Stars for Sale

Chapter Two: Beginning of my Second Life

Ella, 13

I couldn't believe it when Father announced he and Robin were getting engaged. I gasped. I cried. But to everyone else, it just looked as if I were happy. How could I explain that Robin hated me, and if she were my stepmother, her torture would never be escapable?

Becca and Kimberly, who would become my stepsisters, made fun of me constantly, took all of the clothes I liked out of my closet and insisted that "since we're friends, we'll share clothes," never returning them. I was devastated. The days afterward I cried in my room. School hadn't even started, but I had no friends. No one knew me anyway, because I lived so far away from the city. All of my friends lived in Scotland, which is where I wanted to be, back with Mum and the friendly man who used to be my father.

A week later, Robin came into my room with Kimberly and Becca. 

"Now, Ella," she said with a sickly-sweet tinge to her voice, "Since you three will be sisters, that means you'll start sharing everything. I'm sure you'll be the best of friends. But you'll have to sleep downstairs, in the study, because Becca and Kimberly need rooms too. Your father said it would be fine. You don't need a closet, do you?" She stood up and walked into my closet, ruffling through the few clothes I had left. As soon as her back was turned, Becca and Kimberly's faces turned back to their normal sour expressions.

"Oh, Honey, you don't have that many clothes, you'll be fine just putting them in the file cabinets..."

I gaped. First she wanted to give my beautiful, large bedroom away to one of my stepsisters and move me into the tiny, non-air-conditioned study, but now she wanted to store my clothes in a file cabinet? It had gone too far, but I just couldn't bring myself to set her straight.

I suppose in my head I was screaming at her, but now I think back and I'm disgusted at myself. To think I was such a coward and that I was afraid to stand up to Robin like that, I can't believe that I'm... well..

Anyway. 

That night, Robin and my two stepsisters moved all of my things out of my room and into the study. Kimberly's huge bed and eight suitcases' worth of clothing was squeezed into my room the next day. Becca whined for weeks afterward about how mean and unfair Robin was, that Kimberly got the biggest room, and that it didn't matter whether she was the younger one, she deserved more than the former guest room. I wanted to scream at her so many times, At least you don't have the cramped study, you ingrate! but I held my tongue. If anything, my life would get worse. And it did.