My house is about a ten-minute drive from town. It's a large three-story house with a circular driveway and floor to ceiling windows lining nearly the entire house. Behind the windows is an empty house, only having the first floor occupied. There are three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a single bathroom. My parent's room is on the third-floor mom loves the view from her window.
Mom doesn't like us going upstairs. All the doors from the second floor onward are locked. Those are Alicia and Lani's rooms. Their rooms are the only things left of them since they left. All the family pictures with them are no longer on the walls—no school pictures, drawings, stuffed animals nothing.
They wanted to explore the world. That's what mom likes to tell people she'd rather not accept the fact that they hate being apart of our family.
I sigh and turn into the secluded road leading to my house. There are over ten cars parked in the driveway that it takes me a while to find a spot. It's when I see a photographer at her car taking out equipment that I know what's going on.
Westview's Family of the Year. Mom makes us participate every year; it makes her feel like she's on top of the world. The Pattersons won last year, which makes mom even more determined to win. Mom blames our loss on the fact that Alicia, Lani, and Tyler refused to be in the nomination picture. According to her, we cant win a family of the year if only half of us participate. After our tragic loss mom made Alicia, Lani and Tyler promise to attend every year, and she would leave them alone.
"Valeria you guys are home! The outfits ready we need to get you all into hair and makeup as soon as possible" Kara, my mom's assistant, says guiding us towards the front entrance. She looks down at Bella and Junior and extends her arms "I missed you guys, how are you?" They both run to her and embrace her in a hug. Kara has been more of a mother to them that our actual mom says a lot about her.
Kara has been working with my mom for over fifteen years. I've never been too keen about Kara acting as a mother figure to us, but I still appreciate the effort that she puts in.
"We're great Kara. Ecstatic." My voice is dripping with sarcasm that Kara ignores she knows that I hate family of the year. She understands that I need time to myself when participating. I take a deep breath to calm myself shake my head "Is everyone else already here?"
"Yes. We've just been waiting on you three to get here," Kara says I nod and let out another deep breath.
I tell Kara to give me a few moments and get the kids ready. I discreetly head over to the backyard and sit under our maple tree. The grass is still wet from the sprinklers that were on earlier and the sun beating down on my skin. I relax and lean back on the trunk inhaling and exhaling to calm my nerves. After a few minutes, I decide that I need to start heading inside to get ready.
Chaos. That's the only way to describe what is going on—particularly one of the reasons I hate taking the nomination photos. Every participating family has to offer up their home for something during the six months of the competition. Mom always offers our house for the photos because every family comes over and she gets to show off our house. It's all a bunch of wealthy families throwing money around acting as they care. Along with all of our materialistic things come all the pretentious people.
I sigh, looking at myself one more time in the mirror before walking to the front door. All of the photos are taken in the same spots to make everything 'fair' at least that's what they say.
"Valeria sweetheart we need to take our pictures." I glance back inside the house before smiling and walking out.
Mom expects our photo to be perfect as she always does. For that to be accomplished, she buys the most extravagant and expensive dresses and suits to show off. Thirty million dollar watches. Two hundred fifty million dollar necklaces, rings, and earrings. As I said, perfection is the key to everything.
My pregnancy and the weight I had put on during nearly gave mom a heart attack. She assured to founders that Kye and I were together and raising Emilia as a happy couple. If I'm seen as a single teen mom, we'd be eliminated before we even started. As a result, Kye and Emilia are in all the family photos and attend every event no matter the circumstances.
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