Ese.

One.

June 16th, 1992

Isamariá

Man, times were so hard. Growing up and living in the Bronx wasn't exactly the dream life. I hated it here. Ever since my daddy passed away, life hadn't been the same.

Only a year after my father's death, my mom went off and married a dead-beat, who I called by his first name George. He was nothing but a couch potato because he never did anything for us except run up our cable bill and eat up all of our food. We were basically struggling because all of the hard earned money my momma made, he took it and spent it on drugs, beer, and even other women. The worst part about it was that my momma let him do it. She was too stupid to leave him, and that's exactly why we were living in the projects now.

George didn't care about us. You would've thought since my momma bore him a daughter, he would step up and be a better man. Kaylani being born didn't change a thing for him—he was still a loser. He was a loser that I hated with everything in me.

Besides my mom working all of the time, I worked under the table at a stupid hardware store only a couple of blocks away from home. I was only fourteen years old and my momma forced me to get a job to help out with the bills. I didn't think it was fair since George didn't do anything to help out and he was nearly forty years old. I was only a child, and I had to work for less than five dollars an hour? What great my life was.

Besides all of that, things were alright here in the Bronx. I had my best friend Jada, and my little sister Kaylani. They were the most important people in my life, and were always there when I needed them. It was kind of sad considering the fact that Kaylani was only four years old.

But, oh well. What could I do about it?

As the night when on, my legs grew tired from standing behind the counter at work. My patience was running thin because I was sick and tired of being here almost every night doing absolutely nothing but standing here behind this counter or organizing shelves. The place was so boring that I wanted to puke. Nobody ever came in here except a bunch of old people, and they never really wanted anything unless it was paint and wood. Sometimes, I wished that I worked at a teen club or something. I knew that it would be a lot more excitement, but we couldn't have everything that we wanted.

My boss came out of his office and did his daily examination of the workers. I hated this part of the shift because I always felt his eyes burning into my back as if he were waiting for me to mess something up. It almost seemed that he was a racist due to the way he treated me as compared to his other employees. I always had a reassuring thought in the back of my mind that he was just hard on me because I technically wasn't supposed to be here. It was hard to use that as an excuse sometimes, though.

"Why are you just standing there?" Mr. Wellington asked me, just as he did pretty much every day.

"There's no customers and there is obviously nothing to do." I groaned, praying that he would leave me alone.

I glanced at the clock and noticed that it was almost six o'clock and that meant the store was close to closing. "Matter of fact, I'll start cleaning up so we can get out of here at a decent time."

I happily skipped from around the counter and began to make my way to the back, when I heard the bell go off from the front door opening. "You're not going anywhere until you make sure this customer is taken care of." I heard my boss say. I could just picture the stupid smirk that I knew he had on his face without even looking at him.

I rolled my eyes and turned around to see a Hispanic boy making his way down the aisle, which made me stop in my tracks. He had an attitude that I could sense from a mile away. The way that he walked in those timberlands told me he was cocky. Maybe a little too much, but he was attractive and that wasn't unsual these days.