A Woman's Flight Chapter 16

Rebecca could feel herself losing control in more ways than one. She was beginning to withdraw from school and especially her mother. She still blamed her mother for allowing things to get so bad with her father and especially for allowing herself to be made so weak and not fighting back when Rebecca felt like she needed to be protected the most. She felt that in some ways her mother had indirectly betrayed her by allowing the abuse to continue for as long as it did. She remembers one night in particular when things really began to fall apart.

Rebecca had just gotten home and she was actually happy for a change. Even though she never really felt like she connected or really understood most of the kids at her school, she usually spent most of her time studying and reading. She felt that doing good in school was one of the only things she was good at. What she loved the most though was to go into her room after her father and mother had just gotten done arguing and read silently to herself.

She soon fell in love with books and found herself escaping into the different worlds and better possibilities that the books offered and she found that with some of her favorite books she would revisit them like old friends that she always got something new and amazing from each time she read them.

On that particular night she had just gotten her report card back from school and like usual she was pretty good at maintaining straight A's but this time in particular she had gotten an achievement award for being on the honor roll for her entire time at her elementary school in Tyler. She was moving from the 5^th to the 6^th grade and her school was honoring the special children who had managed to do well scholastically throughout their entire academic career.

Growing up she had always felt somehow different from her mom, but she especially felt estranged from the other children at school as well. She had always been very sensitive when it came to seeing people sad and suffer while it seemed like her mom actually took joy in talking about people and spreading gossip and talking down to people she felt were beneath her even though she was never really rich to begin with.

She never understood how kids could be so cruel to each other and even she was often the butt of jokes and picked on at school for being smart and getting straight A's but she was especially picked on for being simply being bigger than most of the kids at her school.

Just as much as her mom was short and petite and diminutive in stature and in personality, she was the exact opposite. She wasn't exactly over weight, but she had always been a little taller and bigger than most of the kids her age. By the time she was 11 she had already surpassed her mom in height and size and most of the kids in her grade as well. The girls her age were especially merciless when it came to picking on her when it came to her weight and would purposely make snide comments and remarks.