He used to take the kids to the park, fix things around the house, and had a reputation in town for being handy. But over the years he turned into a domestic tyrant who kept the whole family on edge, including the dog. Susan couldn’t even say exactly when the change had happened.
At some point, she had simply accepted her lot, never blaming her husband out loud, though privately she carried a heavy guilt over what her children had lived through. Sitting at the same table with her raging stepfather, Katie knew once again that appealing to his conscience was useless. He lived by his own rules.
Other people’s needs barely registered with him. And the missing meat at dinner was his doing as much as anyone’s. The family survived on his modest paycheck because he had forbidden his wife to work.
His wages from the plant barely covered cheap staples and canned tuna, and even ground beef was a rare treat. Still, every night he blamed Susan for their poverty, lecturing her about budgeting as if she could somehow turn a thin paycheck into steak dinners. In his mind, if she were smarter with money, he’d be eating like a king.
What he didn’t know was that his stepdaughter had quietly taken a job cleaning at the local community center. After school, she mopped floors and dusted the stage just to earn a little cash so she wouldn’t have to keep wearing clothes that looked like hand-me-downs from another decade. At seventeen, with a crush on a boy in her grade, she wanted badly to look like she belonged.
As it was, her appearance made her an easy target. “Look, Katie’s scavenging for leftover meatloaf again,” some of the girls would sneer in the school cafeteria when they saw her collecting untouched scraps into a bag. The food was for Max.
He might have been a poodle, but he was still a dog, and Katie thought it was only fair that he get some protein now and then instead of living on table scraps and cabbage like the rest of them. “I’m not stealing it. The lunch lady said I could take it,” she would shoot back. “Sure, so you can eat it behind the gym,” said one of the worst offenders, a smug girl named Brittany.
Brittany came from one of the better-off families in town. Her mother worked as the chief accountant at a local firm, and her father owned several pieces of farm equipment and did well for himself. “You didn’t see anything,” Katie said evenly.
“And if you think you did, maybe get your eyes checked. Too much cheap makeup can do that.” Brittany’s little circle started to laugh, then quickly stopped when they caught her glare.
“You’re trash, Katie,” Brittany hissed, flicking a plastic fork at her. “Say one more thing like that and I’ll make sure you regret it.”
“You’d have to aim better first,” Katie said calmly, tying up the bag with Max’s treat. “Looks like your eyesight’s the problem after all.” Brittany’s contempt for poverty was one of the main reasons Katie hated school…
