Author's Note: Ever get in the mood to read a really bad story? If so, this is definitely one to check out. I wrote this story a really long time ago, before I ever knew of such a thing as FP (maybe before FP was even created, I don't know -- I think I wrote this in 2002), and I think it shows.

So the whole thing has already been written, by hand. It's just up to me to type it all out. I am going to type it exactly how it was written, no content changes at all. This should be interesting.

I don't know why I would want anyone to read it. I think it's terrible. But I have read it so much now that I find it funny just because it's so bad. Maybe you will feel the same way. It starts out kind of good, and it even has some good parts throughout the story. The central theme, I think, is a good idea. I am definitely going to re-vamp this story at some point in the future. It has potential, I think, just not the way it is now.

My friend Twilight Starr has already read through most of this for me and given me some tips. Thank you Twilight Starr!! Anything else anyone wants to provide is welcome, but he aware that I already know how bad it is. That’s why it’s so enjoyable, in a bad way. I’m making no sense now.

So go ahead: read, and laugh at how terrible it can be. Especially toward the end. There will be 9 chapters. And I would like to pre-apologize for stereotyping (this contributes to its terribleness) and just general crap. Thank you very much.

Chapter 1

“Stop right there!”

I stopped.

“Where are you going looking like that?”

I shrugged. “To the mall.”

My foster mother turned me around 180 degrees and pointed me back toward my bedroom. “Not quite. Lose the make up.”

“You’re the one who told me to put it on,” I reminded her.

“I was wrong,” she admitted.

I went to the bathroom and removed the disgusting make up from my face. I think I am the only sixteen-year-old girl in the world who hates make up. Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong century or something.

“Delilah,” my seventeen-year-old foster sister called tauntingly from my bedroom.

I ran in there. “What are you doing in here?”

She held up a black T-shirt identical to the one I was wearing. “Can I borrow this?”

“No.”

Anna stomped her foot. “Why not? It’s not like you’ll miss it.” She eyed the clothes I was wearing.

“I just don’t want you to borrow my stuff,” I told her, somewhat harshly. “Or come in my room,” I added.

Anna dropped the shirt on the floor. “Fine. It would have been too big for me anyway,” she said, and she left.

As I was leaving, I heard her say to her mother, “Why can’t I go into her room? She doesn’t even live here.” Her mother scolded her for it, but I could understand. No one in the house felt comfortable with me there--Especially me. But I actually never felt comfortable in anyone’s house.

This was the sixth family I had lived with since my mother went to jail. She is serving a life sentence for killing her boyfriend. We didn’t have any other family for me to live with.

In some ways, I do miss my mom because she did raise me when I was little and she did give birth to me and everything, but I don’t really miss her because of what she did. Even though that was four years ago, I still haven’t forgiven her for it. Sure, I never liked the guy, but she still shouldn’t have beaten him to death with a skillet. As bad as it may sound, I think she deserves her punishment. And to be quite honest, I think she should have been punished worse, like being hanged or burned at the stake like they did in the old days. I shared this once with an ex-foster parent and she told me that I was horrible to say or even think such a thing. Needless to say, I didn’t live with that family much after that.

I knew that my newest family wouldn’t last much longer either. I just couldn’t adapt to their outrageous ways. The mother actually encouraged us girls to wear make up and revealing clothes, and the father, well, he was never really sober enough to encourage us to do anything. I don’t know how they managed to qualify to be foster parents in the first place.

With the make up off, I managed to escape the apartment. I told my foster mother that I was going to the mall, but that was a lie. Instead, I walked eight blocks to Rite-Aid, where I worked. I didn’t want them to think that I could afford to pay for my cost of living.

“Hey Ryan!” I called as I walked in the automatic doors.

Ryan, who was working the front register, quietly said back to me, “Hey Lila.”

Now normally I would freak out and hop into a lecture on why I don’t like being called Lila, but I make an exception with Ryan. He is so hot. He’s tall and thin and has beautiful red hair and bright blue eyes—absolutely gorgeous.

The most wonderful days of my life were the ones on which I worked with Ryan. But for some reason, this day wasn’t looking so good. Not two minutes after I got to work, a customer accused me of false advertising.

“This isn’t the item that is on sale,” I tried to explain to the man.

“But it looks just like it!” he insisted, though I could clearly see the difference between the product he was holding and the picture of the product on the advertisement.

As I pointed out the differenced to him, he exclaimed, “This is ridiculous! I wanna talk to the manager!”

The story manager wasn’t there, so I called the assistant manager to my register. And of course the assistant manager gave the man what he wanted, which really pissed me off.

“Why in the hell did you do that?” I asked Mr. Dickens when the customer was finally out of earshot.

“Because I can,” Mr. Dickens answered.

“Well, you’re not supposed to,” I pointed out. “Not only did you make me look bad, but you broke company policies.”

“If you were an assistant manager, you’d do it too,” he said and started to walk away.

I know that it was no big deal, and I really should have just let it go, but I couldn’t. “I hope you get fired,” I called after him, “you big dick, Mr. Dickens.”

He turned around and stared at me. “You hope I get fired?” he said with a hint of sarcasm. I had never spoken to him like that before, so it was actually rather shocking to him.

The phone next to me rang. Another customer was probably just calling to ask what time we close. Mr. Dickens continued staring at me. “You’d better answer that if you want to keep your job,” he said.

“And why would I want to do that?” I asked with my attitude but my words were drowned out by another ring of the phone. I picked up the receiver. “What the hell do you want?”

Next thing I knew, I was unemployed. Go figure. I needed ice cream. So I went to the shop down the street.

Big mistake. My ex-boyfriend Sam was there with his new girlfriend Sarah. I hate them both. I don’t know what I ever saw in Sam, apart from his good looks. And Sarah is nothing but a whore. The two of them are perfect for each other.

“Hey look, Sam,” Sarah said when she saw me, “it’s the orphan.”

Sam looked, but rolled his eyes and looked the other way.

If I wouldn’t take any crap from my manager – well, former manager – then I definitely wouldn’t take any from this chick.

“Hey, look Sam,” I said, mocking Sarah, “you’re sitting across from the city whore.”

For some reason, that really pissed off Sarah. Maybe the truth really hurts her, or maybe she just hated being called the whore of New York City. She jumped up from her seat and started towards me. She stopped though, before she made a scene in the ice cream parlor.

“I am not a whore,” Sarah said quietly once she had calmly approached me. Only I could hear her. “You’re just jealous because I can get a boyfriend, and you can’t.”

At just that moment, a slender, male arm draped across my shoulders. It was Ryan.

I was shocked. “Hey!” I said. “What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be working.”

“I’m on my break,” he explained. “Just thought I would come see you.”

How he knew where to find me, I’ll never know.

Sarah had no idea how to respond to this. Apparently she believed that her words had just been proved wrong. She didn’t need to know the truth. But she turned away from like, like seeing me with Ryan was too much to handle, and sat back down with Sam.

“Did I come at a bad time?” Ryan whispered in my ear.

“No,” I whispered back, “your timing couldn’t have been more perfect.”

“Good,” he said. “I should be going now anyway. Mr. Dick only gave me fifteen minutes. See you later!” He left.

That was definitely weird. Ryan had never really been that friendly towards me in the past, so why would he now? I got the idea that maybe he liked me or something. It would be a dream come true if that were the case. Of course, I thought the same thing once about Sam. And look how that turned out. But Ryan wasn’t like Sam. At least, I hoped he wasn’t.

I got my chocolate almond ice cream and hurried out of there before Sarah thought of something else intelligent to say. I don’t know why I bothered to hurry though. I headed toward the arcade. Not the good arcade where most of the young people hung out, but the raggedy, falling-down arcade hidden in the shadows behind the laundromat. And why would I go there? Because at Artie’s Arcade, I can play Wormhole. I am not sure if the game exists anywhere else in New York except at Artie’s, but if it does, I haven’t’ seen it. I think it’s one those rejected games that never made it big in the industry, but I absolutely love it.

Wormhole is a pinball game mostly about worms. Yes, it’s sad, I know. I have all the high scores though, and from what I have heard, no one who had tried has even come close to them. That’s because they don’t know the secrets. There are hidden “wormholes” in the game, each noticeable only when a colored light illuminates it, opening it. The yellow wormhole is the easiest to hit, but it doesn’t give too many points. The green wormhole doesn’t open that much, but it is still awesome because when it is open and you hit the ball into it, it sends the ball to another wormhole and you get extra points there.

But the real secret is the red wormhole. It is the hardest to hit, but I can do it with no problem. All I do is let the ball roll down the right flipper until it is perfectly in the center, then hit it, hard. Timing is everything on that shot. The ball has to go straight up and not hit anything, which is hard because of all the rocks and snails in the way. But once the ball goes in the red wormhole, the points rack up, all because the rest wormhole triggers the triple point light, making everything worth three times the normal. And it gets better! If you hit the red wormhole while both the yellow and green wormholes are open, the ball will shoot out of the wormhole, bounce off a rock, and go directly back into the wormhole. Then it will shoot out again and bounce back in. This will happen over and over again until one of the lights goes out. And the great thing is, every time you hit the red wormhole, the points triple from what they were before. I once got it up to where the points were like, forty-three million times the normal value. Seriously. No wonder no one could beat my scores.

It looked like today I wouldn’t even be able to beat my scores. I kept missing the wormholes, even the yellow one. I was too upset to concentrate, I guess. Hey, it was a lot for me to handle. Lying to my foster parents, putting up with Mr. Dick, getting fired, Ryan’s sudden interest, and Sarah the Whore. It was just all too much.

Finally, I lost. And for once I didn’t even mind.

“I thought I would find you here,” said a voice behind me.

I turned around.

“Still can’t get away from this raggedy old game, can you?” It was Celeste Gregory, my social worker. She had been somewhat responsible for putting me in all those crappy homes. But I never blamed her. She was cool. Everyone else called her Ms. Gregory, but I had known her so long that I called her Celeste. Even though she had been doing social work since before I was born, she didn’t look like she could have been a day over twenty-five.

“Were you looking for me?” I asked. After all, she did think she knew where to find me.

“Yes,” she answered simply. “You and I need to have a little chat,” she said. “Or maybe a long chat. Let’s go to my apartment and discuss these little issues you have been having with your life and your family.”

I became suspicious immediately. “How did you know I was having family issues? Have they called you already?” I questioned. “They” was referring to my foster parents.

“No,” she said, staring me in the eye, “and we have a lot to talk about.”