Cinderella is nineteen.
The day she turned eighteen she fled her stepmother's house - nevermind that it was her house, the moment the woman died - and spent several months in a shelter. She worked two minimum wage jobs and eventually made enough money to get into a small apartment with two roommates.
She filled out every scholarship application she could find and with outstanding test scores and an average high school career she gets accepted by several prestigious colleges. She didn't know how to explain to the interviewers that she had poor grades because she was never allowed to do her homework, so instead she tells them about dead parents and two younger siblings. She privately hopes that she does not get accepted only because of her lie.
She majors in veterinary medicine. Her work-study is not nearly as taxing as being a maid for her stepmother, and her grades soar. She makes the Dean's List her first semester. She buys textbooks on her student loans and squirrels as much money as possible away each month.
When her dorm roommate asks her name, she stumbles over it, before deciding that her name was Ella like her mother's. It takes her a week to get used to it. She spends her free time volunteering at the local equine shelter, and eventually adopts three rats so the animal shelter cannot put them down.
She is a survivor of abuse. She joins group therapy on campus and finds peace in helping others. At the same time she begins to heal. She doubts. Her earliest memories are of scrubbing floors and being told she is worthless. She doesn't understand how her stepmother can be wrong. How she isn't worthless. She spent so much time being told she was nothing without her stepmother that she doesn't know how to believe otherwise.
Her counselor sits across from her and takes her hands and asks why she left. Ella looks up with tears streaming down her face and gives her a locket with two pictures. One is of a young, beautiful woman with golden hair and proud eyes. The other of a handsome man with her bones and blue eyes. Her father had left his lawyer a letter to be opened when she turned eighteen, and he had delivered from beyond the grave.
Most people don't leave. Most people can't. Ella accepts the hug with sobs wracking her body. She cannot fix her puffy eyes or the sadness drawn across her face when she leaves. Instead she gathers the books another student drops and when he asks about her tears she tells him she's had a bad day. She says nothing about these being the best days she's ever experienced. She's simply had a bad life.
Ella knows a lot about bad days. She sees eyes in crowds she once saw in mirrors. She stops to speak with them, and Ella is a good listener. After her first semester she changes her major to psychology. She wants to help people like her.
She is kind because so few people were kind to her.
She forces herself to go on when she has not manages to convince herself she deserves to eat.
She is kind and her room is messy and she gives to others parts of herself she doesn't have. She thinks she may never have those parts back, but she still gives them away as often as she can.