113 Days

It was a Saturday morning in chilling November when a girl's life would do another 180.

Her mom had asked her the day before if she had wanted to go to the hair store with her and her older sister. She was finally started to not feel left out for the first time in 4 months. The happy girl, her sister, and her mom all go to McDonald's to satisfy their hunger and came home joyful. The girl goes to use the restroom and when she comes back, her other mom gets in the truck and says, "We are going on a trip!" The girl asks, "Where are we going?"

"It's a surprise..." her step-mom grins.

The two sisters fall asleep in the car and when they wake up, they'll find themselves in a parking building, having no idea why. Their moms wait until the younger sister wakes up to initiate their master plan. The younger sister wakes up, starts looking around, and asks, "What are we doing here?"

"Come with me," says her birth mom.

The girl follows her mom to the back of their black Lexus and watches her mom open the trunk to only find a suitcase and her school backpack.

"Remember when you said that you wish you could go and visit your family because you feel you spend too much time with your new family?" her mom asks tearfully.

"Uh, yeah, why?"

"You are going to be staying with your aunt and uncle in Washington for two weeks," she replies to her daughter.

The girl is speechless for a second, then immediately spits out, "What about school? I didn't get to say bye to my friends, they are going to worry about me!" Her mom frowns.

"Denise can tell them what happened. They have her number right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

They get the suitcase and her backpack from out of the trunk, say their goodbyes to Denise and her step-mom, and head towards Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Once the girl gets her tickets and gets to security, it would be the last time she would see her mom again. Her mom says goodbye to her daughter, sobbing. She wishes she had her mother's warm embrace with her every day in icy cold Alaska, where she lived with her aunt for 113 days. The second week of December, the girl's mom had told her that she never wanted to see her again and she hates her. The girl relives the moment where she thought her mom was hallucinating back in October. Her mother came into the girl's room and shook her child for at least 10 minutes, crying her soul out. Talking about how she is such a disgrace to the family and how if her grandmother was still alive, she would be ashamed of her.

October 9, 2017, was the day her grandmother died was the day her life took the first 180. The girl's mother went out of town to go see her girlfriend up in Ohio for a month, so it was just the girl and her sick grandmother. She had died from a heart attack unexpectedly because the day before she seemed healthy and happy. At least her grandmother got to see her favorite football team play and eat her favorite kind of cake with her favorite granddaughter for the last time. The girl felt alone when her grandmother died even though she had several family members look after her while she stayed up for 12 hours, traumatized, waiting for her mom to show up. The poor girl had been up ever since 3AM that Monday. Nobody but her mom knew that at the age of 9, the girl's grandmother died on her shoulder saying her name. For the next month, all she heard when she was trying to sleep,

"Julia, Julia, Julia, Julia, Julia..." over and over and over again.

On December 13, 2019, Julia's mother completely cut ties with her 11-year-old daughter with harsh words. Words that will stick with her until she dies. The depressed girl thinks that she would be better off dead since her own mother disowned her and her aunt seemed to hate her.

All she wanted was to go back home to her loving mom. All she wanted was for things to go back to normal back in 2018 before her mom got married before her mom had even met her future wife and kids when it was just Julia and mommy. Unfortunately, life had other plans for her.

During those 113 days, the girl was fighting demons every day. She was slowly getting fatter, her depression got worse, she did terribly in school, she was in constant drama, she would barely have her phone, and she felt lonely all the time. At school, at home, at church, in stores, everywhere. Her friend Zaedan tried to kill himself by freezing to death, her friend Skylar was never around to talk, Lina was always late or never showed up to school, and Matheo was the school crush. Every girl liked him at one point and Serayah fit into that category. They would flirt every now and then, get a little physical, but at the end of the day, he was riding solo. Alaska came with its sad times but there were new experiences as well. Serayah had got her first Victoria's Secret bra, ate a hotdog at Costco, ate at Denny's, played a game with her future sister, and more.

Almost a year after she had left her mom, she had got adopted by her aunt and uncle, now mom and dad. All Julia wanted was to talk to her friends and see how they were doing but the only way she could was to get adopted by her aunt and uncle, so she agreed. The process would've taken less time than it did if she and her stupidity didn't involve her aggressive mom's brother. Julia's mom didn't show up to any of the court hearings not once.

On November 5, Julia had become adopted and no longer belonged to her mother only to come to a realization that her friends had gotten over the fact that Julia was gone. Rumors saying she killed herself, she ran away, or she tried to kill her step-mom were said around her dear old middle school and people stuck with one of them. Most people thought she did commit suicide, others thought she ran away so they formed a search party to find her. No luck. When she got in contact with her friends, it probably lasted only a week. She realized that nobody wanted to be her friend anymore and then finally that she got adopted by the wrong people. Julia had made the worst decision ever and there was no way to undo it. Her new parents didn't want to go through all the legal trouble again to get me adopted by the right person so they just said live with it. Resentment flowed into her body as reality slaps her in the face, she will never go home.