"Alexis! Get off your lazy ass and come make me some ravioli!"

I tried to ignore her with the sound of my video game. I didn't answer.

"Alexis, do as your mother asks!"

There were three loud pounds on the door. Sigh.

"Hey Dick! Can you tell her that she needs to get herself her own damn ravioli?" I shouted.

"Your grounded!"

I shrugged. "Ok."

This, was my life. I had a good, a bad, and an ugly.

Good, was my love, my everything. The one thing that kept me going everyday. My good, was basketball. Ever since I was seven years old, I've been playing. Rec teams, AAU, and school teams as I got older. When I first picked up a basketball, my father would use to tell me the ball only liked to be in my hands and no one else's. I learned how to dribble and shoot faster than any other guy or girl could in the whole first grade. My father bought a basketball goal for me after my first official game and it was on that very goal that I learned to be as good as I am now.

As time grew on, I got better and better. I was the star player on every team I played for. Parents and coaches would tell me that one day, I would play for a great college team. They told me I was a basketball prodigy... and I am.

When I turned twelve, my father left. And, it wasn't until then, that I learned that I was an accident. Apparently, my mom was knocked up by my father, and in panic, married, hoping it would fix things. It didn't. The only reason they stayed married as long as they did, was because of my dad. My father truly loved me, and he wanted me to grow up in a happy, healthy family. He cared about my happiness and my well-being. He taught me everything a child should be taught. Kindness was the number one way to happiness. You can't be happy if your not kind. And lying, lying only leads you to trouble.

But, when I turned twelve, I guess he couldn't take it any longer. I guess he was tired of my mom cheating on him, right in front of him. So, he left. He moved to South America, so he could study volcanoes. You see, my father was a Volcanologist. He studied the formation of volcanoes, and their current and historic eruptions. He'd travel to different volcanoes around the world to study the eruptions and collect rock and dirt from around it. Sometimes, he'd let me come along for the ride.

But, he ditched me and left me with my prostitute mother who could barely take care of herself, let alone me. I never forgave him. This, iwas my bad.

Which leads me to my ugly. There are only two words for this. Richard Koseny, or what I like to call him, Dick.

Dick came in to my life a year after my parents divorced. My mom married him because after my dad left, we had nothing. My mom had to start cooking again, trying to make a living off being a chef at Olive Garden. But that was only for a year.

Dick, was a brain surgeon, so you know what that means. Tons, tons of mula. So this made Dick, my... stepdad. But I never called him stepdad, because he was no where near close to being called my dad. Even if it was just, step. He tried to get along with me in the beginning, but he quickly learned that I was an unmovable force. He would never earn my kindness, or respect. I hated him, with all my guts, and he learned to deal with it. I was as stubborn as a jack-ass, and there was nothing he, nor my mother, could do about it. I was unstoppable, unpenetrable, and not happy.

My name is Alexis Taralie Lawrence, and this is my life. The good, the bad, and the ugly.