Hello! This is my first fanfic under this penname. It's always been in my head, and I'm just now getting around to writing it. Enjoy!
It was all she could think about, all the time. She'd told everyone she'd blocked it out, but that wasn't true. Tori remembered the day everything happened. She remembered the cold wind against her skin, the footsteps getting nearer, the panicked yell of the man's voice, and the flashing red lights of the ambulance. When she was at school, Tori acted happy and carefree, but when she was alone, she pictured that moment in her head over and over again, just as she dreamed about it every night.
She looked up at him, the man holding her tiny, cold hand. He was bald with a goatee, and, even though it was freezing outside, he wore only tan pants and a light jacket over a Hawaiian-style shirt. This man was Joseph Jeremiah, her father. They were walking through the snow, coming home from sledding down the hill beside the park. Everything was about to change.
That's when she heard the footsteps. She turned a little to her right, seeing the man in the shadows trudging through the snow behind her and Joey. All she could see of the man was his scraggly, matted hair and beard and his big, olive green winter coat. Angela pulled on Joey's pants. "Daddy! Daddy, there's a man following us."
Joey turned to look back. He stopped when he saw the gleam of a switchblade in the homeless man's hand. The man sped up. "Give me everything you have on you!"
Joey let go of Angela's hand as she began hysterically crying. While murmuring comfort to his daughter, Joey put his hands up. He slowly moved his hand to the right back pocket of his pants and pulled out a leather wallet. Joey held it out to the man, who took it.
As the man looked through the wallet, his face came into contact with the light, and Angela could see every detail of his face. He had more wrinkles than she had ever seen, his eyes were wide and bloodshot, and his teeth were crooked and yellowed.
The man suddenly spat in Joey's direction. "You only carry ten bucks with you? What kind of crap is that?"
Before either Joey or Angela knew what was happening, the man lunged forward, and the gleam of the blade disappeared into Joey's neck. Angela screamed and ran away as fast as her small legs could carry her. She looked back only to watch the homeless man limp away.
The good thing about being a smart little girl was that you knew what to do in a time of crisis. Angela entered the pharmacy on the right side of the road. "Help! My daddy! A man stabbed my daddy!"
Angela showed the owner of the pharmacy where her father had been killed, and the owner called an ambulance immediately. Sirens disrupted the silence that was formerly only broken by the howling wind and the sobs of a young girl.
When Angela had been told her father was dead, she lost it. She wouldn't stop crying, no matter how much anyone comforted her. She had no one. Craig wasn't around, and Angela's mother was already dead...
That memory always ended the funeral, where Joey's lawyer allowed people she didn't know, the Santamaria family, take care of her. She had requested to have her name changed to Victoria, because she could stand to hear anyone but her father say her real name.
A few years after that, Tori Santamaria and the people she would learn to call her parents moved back to Toronto, just a few blocks away from where Angela and Joey used to live. Tori had been through years of therapy, but now it was just easier to say that she didn't remember it. She made her "parents" think that she only remembered them as her family.
Tori had learned to become the best actress Canada had ever seen. She hid her pain around everyone else, and she thought she could keep it up forever.
She never thought a certain reporter would come looking for her...
Sorry it's so short. Next chapter will be longer! Review, please!