All of this could have been avoided. Every last bit of it. But for the sake of carrying on the family name, every single one of them just stood there and watched me suffer.
I found my college acceptance letter. Mom's eyes went wide with horror as I pulled out a pair of scissors and cut it to pieces.
She lunged forward to stop me. I shoved her back.
I'd picked accounting as my major for one reason: it was practical, easy to find work after graduation, so I could start earning money and give Mom a better life sooner.
Now I wondered why I'd ever bothered. Why I'd worked myself to the bone for someone who only gave me half.
Graduate with a mountain of debt, or skip the degree and go straight to work? Four fewer years of wasted effort. The math was simple.
I took a selfie—me and the pile of shredded paper—and posted it to Instagram.
The caption: Broke. Done. Not going.
Then I wrote a long post underneath. I laid out every detail. What my life had actually looked like all these years. What Mom's version of "fair" really meant. How Dad's backward obsession with the family name had led him to break every promise he'd ever made.
Within minutes, the post blew up. Relatives, classmates, people I hadn't spoken to in years—all crawling out of the woodwork.
Mom's phone started buzzing. Dad's phone started buzzing. Zachery's phone started buzzing.
Zachery stared at me like I'd lost my mind.
"Cassie, what the hell is wrong with you? Are you trying to destroy this family?"
I rolled my eyes. My life was already this much of a disaster.
If I didn't raise hell now, what was I supposed to do? Graduate and drown in student loans?
No money meant no education. Simple as that.
I'd been researching how to take legal action against my father.
After digging into it, I figured out the path of least resistance: call the cops.
When the officers showed up at the house, I threw myself at their legs and sobbed.
"I can't survive anymore! My mom can't afford to raise me, and my dad refuses to! I'll kill myself right in front of them if I have to!"
The neighbors came flooding out to watch the spectacle. I'd turned the house into a full-blown circus.
The infuriating part? I was already eighteen. The officers told us to work it out among ourselves.
If we could've worked it out among ourselves, why would I have called the police in the first place?
All they ever did was smooth things over and send everyone home.