Prologue (In other words, My life in a nut shell)
Once upon a time, long ago in a far away land lived a princess. Yeah right, shut up. I mean like that would be way too easy right? I mean that only is the beginning of every fairy tale right? Every fairy tale but mine.
You think the name Cinderella might help me out a bit there, you know, magic and a fairy godmother and all. Nope, not me. I guess the first Cinderella stole all the razz pizazz for herself, long ago and lived happily ever after in that beautiful castle. Right now I wasn’t even sure if such a thing as a ‘castle’ even existed anymore outside of books and people’s imaginations.
I’ve finally learned to live with my name though, but I mean how many girls in the twenty first century are cursed with a name like Cinderella? Only one, yep, Me. My gosh, I’d sworn every other day of my life, if my mother was still alive I would have murdered her anyway. Do you know how hard it is to live down a freakin’ name like that? Kindergarten was OK, I was treated like the princess I deserved to be. The kids all thought it was cool and that I was special for some reason and I believed them. What? I know now that little kids are dumb and know absolutely squat but once upon a time we were all a Kindergartner, please, bear with me here.
First grade and zilch, the fairy tale I’d been living came crashing down all around me, it was over, and I was tossed into a cruel reality the day my beloved mother died in a car crash ( that was before I’d wanted to kill her because of my name).
My father had died two months before I’d been born so I’d never missed him much. Some days, when things got tough (yeah, tougher than normal I mean), I cursed him and wished he hadn’t gotten himself killed. Maybe then, my childhood might have been more posh (I’m a princess right?) And I could have spent more time with Mom. Maybe if he’d lived, it would have been him in that crash instead of my mother.
Typical, my life was a mirror of Cinderella’s. (No, I’m not in here scrubbing floors wearing rags). The name was like a curse or something I guess. When I was four, my mother married the evil stepfather. OK, OK, I’ll admit he wasn’t all that bad. He worked hard and a lot but he had a temper that could kill! Especially when he got drunk. Sheesh, not pretty.
Did I mention he had two model gorgeous sons? Nope, guess not. They stayed out of my way and I out of theirs. Perfect right? Well, when there’s not that much room to move, it’s pretty hard to stay out of once anothers' way. We were always after one another for some stupid reason or another.
After first grade finished we shot out of New York faster than you could blink. My ‘Dad’ said it was time for a change of pace and that we were moving out to the country. It tore me apart leaving Mom and Dad behind in that big city graveyard. I had no choice in the matter, remember I was only six years old, maybe seven.
California, yeah! right? L.A., Hollywood, Disneyland, San Francisco, everything to fill a girls dream. It turns out that California’s pretty big and between all those famous places there is a whole lot of stinkin’ nothing out there. Yep, you guessed it. We settled down like old squatters from the 1800's, as far away from Disneyland as my old man could find in a small historic town of a little place called Mendocino. Just great!
If you think that’s bad just wait until I tell you a little bit more. Surprise! It gets worse. No, luckily my dad didn’t get engaged with Cruella De’vil or any other high flashing dame for that matter. Sadly, this rural town didn’t have much to offer my dad in the ways of a wife, all the pretty lookers were already taken. Not that I minded, just as long as he didn’t get so desperate and ended up marrying the wicked witch of the west or some other whacked-out old hag.
OK, OK, I’m being over dramatic. I was glad to realize that Dad was actually sad about Moms death. It taught me that he really had loved her. I also have to backtrack and tell you that I judged the town too quickly OK. It definitely is not New York if you know what I mean. But it is absolutely gorgeous. It’s right next to the Pacific Ocean and it has that salty sea air and noisy gulls that make the place feel like a beach house or something beachy...maybe Florida? No, not nearly warm enough, I mean it’s like a town record when this place reached Ninety degree’s, Florida’s that hot all the time... I think...
Anyway, one of my old bro’s took to the country like an old buccaneer. He absolutely loved the place and everything it had to offer. My dad was ok with it all, he said it wasn’t what he’d expected (never trust those Real Estate agencies let me tell you, they’ll do absolutely anything (and I mean absolutely anything) to sell their piece of moldy bread on to you). My other brother hated it worse than he hated me, and that now is saying something. He despised every inch of Mendocino and it’s County. He was such a whiner baby, he like would never shut up about it. He always had some derogatory remark to shoot us with. It hurt old Dad but me and Lone Ranger ignored him.
So there, my life, up till now, in a nut shell. Yep, we’re still living in this little historic town. Waiting for every summer ‘cause the roads get so suffocated with tourists you can’t breath we get to go back to New York and visit Mom and Dad’s grave and do a lot of sight seeing. Leave it to my dad to refuse taking a plane, we have to drive across practically every state in the US to get back to New York. I’m sixteen now, my brothers are seventeen and eighteen. Number eighteen is part of some freakin’ slick and stupid gang in the next town over Fort Bragg (What a name for a town!).
Dads hanging in there but he’s getting more and more out of it, spending lots of time at the pub in Fort Bragg and less and less at his job here in Old Mendo. Yep, things were just about to get ugly. And I mean really ugly.
