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WENDY

As I do every morning, I look over my shoulder to make sure Naomi is still sound asleep beside me. Her tiny frame is tucked under the blanket, and her eyes are shut. I let out a small sigh of relief and carefully get out of bed.

“It's a wonder she sleeps through that,” I whisper under my breath as I carefully navigate the few toys Naomi has strewn all over the floor to get to our dresser.

That's one of the biggest drawbacks of sharing a room with an eight-year-old. No matter how much I ask her to, she’s almost incapable of putting her things away.

I try not to bother her about it if I don't have to.

She has a hard enough time at school with the bullies.

Everyone in town knows her parents are drunks, and all the money they have goes to booze and pot, so she's always wearing tattered thrift shop clothes.

Naomi doesn't get to the trendy styles from Claire's or Justice like the other girls in her class.

I do my best to give her what I can, but I just can't prioritize everything.

When I have my clothes pulled, I carefully shut the bedroom door and head to the bathroom.

I shower and brush my teeth, trying not to focus on the bags under my eyes.

I'm only nineteen, and at this rate, I'm worried I'm going to age much faster than I should.

Most women my age get to sneak out with their boyfriends and party in the woods with their friends, but I've never had that luxury.

Honestly, I've never really had the opportunity.

I wasn't the most popular girl growing up, and my eight-year-old sister is pretty much my only friend.

I slip into my clothes, a pair of baggy black jeans, an old Fleetwood Mac T-shirt I managed to grab at the thrift shop, and an oversized cardigan that hangs off my body.

I pull my strawberry-blond hair into a ponytail, pulling a few loose curls from my bangs to frame my face.

I don't spend long in front of the mirror.

The longer I stand here, the greater the risk I have of spiraling and pinpointing everything wrong about myself.

I've done that long enough for one lifetime already, and I don't want to be late for work.

I close the bathroom door and brace myself for an interaction with my dad and Veronica, my evil stepmother. I wish that were a joke, but she clearly stole her personality from every Disney villain ever written.

The musky scent of marijuana wafts upstairs, and I clench my fists at my side from the frustration.

They don't care about us; that much is clear.

But I've begged them time and time again to at least open a window when they're smoking.

The smell of weed clings to every fabric in the house, including Naomi's and my clothes.

I'm tired of getting letters from the school about it.

An eight-year-old shouldn't have to spray her clothes with Febreze before leaving the house.

The two of them are sitting on the couch passing a blunt back and forth as they giggle and tap their feet to “Fortunate Son.” It takes them a moment to even notice me standing at the base of the stairs, glaring at them.

“The fuck are you looking at?” Veronica asks, sitting up straight and resting her elbows on her knees as she looks me over.

“Can you please turn the music down?” I plead, careful to keep my voice calm and level. I've fought with them before, and I have no intention of getting into anything before my shift at the bakery. “Naomi has a big test later today. She needs all the rest she can get.”

Veronica rolls her eyes and looks at my dad, causing him to smile and laugh under his breath. “Don't tell me how to raise my daughter,” Veronica says with ice lacing her words.

“I'm sorry,” I mutter under my breath. Bottles of vodka and gin are sitting on the table, so I know it's not just weed they’re on. Honestly, if they were out last night, they could be on something else too. I stopped asking a long time ago.

“Where are you going?” my dad asks, scrutinizing me. No matter how many times I walk down here in the morning to head to work while they're still partying, they can't seem to comprehend the fact that I have a job. Unlike them, I choose not to live on disability for an illness I don't have.

“Work.” He squints his eyes at me like he's trying to see if I'm telling the truth. Even though I've never had a boyfriend—I haven't even held hands with a guy since the second grade—he always assumes I'm going out to sleep around.

“Maybe cut back on the sweets while you're there,” Veronica says as she exhales a large puff of smoke. “Just because the cupcakes are free doesn't mean you need to eat the whole counter.”

She looks me up and down slowly, letting her eyes trace every curve on my body. My dad laughs and shakes his head, grabbing the blunt from her and inhaling. You would think he would defend his daughter from comments about her body, but you would be sorely mistaken. If anything, he enables her.

Veronica has ridiculed my body since the day she met my dad.

I've always been overweight. Trust me, I've had enough bullies in my day to have had it pointed out to me. My eyes are open to the fact, and I have spent enough time analyzing every single curve of my body to know this myself. Yet people always feel they need to tell me about it as if I don’t know.

Even though I'm used to it, it still hurts.

Hearing it so early in the morning, when I'm already exhausted, makes the back of my eyes sting.

But what hurts the most is the fact that my father, somebody who is supposed to love me unconditionally, more than anyone else in the world, just lets it happen.

I've wanted him to come to my defense for a long time.

He's seen how I would come home crying after school because other kids called me names and made fun of my weight.

A normal dad might have spoken to their parents and done something about it, but he's not normal.

Veronica has said some cruel things to me, and he doesn't care.

Expecting him to change now is probably silly, but that little glimmer of hope in my chest is still there.

I force myself to ignore the comment and go about my day.

It's the middle of July, and I still have a few weeks before the temperatures start decreasing, but it's a cool enough morning that I don't have to take my cardigan off.

I wrap it around myself, hiding my body from anybody around to see it.

I've done that my entire life, so unless I miraculously lose weight overnight, I doubt I'll stop anytime soon.

The moon is still high in the sky, and I can see stars dotting the blue.

I look up and admire them on my walk. Even though it's god-awful early, once I'm out of the house this is my favorite part of the day.

It's only a thirty-minute walk to the bakery, and it feels like the entire world is all mine.

We live on the outskirts of town, and once the few bars close around two o’clock, everything is quiet. I can walk along the sidewalk and feel free before clocking in for a ten-hour shift. A cool breeze rustles through the trees, and I inhale the early morning air with a soft smile on my face.

As I approach Main Street, where a majority of Swanton’s businesses are grouped, I ready myself for the day ahead.

Susan and Walter will probably already be busy behind the counter, mixing dough and batter to throw in the ovens.

I've always enjoyed my mornings with them.

It's warm and comforting, something I've always wished I had growing up.

Sometimes, while the three of us are prepping for the day, I fantasize about what it might have been like to grow up with them as family.

They're both far too old to be my parents, but I imagine them stepping in and adopting Naomi and me and letting us live in their little house where we’d have our own rooms. We would have glorious Thanksgiving dinners, and Susan would let me help bake pumpkin pies, sharing her secret recipe with me to carry on for generations.

It's always been a dream, but now that I'm nineteen, nobody's going to adopt me. But I can't help wondering how different things would have been if something like that had happened.

Laughter in the distance catches my attention, and I look up to see two men with brown paper bags covering their liquor bottles leaning against an old Ford pickup. I don't recognize them right away, but they're standing in the alleyway of Forge, one of the three bars in Swanton.

Both of them stop talking and look at me, the smiles falling from their faces. I immediately look away, my eyes glued to the gum-covered sidewalk. I don't want to cause any trouble with the drunks in this town.

“Like what you see?” one of them yells after me. My cheeks burn, and I try to focus on walking. I'm about five minutes away from the bakery, and I'm tempted to just start running.

“Hey! We're talking to you, bitch,” the other one shouts, both of them laughing. I hear them setting the bottles down and slowly look over my shoulder to see them approaching. Every nerve in my body is on high alert, and I immediately take off running.

They run after me, their faces contorted into twisted grins as they force away the haze of their drunkenness and chase me.

I stupidly look over my shoulder to see how far away they are, and my foot snags on some uneven concrete, and I tumble to the ground. They're above me in no time, and I scramble to try to get away. They laugh and look down at me with grins that make my stomach churn.

I scramble to my feet, but by the time I'm standing, one is in front of me and the other right behind. They close the distance quickly, pulling me away from the publicity of standing on Main Street.

I try to fight back, but they're both too strong, even as drunk as they are. Their hands are all over me, gripping my arms and pushing me down the alleyway as I try to struggle against them.

“Let me—” I say before one of them clasps a hand over my mouth. I taste the saltiness of their flesh on my lips, and it makes me sick to my stomach. Fear overtakes everything in my body as I think about what's about to happen.

“It’s your lucky day, bitch,” one of them slurs as he pushes the cardigan from my arm.

I let out a cry that nobody can hear and brace myself for what’s about to happen, my mind reeling to think of a way out.