Hey! This is another story I wrote while in the abusive situation. Maybe they'll come out better as time goes by, and maybe they won't, but I don't plan to stop writing. This story takes place in two different settings: Past, which is 1880, and "Present", which is around 2011-2012.


I only own Emily, Nellie, and their parents!


Prologue

Hi. My name's Emily, and I have a twin sister named Nellie. We're nine, but almost ten, and we can't wait for our birthday. Mom's going to have a party after she gets done with the doctor—she works for him, but she's also pregnant—6 months along—and Dad's going to bring something he ordered from the mainland home for us when he leaves his store. They always do that for us. It's a tradition, and our little island is big on tech and tradition.

"Girls, it's time for chores!" Dad's an angry man, but he's never hurt us, so we're not really scared of him, but we know better than to disobey.

"Coming!" We scramble out of bed and into our chore dresses—they're long sleeved: mine is blue, and Nellie's is yellow, with the others' color for our aprons and bonnets. We pull on our oldest brown shoes and head out to the barn. Nellie's stronger than me, so she milks our one cow and gathers the eggs, while I care for our horses—we each have one to get us to school: Nellie's is a Palomino named Honey, and mine is a Morgan named Star.

Once we're done, we head inside and give Mom the eggs and milk before heading upstairs to get our school dresses on—they're light pink, long sleeved, ankle length dresses with peter pan collars. We tie on our blue aprons with light pink trim on the pockets, pull on our white stockings, and pull on our new pink button shoes—we'd been saving them for spring, but we'd gotten them for Christmas. Then we take turns braiding each other's hair, and tie the ends off with pink hair ribbons before tying on our matching blue bonnets.

After breakfast, we saddle our horses—my saddle is black and pink, and Nellie's is brown and blue. Once we're done, we slip our books into our saddle bags, climb on our horses, and start off for school. We're running late today, because we overslept.


We slide off our horses and lead them toward the stable, waving toward our teacher as we do. We're in the fourth grade books now, making us fourth grade in our one room schoolhouse. "Hey, Ms. Smith!"

"Good morning, Girls. Put your horses up and come get settled in. Class is about to start."

We get our horses settled in, and I lay a pink blanket over Star's back, while Nellie covers Honey with a blue one, then we head inside.

While we're "town girls", we don't pick on some of the other, less-fortunate girls—not like the other town girls here. We dress similarly to the "country girls", even though we could afford better, more stylish dresses, we choose to wear what the other girls do, because we're not stuck-up.


We rush home and change into our chore dresses—mine is blue with a yellow bonnet and apron, while Nellie's is yellow with a blue apron and bonnet. We get our chores done before reporting to Dad, who sends us to change into our everyday dresses—we're not allowed to wear them during chores because they could get destroyed. Once we're in our red and white everyday dresses, we run back to Dad, who gives us each an armload of packages. "Be quick, and don't dawdle."

We're only nine, but we help out in the store—making deliveries and such—after school. Sometimes we even get to run the cash register!

The two of us run for the first house, and quickly deliver their packages, take the required amount of money, and rush through the rest of the deliveries in the same manner, making sure to say "thank you" and "you're welcome".


Supper is late—Nellie and I have to cook it because Mom hasn't come home. Dad says that our sibling was coming early, and that he needs to hurry up and eat so he can get back to her. He leaves the two of us in charge of the store, and leaves us there to get to Mom.

I leave Nellie to clean up, and I head into the store so I can watch the cash register. As usual, very few, if any, people come in before we're supposed to close at seven. Once the clock hits the hour, I lock the doors and flip the open sign to closed before heading back to join Nellie. We quickly get changed into our flannel nightgowns—mine's light pink, while Nellie's is yellow.


2:00 AM

We wake up to find Dad leaning over us, tears in his eyes. "Dad? What's wrong?"

"Girls…your mother died last night."

Nellie bursts into tears, while I look up at Dad. "The baby?"

"Too early. He didn't make it either." He leaves, and heads to his own bed.


Three Months Later

With Mom gone, life has gotten a lot worse. Dad took up drinking, and we lost the store. Our tenth birthday came and went without even a present. Dad used what money he had left—from owning the store—to pay for a little house in in the mountains, and sold Mom's horse, as well as our horses and their pretty saddles, so he could drink himself into a stupor every night. In addition to that, we now have to work—he takes our wages to buy himself more booze—and more often than not, we miss school for one reason or another. Also, if we're anywhere nearby when he comes home from the saloon, we get beat. We've been planning to run away, but we haven't decided when yet.