Admitted As A Legal Orphan

MotoNovel 1 Chapters English

I grew up in a disposable house. I wore disposable paper slippers, brushed my teeth with disposable travel-sized plastic brushes, and slept in the unfinished crawl space beneath the rafters. Whenever I came home, I had to sit on the porch steps, waiting for someone else to turn the deadbolt. I was never given a key. Worse, my name was never added to the family’s legal residency papers. On every official tax return, every municipal census record, I simply did not exist. Years ago, when my parents packed up to chase wealth in the city, they took my brother, Sean, because he was the boy, the heir who needed to be groomed close to them. They took my little sister, Natalie, because she was fragile and spoiled, and my mother couldn't bear the thought of her enduring a rough country life. So, I was the one left behind in Ohio, sleeping on my grandmother’s lumpy cotton mattress, until Grandma took her last breath eight years ago. On the day I turned eighteen, my parents drove me downtown for the eighteenth time, supposedly to file the paperwork that would finally add me to their household registry and make me legal in the eyes of the city. We had barely reached the granite steps of the municipal clerk’s office when Natalie’s name lit up my mother’s phone screen. Natalie was at the amusement park across town. She claimed she had gotten separated from her friends and couldn't find the exit. She was crying, demanding that Mom and Dad come get her immediately. I gripped the Manila envelope containing my birth certificate and said quietly, "It really only takes three minutes to get the stamp..." Dad had already hung up. Without a backward glance, he turned on his heel toward the curb. Mom paused just long enough to offer an absentminded pat to my hair. "Aria, honey, stay right here. We’ll be back in twenty minutes." I kept my chin down. I didn't answer. At five o'clock sharp, the heavy bronze doors of City Hall clicked shut behind me, the security guard turning the bolt wi

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