It's A Not So Wonderful Life

What does it take to make an honor student desperate enough to rob a bank? she wondered as she felt the gun in her pocket. How does the valedictorian end up here? What went wrong? Of course, she knew the answer to that.

Everything.

She used to be Alexandra Hale, beautiful and smart with a promising career as an artist. She used to be the activities girl, in so many different committees it was too hard to count. Basically, she was the girl everyone hated at school. The picture of perfect, the teacher’s pet. She was the one nobody could compare to in looks or intellect. She was the person the girls thought of as they threw up in the bathroom.

At least, that’s who she was on the outside. Inside her home, she was the nobody. Her drunk mother was to wrapped up in reality TV shows to listen, and let’s be honest, the amount of time her father was around, she might as well not have a father. And that’s how it always goes. Head cheerleader with a drunk mother or stoned father goes into drugs and alcohol, or the smart pretty girl goes to college and never moves past her emotional scarring.

Which wasn’t her story. Alexandra did get rid of her demons. It was miracle, but she came out perfect, just as if her life was as perfect as it looked. She got married to a handsome man and had a glorious wedding and they had twin girls and a baby boy together. A story so perfect there’s no point in writing it, right? Just one perfect thing after another, the luckiest girl in the world. A complete Mary Sue.

Then her little baby boy died when he was three, and she went into such a depression. She tried to be a mother to her five year old girls, but it hurt so much. To have loved something like him, to have your heart expand to include him, and then have him ripped away. Her heart wasn’t empty, but it wasn’t full anymore.

Then her husband divorced her for another woman, taking the twins away. She was all alone, with an empty heart too big for her chest. A constant ache of pain, like acid eating away inside her until there’s nothing left. Day by day she walked around and smiled at her friends, but she couldn’t really feel it. IT was just a blur of pain.

So she turned herself off. She might as well be a zombie for the amount of brain activity she had. Answer if someone asks you a direct question, focus on work. IT wasn’t art anymore, it was work. A distraction from her pain. If she turned herself off, she couldn’t feel the pain. A plan she stuck to for months, until she got a phone call.

“Hello?”

“Alex? Alex, it’s Adam,” her ex-husband said. That shocked her out of her zombie-like state into full awareness. She hadn’t seen him or the twins since the divorce nearly a year ago.

“Adam? What is it?”

“Tracy is…very sick,” Adam answered carefully.

“Tracy? What’s wrong with my baby?!” Alex shrieked. She could picture Tracy’s golden brown curls, her rosy cheeks, her perfect smile. She could smell the shampoo she used to use and she could almost hear her tinkling laugh. What could be wrong with such a lovely child? What in her memory could have possibly changed? Again, the answer she already knew.

Everything.

Tracy’s long, golden curls were gone. Her once rosy cheeks were flames too bright to be called adorable. Her lips were puckered in exhaustion, not smiling like they used to be. She smelled of barf and cough medicine, not her shampoo. There was no laugh. Tracy was near death, and Adam had only called because he had no money left to treat her. He said there was a doctor in Paris, but the prices were high.

Adam said he could take Tracy to Paris and Alex could have Trixie, if Alex had enough, money to pay the doctor. Alex knew she didn’t. She hadn’t sold a painting in months. She was living off her friends mostly, a fact she hadn’t notice until this whole problem was brought to her attention. She didn’t have the power to save Tracy, just sit by and watch her die. How many more blows could she take?

Then the final shove to push her into crime. Her other daughter, Trixie, was hit by a van on her way home from school. She was alive, but in critical condition. If she had money it could solve all her problems.

So that’s how she ended up at the bank, a hand gun in one hand, with five big men as her partners. That’s how the honor student becomes desperate enough to endanger people’s lives. In a life where everything has gone wrong, how can you pass up an opportunity to make it right? She could save both her daughters if only she could get enough money. If only she could rob the bank.

She considered running away, though. She wasn’t a criminal at heart and she was afraid someone would get hurt. She couldn’t risk someone else’s life. How could she live through that, live through having blood on her hands, her conscience? Then a little boy walked up to her.

“HI,” he said happily, a dimple popping out on his chin as he smiled. His face was so familiar. His round, chocolate eyes, his plump cheeks, his light brown hair parted just so on his head with on cowlick in the back. He reminded her of Carsen, her little boy. Her baby, her end. Because his death was the start of the end of her.

“Carsen,” she whispered, and pulled out her gun. She pointed it at the ceiling and shot once, twice, three times.