It all began with that most clichéd of expressions.
Once upon a time.
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl named Erika Andress. But no one that would know it, because no one ever seemed noticed her. Not her mother, because she had died shortly after she was born. Not her father, who died in a car accident the day after she graduated from the sixth grade.
In fact, the only attention she ever consistently got was the bad kind, especially from her stepfamily. Her stepmother was a rich MILF, and she knew it. Therefore, anyone that wasn't an immediate family member was automatically relegated to second-class citizenship. What made things worse that this witch with a capital 'B' was a teacher at her school. So when she messed up, Ms. Allison Andress would be among the first to know it.
And no good especially came from associating herself with her two stepsisters, because Fiona and Jade were plastics. They belonged to the group of kids that was the popular kid's version of royalty at Mary Theresa's School for Girls.
And yes, she was enrolled at the area's private all-girls school. While the locale she lived in was very affluent, only the upper crust sent their girls there. The only reason that Erika could come up with for why her stepmother would enroll her there was to keep an even closer eye on her.
In fact, besides her mother screaming at her to wake up two hours ago, her two stepsisters giving her nipple twists while she was trying to dress, and the abysmal rainstorm going on outside, there was near nothing to look forward to today. The fact that today was Friday was a double-edged sword. While Fiona and Jade would be busy getting drunk with their friends, she would be under the ever so watchful eyes of her dear stepmother doing chores.
The animosity between her sisters and her was so great that she even had to walk to a different bus stop than those two. Fortunately, there was a friendly face waiting for her at the stop.
Said face was opening his door and ushering her inside his more moderately sized house. "Come on outta the rain, Erika. You'll getcha death of cold."
Erika stepped into the warm air of the house and closed her umbrella, placing it carefully beside the door. The senior's wrinkled chocolate face shifted into a kind smile, his white hair moving slightly from the movements of the ceiling fan. "It's good to see you, Mr. Daniels."
"Please Erika, I've told you a hundred times, just call me Buck. Have a seat and I'll getcha an orange." Erika smiled at that, because as Buck would say, 'An orange a day keeps the doctor away, but don't bother with apples. They taste something horrible.'
As she sat down, Buck couldn't help but admire the way the young woman had grown up, "I gotta tell 'ya Erika, you're looking more like your mother every day."
Erika would never truly know it, but Buck was right; she was her mother's daughter. Her long red hair and those green-blue eyes were a definite hint, and she had inherited her mother's naturally perfect dimensions where they really counted. Her face was more a combination of her mother and father, giving her a naturally striking face- one that no one ever seemed to notice.
That said, her clothes were a little old, but that couldn't be helped. From what Buck understood, she mostly got to wear hand-me-downs from her sisters. The only unused clothes she got were underwear.
"What classes you got today?" Buck handed her a perfectly unpeeled orange, into which Erika tore into happily.
"US Government... AP Environmental Science..."
"I keep tellin' ya, you got both your parent's brains."
"Calculus..."
"I'm sorry about that." There was only one Calculus teacher at the school, and it happened to be her stepmother.
