Paper Hearts

Chapter Two: Life is Hard...

Camille:
In all my wildest dreams there was one thing in common. I lived in a world like a normal person that didn't experience the worst of life over and over again.

From the very start, life was hard. I was born into a family with a beautiful mother that loved me to the very fullest and never failed to let it show. She was always there to help with homework, do my hair, dress me up for school, cook me amazing meals and snuggle me until I fell asleep.

The one thing she wasn't able to do however, was protect me from my dad.

He had a drinking problem from the time him and my mom got married and it just continued to get worse. My mom tried her best to raise me herself, but when my dad came home drunk in the middle of the night, she was always too afraid to jump in when he hurt me.

When I woke up on my seventh birthday, my mom was gone. She left me and small note telling me that the only way for her to have a better life was to leave me and my dad. She also wrote how much she loved me and wished that one day she could see me again.

I cried pretty hard that day, and my dad didn't handle the news of her leaving very well either. 

Sooner or later I was put into a foster home and my dad was arrested for child abuse, I haven't seen him for ten years now.

I was moved from home to home until I was ten, and the foster family I was living with decided they wanted to adopt me permanently.

I was beyond excited. The Fletcher family had always  felt like my real home.

I had officially become Camille Fletcher when I turned eleven and I felt like my life just might start to take a turn.

That was until my newly adoptive dad had an accident at work, leaving me to be raised by my now single adoptive mother.

It was a hard few years after Mr. Fletcher died. I had only known him a short while but he always treated me as if I was his own.

With me being the only family my new mom now had, we huddled together and became very close during that time.

Now, life is pretty ok for a seventeen year old high school kid, except for my continued streak of bad luck of course. I came home from a particularly bad day at school to find my fish Tubby, my fifth fish this year, dead at the bottom of his bowl. I sighed and began to clean the bowl and flush my fishy friend down the toilet. 

Maybe it was time to stop trying to raise fish.

My mom was a nurse at the medical clinic in Chancellorsville and she didn't get off until five most days, meaning I usually had the house all to myself for a few hours after school everyday. That's when I had the time to write my notes.

I can't really explain why I started writing letters to the universe, it just sort of... happened. I've always believed my birth mom was out there somewhere, and my birth dad starting his new life, and then there's me, with a mom I loved very much, but a pretty crappy life thus far if I do say so myself.

My first letter was on the night my adoptive dad died. My mom was a wreck and I locked myself in my room to be alone. I didn't understand why the universe kept taking people away from me, and making life so hard to bear. So I asked it.

I wrote;

Dear Universe,

Why are you taking people away from me?

Cam

I folded it into an air plane and threw it out my window. I knew it would never really make it to the universe, but throwing it out my window somehow made me feel... better. At least I tried asking someone for answers.

After that night, I wrote letters everyday, getting things off my chest and throwing them out into the world. I never knew where they actually ended up, and I didn't really care. It made me feel better, and so I never stopped.

So, like every other afternoon, I sat at the bench underneath the window in my room, on the top floor of our cozy town house, and began to write.

Dear Universe,

I'm beginning to think you really don't like me.

Tubby? Really? What did my fish ever do to you?

Sometimes I wonder how how you pick the people you're gonna hurt next. Is it like a raffle or something? If it is, can you take my name out? I've been picked far too many times, it's not even fair anymore.

Also, can you stop with the whole pop quiz stuff? I swear I have one in different classes everyday and I'm NEVER prepared.

I guess my question for you today is, could you ease up for a while? I've been pretty exhusted lately.

Thanks.

Cam

Once I had finished, I folded it up into an air plane, and threw it out my window. And just as the plane left my finger tips, the wind picked up and carried it off far away. I sat and watched it drift away, I wonder where it would end up this time.