The change of Veronica May

Veronica May

"Veronica, how many fingers am I holding up?" said Cyrus.

"Cyrus, I can still see without my glasses, I'm not completely blind," I replied.

Dean, not very amused, rolled his eyes. I would have been ready to call the ambulance and report someone's eyes rolling back into their head. I honestly still don't know why I hang out with these people. I ask myself that question way too often.

Tired and beat from the school day I said, "See you guys tomorrow, I have to cook dinner again. Amber never cooks these days."

Cyrus constantly told me to call my mom "mom" and not Amber, but I didn't care for his opinion. No one really did care for his opinion the more I think about it.

Walking home is usually the worst part of the day. San Francisco isn't the best place to be a 16 year old girl walking alone, if you get the point of what I'm saying. Whenever I walk down the cold, misty streets at 5pm every day, I feel someone is always watching me. Sadly I can never prove that there is someone behind me, and I can't tell myself that I'm alone either, which I know I'm not.

When I arrived home I found something very peculiar, a white top hat sitting on the kitchen counter. My house never has anything as fancy as that hat, considering my daily attire is faded jeans, hot topic t-shirts, and green converse to add a special flare of color.

Amber came out and said, "You like it? Only 3 bucks at the swap meet today! The only thing not to love about it was the creepy salesman who tried to make a move on me. I can't blame the man for doing that though."

Annoyed and now mentally disturbed I went to my room, taking the hat with me. I carefully observed the hat, concluding it was truly a very expensive one. Why would someone sell it for three dollars when it's probably worth over two hundred dollars?

I set the hat aside while I went to go and start to cook dinner.

Of course, Amber left to go and "party" with her friends, which usually meant gossip and get drunk in the town park, and said "Cook dinner for yourself and don't answer the door for the cops, got it?"

I replied with a "yes". I didn't make dinner that night; I was too lazy to function.

I arrived back in my cold as an icebox room and to my surprise the hat was gone. I assumed Amber took it out to show off the fact she owns more than cheap knockoffs of designer brands and thought nothing of it. Feeling tired, I went to bed at 6pm. Not doing homework was a rare thing for me, but some days I let myself relax.

I woke up the next morning with a golden ray of sunshine shining right in my eyes. When I became coherent of my whereabouts I smelt something burning. I ran with a fire extinguisher ready to put out any blaze that faced my path. Turns out it was a surprisingly still drunk Amber trying to cook herself some breakfast. Out of curiosity, and a little stupidity, I asked Amber if she took the top hat with her.

Amber said, "I haven't seen that piece of junk since you took it, you little thief. Now get out of my face, I don't want to see any kids today."

She baffled me since she hardly ever sees me anyways. What confused me was, where had the top hat gone? It didn't have legs to walk away by itself. Being me, I know I'm a messy person; I probably just left it somewhere without realizing it. I got dressed, with a messy bun for a hairstyle, and started to trot down the sidewalk to school, late as usual.