Chapter 4 The Age of Sacrifice

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Sixteen.

That's when childhood ends.

Not at eighteen, when they hand you a diploma and call it freedom.

Not at twenty-one, when society lets you toast your broken dreams with cheap champagne and fake smiles.

No. For me, it ended with the silence after the applause I never got.

It ended the day I walked out of Holloway Secondary School, my spine straight, my hands clenching a creased certificate that smelled faintly of ink and resignation. There was no one at the gate. No balloons. No cameras. No Maria clapping in the crowd, no Liam holding a handmade sign, no Nia running up to hug me.

Just silence.

And inside me? A hollow pit where celebration should've been.

---

I came home to the smell of overcooked rice and wilted cabbage. Maria was stirring a thin pot of soup in the kitchen, her eyes foggy with exhaustion. Liam and Nia were squabbling over the last heel of bread in the living room, their voices rising and falling like static against the worn-out radio humming in the corner.

No one said, "Congratulations."

No one even noticed I was home.

I walked past them, through the creaky hallway, and out the back door into the evening. The wind was gentle, almost mocking. I sat on the chipped concrete steps in my fraying blazer, my satchel still slung over one shoulder, and watched the sky bleed from orange to purple.

The last light of childhood, slipping away.

---

"You don't have to work right away," Maria had whispered the night before my last exam.

She said it like a plea, as if wishing it could make it true.

Her hands trembled as she poured the tea. We hadn't had real sugar in weeks.

"I can take more shifts at the hotel," she offered, her voice breaking. "Maybe the night ones..."

"No," I said quickly. Too quickly.

Then again, how many times had we had this conversation?

Her sweater hung off one shoulder like a warning sign. Her skin had gone dull. There was a tiredness behind her eyes that no sleep would fix.

"You're barely sleeping as it is," I reminded her, forcing steel into my voice. "If you collapse, who's going to look after Liam and Nia? Me?"

Maria looked away. That was the worst part. The way her eyes would dart off, like she couldn't bear the truth in mine.

I wanted to touch her. To hug her. To cry.

But I didn't. There was no room left for softness.

---

The job hunt was brutal.

I didn't expect red carpets. But I didn't expect to be invisible either.

I walked all over town in cracked flats, dressed in the only pair of decent black trousers I owned, handing out CVs that were really just thin lies on cheap paper. I wasn't sixteen-I was centuries older inside-but I still looked too young. Too polished. Too desperate.

The boutiques turned me away politely. The offices didn't even make eye contact. One woman at a supermarket told me I had "too pretty a face to be stocking shelves." I smiled, thanked her, and left. Then stood behind the building and cried for ten minutes straight.

I started scanning the classifieds with a ruler and red pen. Circle. Cross. Call. Repeat.

Every rejection was a bruise. But I kept walking.

---

A friend of a neighbor said there might be an opening at Rosie's Diner on 8th. I didn't even bother asking what it paid.

The manager, a squat woman named Rosie with tired eyes and a cigarette that never left her lip, gave me a quick once-over.

"You got two hands?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You know how to count?"

"Yes."

"You're hired. Don't be late. Uniform's in the back."

And just like that, I was a waitress.

---

I started the next morning at 5:30 a.m.

The uniform was stiff with starch and smelled of sweat from whoever wore it last. My hair was tied back in a tight ponytail, and my shoes-hand-me-downs from someone's cousin-bit into the backs of my heels with every step.

The breakfast rush was hell.

"Order up!" the cook shouted, the clang of the bell echoing in my skull.

I carried trays stacked with plates slick with grease, dodged spilled syrup, and tried not to gag when a man coughed into his napkin and handed it to me with a smile.

"More coffee, sweetheart?"

"Where's my toast, darling?"

"Smile, beautiful! You'll get more tips that way."

I smiled. Always.

Because tips kept the electricity on.

Because Liam's school supplies didn't pay for themselves.

Because if I didn't work, Maria wouldn't get her pills.

---

That first week, my body felt like it was unraveling. My arms ached from carrying plates. My back screamed from standing twelve hours straight. I burned my hand on the coffee pot on day two and didn't even cry.

I was sixteen and surviving on instant noodles and grit.

But I didn't quit.

Every night, I came home to the dim apartment, stepped over shoes and homework papers, and collapsed into bed fully clothed. Nia would curl up next to me sometimes, her tiny body warm and fragile, her breathing steady like the lullaby I never got to hear.

I whispered promises into her hair.

"Someday, baby. Someday I'll give you more than this."

---

The days blurred into one another.

Wake up. Work. Sleep. Repeat.

I missed school dances I was never invited to.

Missed Saturday hangouts at the movies.

Missed group study sessions and morning gossip and carefree giggles in the hallway.

I missed being a teenager.

But what stung deeper was the realization that no one seemed to notice I was gone.

---

I kept a tin can under my bed.

It had once held Maria's cookies from a Christmas long before things went bad.

I labeled it with a fading Sharpie: "Someday."

Every spare coin I got went into that can. Tips. Extra shifts. Found change in coat pockets.

Every clink was a little prayer.

Someday I'd go back to school.

Someday I'd get a real job.

Someday I'd leave this life behind.

But "someday" stayed a whisper in the dark.

---

Then came Rina Lang.

I met her during a Tuesday breakfast rush. She walked in like she owned the sidewalk outside-and probably did. Her suit was powder blue and tailored within an inch of its life. Her heels clicked like punctuation marks. She never looked at the menu. Just said: "Eggs over easy. Toast, no butter. Black coffee."

She didn't smile. Not even once.

But she watched.

Every time I brought her plate, her eyes followed me-not in the way men did, not like she wanted something. More like she was measuring me.

Then one day, as I poured her coffee, she said flatly, "You've got presence."

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You could be something better than a diner girl," she added, slipping a sleek card across the table.

Lang & Co. Events

Rina Lang, Director

"Come see me. Friday. Clean clothes, ponytail, and look me in the eye."

And just like that, she was gone.

---

I stared at the card for hours that night. Turned it over. Held it under the flickering bulb above my bed. Wondered if it was real.

Trust wasn't something I had anymore. But maybe curiosity could outrun fear.

Or maybe I was just tired of smelling like eggs.

---

That Friday, I went.

The office was a glittering glass building uptown. I'd borrowed one of Maria's blouses from when she worked full-time-cream-colored, button-down, still smelled faintly of rosewater.

The receptionist barely looked at me.

Rina didn't offer tea or a seat. She handed me a notepad and phone list and said, "Temporary work. Schedules. Calls. Light event help. If you mess up, you're out. Clear?"

"Crystal," I said.

And meant it.

---

Lang & Co. was chaos dressed as elegance.

Tight deadlines. Impossible clients. Glitter and disaster behind the curtain.

But I learned. Fast.

How to calm angry brides. How to take a message like it was a military command. How to smile while saying "no" a hundred different ways.

The job didn't come with stability, but it came with something else: momentum.

For the first time, I wasn't just surviving.

I was climbing.

---

Still, every paycheck went back into the family.

Liam needed new shoes for gym class.

Nia had outgrown her jacket.

Maria's meds had doubled in price.

I was eighteen before I bought something for myself. A used paperback. The pages were yellow, the cover creased, but it felt like gold in my hands.

---

I kept working. Kept saving. Kept counting days like steps on a ladder.

I wasn't where I wanted to be.

But I wasn't at Rosie's anymore either.

And that meant something.

---

I wasn't the girl who once danced in the halls of Westbridge Academy.

I wasn't the heir to a name that meant nothing now.

But I was something else.

Someone who kept going.

Someone who didn't shatter.

Someone who could carry the weight of three lives on her shoulders and still smile at strangers.

I was sixteen when childhood ended.

And eighteen when I realized I had turned that broken ending into the beginning of something new.

I didn't know what was waiting for me on the other side.

But I was still standing.

And sometimes...

Sometimes that had to be enough.

For now.