Arrivederci 🔪

Amore: Part I

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December 25, 2014

Well, here you are. Today is Christmas, and you are my present. I'm happy as hell right now because I really need something where I can write down plans and thoughts. I will call you Amore, which means love in Italian. Now let's get to business. I will tell a little about myself before I start writing serious stuff.

So, Amore...my name is Prudence Cardwell. I'm fourteen years old. I'm from Detroit, a city of motor industry. I live with my parents and two brothers. My dad Richard is forty-seven, he works at Ford. My mum Palutena is forty-four, she's a programmer. I have three brothers: Fred, Dan, and Oleg. Fred is thirty-one. I haven't seen him much in life because he's a jailbird. My dad's ex-wife abandoned them when Fred was born. Trixie Elena Hubs was the name. All I know about her is that she got fourteen years in prison. For what, I do not know, dad refuses to tell me. Back to Fred: a few months ago he has been locked up again for raping some girl in a nightclub and will be there for eight years. Why was he in jail for the first time?, you'll ask? He broke into somebody's house and stole like, twenty thousand dollars, a game console, and jewelry.
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Robin stopped for a second. "Her brother was in jail twice?! What the hell is wrong with him?"

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Dan is seventeen. He is a magnificent person...with an excellent personality, gorgeous on the inside. He was my parents' first child. They adopted him from Naples when he was two years old. Mum told me that his biological mother couldn't afford to take care of him after his dad got killed in the army. But I'm more than happy that he's with us...I love him more than anybody else in this world.

Oleg is nine. I hate his guts. He's the most annoying kid on the planet. Last year mum and dad went to Russia without us. I and Dan were just doing our own thing and out of nowhere, dad was like: your mother and I are going to Russia, and we'll send you two over to Toledo to your Aunt Fanny and Uncle Barry. It was a big shock for Dan and me; we've never been left like this. We thought they were going for a romantic trip or to explore the Russian architecture, BUT IT TURNED OUT A LOT WORSE!! They didn't come back alone, they brought a kid with them. Dan and I were very confused. What was this kid doing here? Was this an exchange student? And then dad said that this was our new brother. He introduced himself as Oleg Aleksandrovich Kolbin when mum corrected him: "not Kolbin, Cardwell. We are now your family."

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What kind of parents do that? First, they tell their kids they're going somewhere that's eight thousand kilometers away out of nowhere and send them to Ohio, then they come back with a new brother without negotiating with them first?! There's something wrong with her parents, but it's only the beginning, so I must continue reading this, Robin thought.

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When Oleg first arrived, he spoke absolutely no English. He did not understand us, neither did we understand him. In our apartment, we have three bedrooms: my parents', mine and Dan's. Well, it was like that before Oleg. When he came, dad made me and Dan share a room and gave Oleg my bedroom. I was really mad at him for that. He just took my property away without discussing it with me first.

I must go now, so I'll come back later. In the next entry I'll talk about myself.

xoxo, Prudence

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Robin stopped reading for a second and made an inference that Prudence didn't have a good relationship with her family. But when she mentioned that she doesn't have her siblings anymore, what exactly did she mean by that? I must keep reading this...this is like a real book! Should be in bookstores, was in Robin's thoughts.

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December 29, 2014

Dear Amore,

I'm back again. As I promised, now I'll talk more about myself. I love video games, horror movies, and talking about death. My family isn't very rich, so all I have for video games is a Nintendo Entertainment System with Super Mario Bros and The Legend Of Zelda. What do I think of them?, you'll ask...I don't like Zelda very much, but only because I beat it so many times. Mum and dad refuse to get me any new video games, so Zelda is what I've been playing for a long time. Mario Bros is fun, except that I get stuck on levels quite often and I end up raging because I keep dying at the same place for twenty times in a row. I've never beat it because once you lose all your lives, you have to start the whole game all over again. When that happens, I end up throwing the controller into the wall and infuriating like crazy.

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Prudence turns out to be a crazy gamer! I should invite her to play PlayStation with me sometime, but let's continue reading this.

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I go to Cass Technical High School. I'm a freshman there.

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No way!! That's the school Robin attends currently. And he attended it since freshman year. Prudence Cardwell, he thought. Robin opened his drawer, pulled out the yearbook from the 2014-2015 school year, and flipped to the "C" section. "Ca, Ca, come on..." he whispered and flipped. 'Cardwell, Prudence,' was the fourth name in the 'Ca' section. Robin looked over. No way. This girl looked exactly like Prudence he met a few weeks ago, but younger. "This can't be," exclaimed Robin, "This girl is dead, and she's been dead for more than a year,"

Robin carefully examined the yearbook and tried to find another girl named Prudence Cardwell. No sign of her. There was only one Prudence Cardwell. This girl is a mystery, thought Robin and put his yearbook away. He opened up Amore and continued to read:
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I only have one friend there. His name is Joshik Gjoni, and he immigrated from Poland during the summer. He speaks well English and is an interesting person to talk to. He loves me as a friend, but I love him more than a friend. I'll keep it to myself for now, because I'm afraid to lose him.

Mostly everyone is against me. People don't enjoy being around me. I don't like anybody either, but there's this one that's getting on my nerves every single goddamn day. Her name is Sara Moscow. She's from Ypsilanti but states that she's from here, just to seem cooler. Ypsilanti is a crappy town near Ann Arbor, it's a suburb of Detroit, they're both suburbs, but Ypsilanti is poor as hell, and Ann Arbor recently became a city. It's growing and growing, getting better every year. Sara has been my enemy since late elementary school. No matter how much I reported her to teachers, psychologists, social workers, school principals, she wouldn't stop doing her shit. They tried separating us, putting us in different classes, still, she'd always find me in the hallway or outside of school and do shit to me.
Sorry babe but I gotta run. I'll be back soon, okay?
Love, Prudence.

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Robin realized this was the last entry for the year 2014. He listened for a second. No sign of Prudence. Where did she go? Why isn't she here with him? He removed the yearbook from his drawer once more and looked into the 'M' section. 'Moscow, Sara' was there. Robin knows that she is dead too, somebody killed her, but who? When he read about it in the news, they didn't give the name of the murderer. Robin then went to the 'G' section. 'Gjoni, Joshik'. The only kid who had the last name starting with a G that year. Robin would have contacted him and asked him about Prudence, but last summer he went back to Poland, plus Robin didn't have any of his contact information. Looks like I'll have to find everything out alone, he thought, putting his yearbook away.