I walked out of the auditorium, not being able to look at my class mates and their dads playing stupid carnival games. I opened the door to the girls’ bathroom and stuck a hair pin into the lock, so no one could come in. I stood in front of the mirror, wondering what happened to the sweet little school girl I used to be. She was gone. She left the same day my dad did. I picked up a piece of my naturally black hair and pulled half of it into a pigtail. I didn’t even look like I used too when I did that.

I looked at myself running my finger across my eyelid rubbing off the charcoal colored makeup. I, without even thinking, turned the sink on and washed the makeup off hoping some of the lies I’ve heard would go away too. I stood there my face wet and my eyeliner running hoping something would happen that would make me happy again. My mother hid in her room all day, crying and drinking.
My brother, Alex, was just a baby when dad left but dad took him with him. I was alone, only 14 and alone. Everyone in my family was either dead or wanted nothing to do with me and my alcoholic mother. I had one friend and he wasn’t here with me. This was the "Daddy & Daughter" day at my school. Why I came I couldn’t remember a good reason, but I was here sad and reminded of the only pain I wasn’t immune to, My dad being gone, forever.

He wasn’t coming back because when he and Alex got on that plane to leave, they were the only ones who didn’t survive the crash. The thought of my little fair haired brother dying in a plane crash before his first birth day sickens me, but sometimes I’m a little less sympathetic for my dad. He was the one that took Alex away from me. He was the one that left me to take care of drunken mother every time she got alcohol poisoning. He left me with nothing but silver purity ring they gave me at his funeral, which my mother refused to attend.
I was young but they said they found it in the rubble of the crash inside my father’s black leather jacket, a slender silver ring with my name engraved on it, Sammy Paige.

I remember the air line mangers tortured voice when he told me, a sad, hurt, lost six year old girl who had lost all the happiness that she used to over flow with. "Ms.Paige...I am very sorry to say that your father has died in the crash" the words ring in my head "died in the crash" is all I really hear any more. "What about Alex?" I had asked. The manger didn’t even answer when I burst into tears on the floor of the airline lobby.

I pushed away the horrible memories and washed what running makeup remained on my face. My green eyes look less of the sea green my father had and more of the color of stomach bile. I couldn’t stand to look at myself anymore; I walked out of the bathroom and maneuvered myself through the maze of a school I attened to the counselor’s office. Mrs. Dorel was sitting at her desk and saw me through the glass. She beckoned for me to come in and I did, ready for another session where she was the only one talking.