I didn\'t show up at school on Thursday and Friday. Perfect attendance records be damned because I need to have some me time. I told my mum I was sick, which wasn\'t a complete lie, only a half truth and as such, I couldn\'t go to school or drop Sophie at Linkdale. Luckily, she didn\'t ask too many questions and let me do my thing. My mind tells me she knows I\'m lying, but she doesn\'t want to be too pushy. I\'d open up to her...eventually. Khalil\'s assault and Jason\'s mind games have really taken a toll on me and I really need a breather.

Paris has been checking up on me constantly and is swinging by this afternoon to see how I\'m doing. We haven\'t visited each other in a while because our schedules are hectic but hey, you make time out of no time.

Picking up my phone from my maroon covered bed, I scroll through my contacts (out of boredom). Stumbling by a number I swore I deleted long ago, I hit the call button with a sliver of hope.

They say trials and tribulations are supposed to bring families together, but in my case, it ended up tearing us apart. My mum and dad first met in high school. They didn\'t date back then but she said they were really good friends. They drifted apart when they went off to university but then rekindled their friendship when my dad came back to Bridgewood for work.

Long story short, friendship turned to romance, romance turned to a wedding and a wedding turned to my sister and I being born. From what I recall from my childhood, it was as normal and stable as can be. Mum worked at Saint John\'s Hospital while my dad was the manager at Whole Shopping- one of the biggest grocery stores in town. I remember how my dad used to take me to the park to get ice-cream, taught me how to ride a bike, he even signed me up for martial arts classes because he wanted his daughter to know how to protect herself when the occasion demanded it.

I was really close to my dad. He was my hero, the one I\'d go to when I had problems with my maths homework or when I fell off my bike, he\'d be there to treat my wounds and then sing me a lullaby to make me stop crying.

My parents always looked so in love. With each passing day, they looked like they were going to be together forever. They were the reason why I believed that true love really did exist. Now, they\'re the reason why I believe that the notion of true love is utter bullshit.

Sophie was born in the summer of 2006. Mum named her that because the name \'Sophie\' means wisdom so she wanted her baby girl to be a wise, strong and independent woman in the future. My dad was so happy because he had another girl who completed his family. He would dote on her and help mum out in changing diapers, making her bottle, buying her clothes. Anyway he could help out, he would.

When Sophie was one, we started noticing that she was always weak. I mean regular one year olds turn into mini terrors because they finally discovered that they could walk, so they literally use their legs and hands to turn the house into a miniature playground, but not Sophie. She didn\'t have the energy to play and she was always sleeping. At first my parents thought it was nothing serious, so they overlooked it but then, they noticed that she had boils on her skin, hard painful ones. They took her to the hospital where my mum worked and the paediatrician told my parents that she would be fine. Apparently, she had an allergic reaction to something so he recommended changing her diet and then gave her medications.

Things were supposed to get better, right? Well, wrong. Life always finds a way to kick you in the ass when you least expect it. My parents\' picture perfect marriage crumbled like a pack of cards. I was too young to understand then- I mean I was only four years old and was invested in Barbie dolls and cartoons and not \'\'grown-up stuff\'\'-but I was not stupid. I could sense that there was a disconnect somewhere. They were constantly fighting, hurling insults and screaming at each other. It almost felt like they resented one another for some reason unknown to me then.

I used to ask my mum why she and dad were screaming at each other and she\'d tell me that they\'re going through \'adult problems\' and that \'little girls are not meant to understand big people things\'. As the fights went on Sophie\'s condition became worse. What we thought was an allergic reaction turned out to be a rare condition called Type A Sephiligitis. According to the child specialist, it\'s a disease that slowly eats up the immune system and causes organ failure, like when cancer meets lupus. At that time, there was no cure but there were medications and treatments which could lessen the symptoms but they were expensive and the family\'s health insurance could barely cover the expenses. My parents found a way to make it work and Sophie got the help she needed. She spent majority of her childhood in the hospital and she was making slow but steady progress.

Two years passed, I was six years old and Sophie was three. She was still sick at the hospital and I would visit her every day when I got back from school. We would play with her toys, and I would read her stories and teach her things that I learnt in school. I loved my sister, she was literally perfect to me and I wondered why God would afflict her with such a disease.

One day, I got home from school and I saw my mother crying on the couch whilst holding a piece of paper. Seven year old me couldn\'t understand why she looked so distraught. She sat me down, looked me straight in the eye and told me that my dad abandoned us. I knew that my parents where always fighting but it didn\'t give him the right to just up and leave like that knowing fully well that he had a daughter who could die in the hospital at any moment.

I remember feeling angry, lost, confused and downright pissed because leaving meant that mum had to be the sole breadwinner of the house. Ever since that day, she never shed a single tear and picked up the pieces of her life together because she knew she had to be strong for her daughters. I know it hurts more than she would let on, any reasonable woman would feel hurt if her spouse just vanished without a trace, but like the saying goes: What doesn\'t kill you makes you stronger, and that\'s what it did- made us stronger.

It\'s been years now since he has been gone and I\'ve come to terms with the fact that he\'s gone. I don\'t hate him, I used to, but I\'ve spent enough time doing that and I\'ve realized that harbouring such negative feelings in your heart would only kill you faster and I\'m really not interested in dying young. Sophie blames herself for him leaving, but I constantly tell her that he is an adult who has a moral sense of what is right and wrong. He made a decision and decided to stick by it, so it\'s no one\'s fault.

Really, it is no one\'s fault but his because he missed out on the opportunity to see what a wonderful person Sophie has become. She never let her condition get the best of her and is always so positive. She literally lights up any room she\'s in.

We survived the hurdles, my mum, my sister and I, and we would continue to wave through the storm together.

............….

\'\'Hey dad, it\'s me again leaving the hundredeth voicemail, but who am I kidding? You\'d never respond.\'\' I wipe the stray tears with the sleeve of my sweater and calm my breathing. \'\'A call once in a while would suffice, but I guess you don\'t care enough, and I... Sophie misses you. She asks about you everytime and I can\'t seem to find the words to explain things to her. She\'s fourteen now, did you know? Your daughter is a teenager, and in 9th grade and she\'s one of the sharpest people I know. You know, I have so many questions running through my mind, and I always wonder why you left. Did you hate being a parent so bad? Did mum do something wrong? Was it me? Why did you have to leave? And it\'s not...I\'m just going to hang up now. You probably won\'t even listen to this anyways.\'\'

With a single click of the red button, the line goes dead along with my heart.

Hope is but a grain of sand.