to it.
My mom didn't exactly understand why I choose to move school and why I choose Hawthorn High.
But she didn't question it, and just let me do what I wanted.
I had decided that a bigger school would mean more people wouldn't care about who I was or who my sister was and what she did, because less people would know.
The day that we went to enroll me into the high school my mom decided that she wanted to talk to the principal privately. So I made the decision to walk around the school, and become familiar with it.
I turned a corner and crashed straight into a frazzled girl with black hair.
She stared at me, quickly apologized, and started to walk away.
She stopped, looked back at me and asked, "Are you okay?"
I was shocked that a girl that I didn't even know, noticed me enough to ask me if I was okay.
I quickly nodded my head yes.
She looked at me one last time before nodding and running off.
I stared in the direction that she left before heading back to the main office to meet my mother.
My mom returned and quickly took me home.
I laid in bed later on thinking about the girl in the hallway. It's been a long time since somebody looked at me in concern like that.
My friends would ask me once and awhile if I was doing okay but they wouldn't press too much.
They were to busy.
So were my parents.
Too busy to worry about me, and too worried about Cleo. Again. They never really noticed when I was feeling down.
Whenever they actually took a second to ask I would always answer with what was expected of me.
"I'm fine."
I was just their little girl who would follow their orders perfectly so they didn't have to focus on me. They just assumed that I was okay.
Everyone assumed that I was okay.
But that's how I was to the world. I was left unknown.
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