I wonder why she’s crying, why she’s having such a meltdown. What happened that she has to hold me this tightly? I find out soon as her stepsister, Adrianna, barges in her room and yells “Stop crying, you brat. Get ready for work, you have to go in at 3:30.” 

Ah, work. She works at Arby’s I believe. She’s cried many times over having to work there, her grades have been dropping and her dad blames her. I wish I could come alive and go after him, he deserves whatever karma throws at him for hurting her so badly. 

    She puts me on her bed, a simple mattress on the floor, and gets out her work clothes. She gets dressed and dries her cheeks, grabs her bag and goes upstairs to wait for her stepmom to take her to work. 

She hates customer service, I’ve heard her cry about how rude they are over there. She’s too quiet and shy to work with people like that. And her coworkers, I’ve heard stories about how they ignored her or gave her looks. The customers are all rude, especially since it’s right in Flint. 

She’s only been working for a couple weeks and her grades are terrible, and her behavior has been worse according to her dad. I overhear him talking about her all the time and never anything good. “She’s acting up again, her grades are bad, she needs her phone taken.” She doesn’t even like her phone, she’d rather read. Though I’ve heard him yell at her about taking her books away if she didn’t “clean up her act.” 

    Larissa is back from work now, and she’s tearing up. Her dad must’ve ‘talked’ to her about everything going on. She has a sandwich from Arby’s, but she takes one bite and grimaces and sets it on the floor for her cat, Maggie. 

She never eats anymore, I only hear about what she’s eaten at school, I don’t see her eating anything. There’s only a few of her dad’s meals that she’ll eat and he never makes them.

 Like I said, I overhear a lot of things in this house, she goes upstairs to get her coffee and the first thing her dad says is “Eat a sandwich, you’re getting skinny.”

I never hear her reply, I just hear her, almost silently, walking down the stairs and closing her door. Some more tears. I only ever hear her laugh when she’s with her mom. And I’ve heard stories about how much fun she’s had with her friends.

Well, back to her experience about work, considering she didn’t eat her food and she grabbed me right away, it must’ve been bad. I hope her dad realizes that her having a job is doing more harm than good. And pressuring her about grades and weight isn’t helping. 

    Since Larissa hadn’t eaten anything, and has already cried her eyes out multiple times today, she is clearly emotionally drained, so she gets dressed into pajamas and grabs Maggie to cuddle with me as she falls asleep.

 She relaxes after a bit, so I’m assuming she’s dreaming about life at her mom’s, how it was before she left and how it could’ve been if she hadn’t left. She dreams about it often… Her mom is trying very hard to get her back, I know it, but it seems Larissa is losing hope. She really needs to keep her hopes up, I’m sure this nightmare chapter of her life will end soon, and she’ll be back with her mom in no time. 

Sometime in the middle of the night, she starts panicking in her sleep, she holds me tightly again and slowly wakes up. She checks her phone and it’s right before 6:00, she rests her eyes as she listens for her dad’s stomping to get closer and hears him going down the stairs.

 He lightly knocks on the door and tells her to get up, she sits up and wipes the crusts from her eyes before getting out of bed and going upstairs to get her coffee. 

She gets ready for school at around 6:30 and dawdles in her room until 7:00 to wait for the bus with the other kids. Here I am, left on her bed for another day of hardships for her to deal with on her own. I’m glad I’m a comfort to her, that I’ve been here for her the past 15 years, and even more so for the past 3 years. And I’m happy that she still needs me as she heals from those years of emotional pain that caused her physical pain as well.