Cecilia was revered through the population of Woodruck Middle as a queen. She had the best grades in the school, she was head of the chess team, and she had trouble finding a single book in the library she hadn’t read yet, but in spite of all that she faced no torment from the other children. They all knew better. Everyone in this town knew that if you cross William Blackmore, you disappear, so everyone feared him. Cecilia included.
Her fondest memories were of the time she spent in poverty. Her mother, Donna, was from a poor Irish family, and her father, Joe, was from an even poorer Black family. Neither were from the “good part of town,” but they’d both been raised well themselves and they both worked their asses off to support her. Donna worked at the local Grant’s supermarket as a cashier, and her father was a door to door salesman of some sort. Knives, maybe.
Their marriage was still a bit scandalous at the time in this area, but Donna was so charming and Joe so sweet and unassuming that even the hardest hearted of bigots had a difficult time hating them after actually interacting with them. The two loved Cecilia more than life, and every facet of their lives revolved around giving her the best childhood and life possible. Ceci would play with the same few hand me down dolls and tattered old books over and over again, always insisting truthfully she didn’t need any more. But, come any holiday they’d always found some way to get her more, for which she was always grateful. Each new batch was equally old and tattered, but it was all they could afford, and little Ceci loved them dearly. She even loved how worn they were! They had a nice energy to them, filled with love from owners past. Her favorite book was always Frankenstein. Though Joe and Donna were disappointed they could not offer her more, Cecilia never felt like she lacked in anything. Her favorite hobby was a cheap one, too: she loved collecting leaves outside and pressing them between wax paper, collecting them in a book. It was so beautiful, so permanent, something she was in full control of. She was loved, and life was bliss, though her entire home was smaller than her suite was now in the Estate.
Donna, naturally beautiful, developed a side career as a local model, becoming Miss Woodruck when Ceci was only eight. Ceci had always thought her mother was very pretty and appreciated that other people seemed to agree with her. Cecilia herself had been approached several times about child beauty pageants, but Donna would always quickly shut the idea down, saying it was no place for a little girl and that, gorgeous as she was, Cecilia was more than just a pretty face.
Everything went to hell in a handbasket when Cecilia turned eleven. Just a week after her birthday, Joe died in a car crash on the way home from work. A drunk driver off Golden Maple hit him head on, and the cheap old car wasn’t made to distribute the shock or crumple up to protect the driver like current models. He never saw it coming, and the police insisted that he wouldn’t have even processed what happened or felt any pain before his entire body was liquified between the sheets of metal, pressed flat between them. The day he died, Cecilia threw away her leaf book.
Things were rough, and though Ceci was old enough to understand death, she barely spoke for months following the accident. She was a sweet and sensitive child, raised blissfully unaware of how dark and twisted the world could be. When it finally hit her, it hit her head on, hard, and broke her spirit. Her kindness never wavered, but her joy and bubbliness faded when she was alone, only smiling politely in the presence of others.
Then, things got even worse. Donna was approached after a beauty contest by William Blackmore, gorgeous billionaire and town bigwig, who had become immediately smitten with her hourglass form and infectious smile. William had the foresight (and gall) to buy up hundreds of domain names consisting of common words or phrases, along with many bearing the titles of popular companies, before anyone else realized the importance. When the Dot-Com Boom hit, he sold them for hundreds to hundreds of thousands a pop, becoming a multi-millionaire in a matter of months and founding Blackmore Enterprises, internet provider giant and owner of almost everything in town. He insisted on taking Donna to dinner, and Donna, not over her husband’s death but desperate to provide for Cecilia, obliged. The two were soon married, and the wedding alone cost more than the entire neighborhood Cecilia was raised in was worth. The town billionaire and the town beauty--a match made in heaven, right?
In reality, things were miserable. Cecilia was initially excited to move into the fifteen thousand square foot Blackmore Estate, but things immediately went south. She got along well with her new step-brother, Gerald, and though he was a bit of a spoiled brat towards others, he would always watch out for her and include her in his elaborate games and schemes. William Blackmore was another story. Blackmore was a demanding patriarch, expecting total domestic servitude from Donna and absolute silence from Cecilia. When her mother wasn’t around, he would call her a useless bitch and tell her she was lucky her mother was attractive or she’d have already been out on the streets. Cecilia never had the heart to tell her mother about these outbursts, only crying herself to sleep each night they’d occur.
Of course, she didn’t need to tell Donna this for her to know that William was bad news. Cecilia would open her door at night and hear him screaming at her, the sound of objects breaking, the stinging echo of a powerful hand on soft flesh. On the nights they’d make love, she’d hear her mother screaming loudly, then muffled, then only the creaking of the bed. She’d confronted her mother about it, but Donna scolded her and told her it wasn’t a child’s place to worry about such things, and that she’d do anything to provide for her. Even so, her mother began to wear longer and longer clothing when she’d leave the house.
Shortly after her twelfth birthday, Cecilia made the mistake of confronting her step-father about the bruises her mother was getting. He told her that her mother simply fell down the stairs a lot. She told him he was a lying abusive sycophant. Then, she missed school for a week… she was stuck in the hospital. She’d fallen down an even taller and steeper staircase than her mother. Gerald stood up for her to his father and then promptly had to quit the baseball team. He’d broken his right arm on the banister.
The day after Donna had finally convinced William to put Cecilia in his will, she committed suicide, hanging herself from the staircase on their anniversary in one final ironic display of rebellion. Cecilia found a note under her pillow from her mother explaining that she couldn’t bear it any more and begging her forgiveness, saying that at least now Cecilia would be well taken care of now financially. She hated her mother for leaving her here with this man, wishing every night she had just stayed in the double wide. Her mother could never understand it, but Ceci would have been eternally happy to stay with her in poverty. William blamed Cecilia for his wife’s death and decided to make her his new stress relief punching bag, inventing new racial epithets to spit at her with each blow. She finally became numb to the pain, physically and emotionally, though she fantasized about suicide at least once a week. But with each trauma, she became even kinder and more empathetic. Nobody else should have to feel the pain she did, she decided. She was going to be a positive force in the world and she wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from her.
Her brother had spent every penny of his massive allowance on gacha, collecting several hundred. His current mission seemed to be to collect a hundred Matts, for reasons she didn’t quite understand, but before he even got close to his goal, he gifted one to her. She and Matthew had become fast friends, even without a glove, and finally she had started to feel a bit less despondent.
She couldn’t tell any of this to Kevin, of course. Her father heard everything said about him anywhere, now. She didn’t understand how, but she suspected it had something to do with the Roman-goddess looking five-star Legendary gacha he kept at his side at all times. But as Kevin recounted his own struggle across from her in the limousine and noted that she could never understand, she couldn’t help but feel close to him. As ironic as it was, the richest girl in school and the homeless boy had the most in common: they’d both kept their empathy and kindness despite being constantly battered and crapped on by life, and they’d both kept fighting though it seemed hopeless. Hell, he’d even had the guts to ask her out, something not even the other wealthy boys could. She saw so much strength in his sad eyes, worn beyond their years, and the gentleness in his voice was more powerful and attractive to her than any gruff baritone could ever be. She had more respect for this poor boy than for any of the terrible snobs who hung around the estate. They had the world at their beck and call and used their power to be assholes. Kevin had nothing but the shirt on his back and still managed a smile for everyone he passed.
Cecilia couldn’t believe it, but she thought she might be falling for this boy.