Red-Handed

Red-Handed

         I like to steal things. It gives me a rush of adrenaline. I own the game, I make the rules. Mom says I should stop, but who listens to their mother. Mom says it’s illegal, but I don’t care. I’m good. I can steal anything, from a meaningless mint from a restaurant or a birthday cake at a five-year-old’s birthday party. I know I’m a kleptomaniac and my teacher tells me to get help, whenever I go to school. I understood my life. I understood Mom. I understood my desire to steal.  I understood everything, until he came. He just decided to show up, just before my seventeenth birthday, begging me to come live with him in his huge fancy house in Beverly Hills, half way across the country! I can’t believe he would expect me to take off with him, even with the monthly checks he sent to my mom to help pay for rent. How did he think I would go with him, after everything he did to my mother, expecting I could leave her just like he did? It’s strange how right my father was. I guess I am just like him, me, Scarlett “Red” Smith. I’m able to leave a place I love in search of something I want. I can’t lose sleep over hurting a loved one. My mother was right. I am my father’s daughter.