Chapter 1

"Bye Miss A"

"Bye Miss Amaya, See you tomorrow!" I heard my group of 5 year olds yell as I got ready to leave and head to my second job for the day.

I walked out of my study room, leaving the children with Jade and headed to the reception area to sign out for the day. After signing out and letting Miss Kay know I was leaving, I headed to the staff room and grabbed my bag, double checking the time on my watch to ensure that I made it to the bus stop on time to catch my next bus to the mall.

I work two jobs to make sure I was able to keep a roof over my head as well as pay for my university tuition. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I work at the community centre, helping the children that come through work on their homework and reading, among other academic activities that are offered. My love for children is what made me apply to work here and despite no vacancies, I got the job from Miss Kay who said, "Whenever you talk about children, there is a spark in your eyes".

Throughout the week except for Sunday, I work at the bakery from 4:45 until 8pm closing time.

In addition to both jobs, I am studying to become a teacher and only have one year left before I graduate which I am excited about!

My household was broken. My father up and left when I was 14, with no explanation. I remember coming home on my 14th birthday from school, excited to spend the rest of the day with my family. However, I was met with my mother sitting on the stairs crying her eyes out.

*Flashback begins*

After an exhausting day at school, the bus finally pulled up at the end of our block, parking and opening the doors for everyone to offload. When I finally got off, I power walked down the street to my house, excited for what I was going to find seeing how it was my birthday.

My dad made it a point to leave work early on birthday's, in order to bearhug us at the door the moment we walked in. However, when I walked in the house and wasn't greeted by my dad, I felt something was wrong.

"Mom! why are you crying, what's wrong?" I dropped my book bag and rushed in when I noticed my mom sitting on the floor crying.

"He left us"

Those three words changed the course of my life in a drastic way. After my dad left, my mom was never the same. She started slacking with work. It started with her skipping one day a week for about a month, then that quickly changed to her skipping two days in a week or leaving earlier than she should have. Eventually, she was let go from her job and things at home became tough.

With no income coming in from my mom, my siblings and I were all forced to get part-time jobs, just so we could make it. At 14, I had to fake my age to get a retail job and basically started from the bottom. Due to my inexperience, I started out stocking shelves and hanging up merchandise, while being taught how to expertly help customers and ring them up. After a few months of work at the boutique, I found a better job Secret R, a bakery I would occasionally buy a few treats at when I had the money to spare.

My mom was then introduced to drugs by a "boyfriend" and because of that, she completely changed. She was no longer the loving, protective and caring mother I had been raised by. With that, our lives changed quicker than we could have anticipated.

She eventually lost her job which led to her loosing the house my siblings and I grew up in. We moved to the projects, to a one bedroom apartment which the five of us shared. Despite how tight it was, my siblings and I were just glad we had each other to lean on.

On January 17th, my life changed even more than it had, this time for the worst. After my night shift at the bakery, I walked into our apartment totally unaware of what was about to happen.

"Umm... hi, what's going on mom?" I asked as I saw a lady and four police officers all cramped in our small living room.

"Amaya, its-, I-I have something to tell you" she stammered out. At this moment I felt myself getting a little bit mad because of how long it was taking her to tell me what was wrong especially with how guilty she looked.

"I-I-I called CPS to come and get you and your siblings". At this moment I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

"You are such a pathetic excuse of a mother" my older sister Tamia burst out yelling before anyone else could get a word in.

"How dare you do something like this, knowing that we are most probably going to be split up? Instead of stepping up to the plate and hustling you just decided to take he easy way out because it works for you?" She continued on her rant as she started walking from one side of the room, closer to where my mother was sitting.

"Man, I hope I never see you again because I hate you" my older brother Benji said as he picked up his bags which I just noticed now, were packed and all by his feet.

I watched as one of the police officers helped him with his stuff and took them out to the cruiser. He walked over to me, looked at me with pain stricken eyes and pulled me into a tight hug.

"I promise when I get myself together, I'll come find you no matter what. I love you and take care of yourself"

"Okay. I love you too." I told him with a muffled voice as pulled him even closer to me. He repeated the process with Matthew, the second born, and then with Tamia.

After a few minutes of hugging us all as a group, he left out with the officer, stopping at the door one last time to look at our mom who didn't even bother to look up.

After a few seconds of standing around, Matthew, Tamia and I all got our bags and proceeded to follow each officer that was assigned to us. Not knowing when we would see each other again, we stood by the curb and hugged each other one last time for about five minutes, before going with our officer.

I was dropped of at the group home 30 minutes later, not knowing or anticipating how much I would have to go through for the next 3 years.

*Flashback Over*

20 minutes later...

I finally made it to the mall, power walking to the bakery seeing how I was already late since the bus arrived at the stop 10 minutes later than it should have.

Walking in, I hurried to the staff room, quickly changed to the standard black t-shirt with black pants, placed my name tag on and went up to the counter to start my shift.

"You know Mr Jay hate's it when someone is late right?"

"I know Star, tell me something I don't know." I told my workmate Star who has had an issue with me from the day she walked in.

Something about me bothered her to no end and I found it super comical.

Secret R was the bakery I worked at owned by Mr Jay. He owned a chain of bakeries across the country and was rarely around this particular one. He made me manager of this branch and not to toot my horn but we were doing extremely well in terms of numbers. As much as I managed the branch, I loved working at the counter and getting to interact with customers, especially the children.

"Mama! mama! I want!" I quickly snapped out of the daze I went into and looked at the 3 year old child that was looking at the ice-cream display with wide eyes.

"Okay baby, you get to choose two flavours for being such a good boy today!" I smiled as I watched the interaction between the baby and his mother, wondering how life would be if my own son had made it.

After a few minutes of critical decision making for the little boy, I rang him and his mother up, wrapping the pastries as well as serving the ice-cream with a small lollipop as a small bonus.

45 minutes later...

After taking care of the plethora of customers, I finally went to the manager's office to take a look at the books and check up on inventory numbers, as well as place orders for items that were running low.

3 hours later, I was finally through with taking care of everything that needed my attention. It was 7:45, 15 minutes to closing time and I was excited to get to go home, take a shower and just sleep.

After ensuring everything had been shut off properly for the second time, I closed the store and walked to the bus stop, waiting 15 minutes for my bus. Once I made it to my apartment, I hopped in the shower, handled my business and then proceeded to pull out some left over chinese food from the fridge, heating it up then walking to my couch and picking out a movie on Netflix.

After eating and putting everything away, I walked to my bedroom, hopped into bed and checked my phone one last time, responding to any text messages before finally putting it on silent, placing it on my nightstand, and finding a comfortable position to fall asleep in, thinking about my siblings and how life was when our farther was around.

Something I did every night.