Dandelions | JJ Maybank Story

Prologue

Avery "Aves' Hayes. The pogue princess. Absolutely gorgeous with long brown hair and ocean blue eyes. She had it rough growing up but turned into one of the strongest people the pogues had met. She was accidentally conceived and later born at the Kildare County Hospital 4 days after her future best friend, John B Routledge. Since she was born she felt cursed. Cursed with bad home life and bad luck. Her parents were, to be honest, two abusive, alcoholic, drug addicts who weren't even close to being ready for a kid. While they were terrible people they had never yet laid a hand on her. 

They took care of her as a baby, not well but she was taken care of. Overall they were just absent parents. Never sending her to school or to make friends. Not even paying attention to her so the second she was out of diapers she was sent outside every day at 7 am and her father made it very clear she couldn't come inside until 6 pm(she didn't have a way to tell time but she came up with a rhyme saying "when the sun set, home she went") from there she gets a few minutes in the bathroom and goes straight to her bedroom. If you could call it a bedroom, really it was just the smallest room in the house with a mattress in the middle and her one teddy bear named "mom". 

Anyway, to spend her long days of nothing to do but explore her home island, she walked around play fighting with sticks and creating her own friends out of washed-up trash from the beach. Now living like this she had to create her own tips and tricks to get by. To eat through the day she had to resort to stealing food from grocers and food stands. She didn't have to worry about getting new clothes because while still being a shit mother, Rebecca did feel a motherly bond to her daughter and whenever Avery's father was gone at work Rebecca would take a few dollars stashed away to take her daughter shopping for a few new outfits to keep her getting by. This didn't happen regularly only once every few weeks. 

Once a week she ventured over to Ms. Lana's house. She had met Miss Lana one day around 6 years old while walking the beach, they began a conversation about Avery's teddy bear. She told Lana about her life and while Lana didn't think it was her place to possibly call CPS, she did offer two days a week to teach Avery everything she normally would learn if she was going to school. 

Now while this wasn't a good way for a small child to be living it was the only way she had ever known until life took a turn when she was 7. Her parents split. Now they were never married so no legal divorce was needed but all she remembered is one day she came home as the sun went down and as she walked in the door her father walked out opening the door with a lot of force resulting in Avery being hit by it and getting a large cut from the splinters on the door. 

The next few years go by with her father not being able to afford his own house so even though he split from Rebecca the three still lived in the same house. Her parents got worse in every way and that's when the abuse started. It began with little things. Getting spanked and hit on all parts of her body, and an occasional right hook from her dad. 

As the abuse grew into unspeakable things, she grew older and her parents started allowing her in the house as long she kept it clean and made their meals. Her parents both always had hookups over and it unbelievably came to an even more toxic environment for a child to be. 

April 19th, 2009. A day Avery remembers as clear as it can get as it was the day she was rescued. It was the day she remembers not feeling as cursed anymore. 8-Year-old Avery was walking along the shoreline. She placed her teddy down on the sand and propped it up with a rock. "Are you ready mom? Im gonna run down this beach backward! Im gonna be so fast!" She began to run backward until she collided with another person. They were laying on the sand on a boogie board practicing surfing on their stomach when Avery's foot accidentally kicked their rib and she fell backward landing over the random boy's body.