Chapter 3

I was eleven when Brenda, my mother, finally reappeared. She was engaged to a wealthy businessman named Steven Scott and wanted to show off her "perfect little family" to him.

She arrived at Grandma Rose' s house in a sleek, black car that looked like a spaceship on our dusty street. She brought me a gift: a frilly, pink dress that was at least three sizes too small. It was the kind of dress a five-year-old would wear. It showed me just how little she knew me, or cared to know.

"Put it on," she ordered, not asked. "We' re going to Steven' s."

At his luxurious city apartment, a place with more rooms than I could count, Brenda' s true colors bled through. She criticized everything about my grandmother.

"Rose, for God' s sake, use a coaster. You can' t just put your wet glass on a mahogany table."

"Don' t touch that, it' s an antique."

"Honestly, your country ways are so embarrassing."

I saw the hurt in my grandmother' s eyes, the way she made herself smaller, trying to disappear. Something inside me snapped.

"She' s not the one who' s embarrassing," I said, my voice shaking but clear. "You are."

Brenda' s face went pale with fury. But Steven was there, so she just smiled a tight, fake smile.

The next morning, I woke up to find Grandma Rose gone. There was a note on the pillow next to me. She had left in the middle of the night. Later, I found out why. She had given Brenda her entire life savings, every penny she had, to convince her to let me stay, to let me go to the city' s top schools.

Life in that house was a new kind of hell. I was an outsider, a burden. Steven' s son, Andrew, made it his personal mission to make my life miserable. He wasn' t just a bully; he was cruel. The bullying climaxed one afternoon when he locked me in a dark, musty storage closet. I pounded on the door, screaming until my throat was raw, but no one came. I missed a crucial midterm exam.

The school called a parent-teacher conference. Brenda was furious. Not that I had been locked in a closet, but that my failing grade for the missed exam made her look bad. It made Andrew' s own poor performance look even worse by comparison.

In front of the teacher, Brenda' s rage exploded.

"How could you be so stupid? You' re dragging your brother down!"

She slapped me, hard, across the face. The teacher gasped, but said nothing.

The final straw came a week later. Andrew found the hand-knitted sweater Grandma Rose had made for me, the only thing I had left of her. He threw it on the floor, stomped on it with his muddy shoes, and then, with a twisted grin, he lit a corner of it on fire.

"This is my house!" he screamed, as the smell of burning wool filled the air.

I didn' t think. I just reacted. I flew at him, scratching and kicking. For the first time, I fought back.

Steven came home to the chaos. He saw the smoldering sweater, Andrew' s crocodile tears, and my furious face. He didn' t ask what happened. He just grabbed my arm and dragged me to the door.

"Get out," he snarled.

I looked at my mother, a desperate, silent plea in my eyes. She just stood there, her arms crossed, her face a blank wall. Then, she opened the door, pointed to my small bag of belongings, and slammed it shut in my face.

"Take your trash and get out."