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Prologue

This world isn't a bright place. Everywhere I look is violence, from my daily life, to the violence I hear on the news. Everyone keeps saying that "life isn't fair", and unfortunately, I began to understand this in the seventh grade. My parents were yelling at each other constantly, not caring that their 13 year old daughter was right upstairs, hearing everything they said.the accusations... the cries of hurt... the yelling... I heard it all.

My mom eventually had enough. One day I woke up and she was gone... just gone.

Her belongings had been packed up overnight, so that when I awoke the house seemed bare. All the love had disappeared just as swiftly as my mother did. No goodbyes. No "i love you"'s, and no way for me to have guessed that when she came into my room the night before to say goodnight, what she was actually saying was goodbye. If only I could have known that was the last time I would see my mother.

My father never got over it. He was barely there my 8th grade year, but when I started High School, he started trying to be in my life more, which was good... of course it was good. It wasn't his fault my mother cheated on him. But the thing is, his presence could never replace that of my mothers, no matter how much I wanted it to.

High school has been a disaster for me so far. I can't seem to manage to keep my grades above a C, no matter how hard I try. Mostly because I have two jobs on top of going to school.

Sophomore year my father gave up. He started drinking, and he hasn't stopped. He's still bringing me to school everyday as an effort to be a good father. But even then he's hungover, and I fear for both our lives when he's driving.

He got fired from his job shortly after I started my sophomore year, because he always showed up drunk. Since then, i've picked up two jobs, and now I can barely get 3 hours of sleep each night, due to homework I get a C on anyways.

It's about 2 weeks into my Junior Year, and i'm already extremely exhausted, because of all the problems mentioned before, but also because its my second week in a new school. When my dad got fired I had to switch schools because my old schools tuition was too high for me to pay, even with two jobs.

So here I am, halfway through the second week of school, and i'm still sitting alone at lunch. Nobody cares enough to approach me, probably because i'm always trying to get as much homework done as I can before lunch ends, and I also have large dark circles under my eyes from getting three or less hours of sleep each night.