Scared Straight

Lia and Mariah Laney are twin sisters who live in the closest thing to paradise, the island of Oahu, Hawaii.

Their mother kept them until she no longer was financially able. Leaving the six-year-old twins under the pretenses that she was going to the store, she left them on a church stairwell, never to return.

They fell asleep on the concrete steps that night, exhausted from crying. A preacher found them the next morning and called 911, ultimately leading the parentless girls to an orphanage. There, they were treated well; given decent food and warm beds. What the caregivers didn't mend was the trauma the girls had underwent.

At the age of nine, they scaled the fence and escaped the orphanage together. Mariah became the protector of Lia, though biologically it was meant to be opposite. She was the leader of their small pack. To survive, she would snatch things from people when they weren't looking. Lia caught on fast. They discovered the relaxing effects of nicotine. They learned how to shoplift. They learned how to stay warm at night.

After weeks of living on the streets, a lady finds them sleeping on a park bench cuddled together. Her name was Consuela, of which the young girls confused as Abuela. No matter how resistant they were, she successfully urged them to her home. She fed them, gave them baths, and cleaned their many cuts and scrapes. But she was an older woman, in no position to raise more children. She takes them to her son Anthony.

All her intentions were to get the poor girls off the streets, and as they expressed resistance to a shelter, Consuela hoped her son had what it took to help them. However, Mariah and Lia hated Anthony.

Now, they've lived with him for four years. At the bright age of thirteen, they attend school, and are given the bare necessities of life such as clothes, food, and shelter. Other than that, they have nothing to thank Anthony for.

Other than their addiction to methamphetamine.