Victoria Hanback, famous movie star and unfaithful wife. She has been exiled from her home and her daughter when Chloe was still a baby. The album began with pictures from Victoria’s youth continuing to a small sampling of articles from her glamorous Hollywood days. Chloe knew the articles by heart as she carefully touched her mothers face with her quaking hands. As the book progressed further Chloe saw her mother with her father on their wedding day, the only one of them together. The final, and most painful picture was the only picture Chloe had of her with her mother.
Chloe threw her head back, banging it loudly on the wooden chest as tears began to pour from her face. Threw blurred eyes she traced the image of her mother’s delicate face that looked so lovingly into Chloe’s eyes. Chloe had been only six months old when that picture was taken, the day before her mother was thrown out along with any memory of her existence.
A soft knock on the door pulled Chloe out of her thought, “Yes?” she whispered as she frantically tried to hide the album.
“Ms. Hanback are you ok?”
Chloe relaxed as she walked to unlock the door for Miss Wyatt, the family’s head maid and Chloe’s surrogate mother. Miss Wyatt was the one who had managed to grab the photo album for her. Chloe opened the door and walked straight into a pair of opened arms. “Shhh, it’s ok dear.” Miss Wyatt peered further into the room and spotted the album, “Were you looking at photos of your mother again?”
Chloe ended their embrace and walked toward her canopied bed nodding her head. “I just---with all this,” Chloe swung her hands toward the lavish furnishings in her room, “How can I be so lonely?”
Miss Wyatt sat cautiously on the edge of the neatly made bed and pulled a young Chloe into her arms, “You don’t have any friends at school?”
“No, none of them will talk to me. They think I’m weird and ugly.” She broke the embrace and laid herself on the bed, burying her head in a mound of pillows.
Chloe’s father, Charles Hanback, was the president of Hanback & Company, a wealthy department store that had been in her family for nearly a century. With his esteemed position in the community and abundant prosperity Chloe was given many things to please her, yet most of what she wanted her father refused. Charles, although he traveled in the high society circle in Salem, practiced different morals and ethics than his colleagues.
While all the wealthy children attened a premier private school, Chloe was enrolled at the Catholic school her father and grandfather had attended because it provided the ‘best eduction’. Despite the fact that times had changed and the students at the Catholic school were no longer wealthy but quite the opposite, her father’s opinion remained unchanged. “The schools my colleagues’ children attend lack the boundary’s and restrictions and I will not have any daughter of mine running around like the carefree teenagers these days,” her father would mutter with much agitation. Her mother had cheated and been promiscuous, so Chloe was paying for her mistakes and his humiliation.
The children at the Catholic school taunted her because she was different. At 14, Chloe stood five foot two, flat chested, pimply with long, stringy hair. She spent endless hours examining herself before concluding that she would always be ‘ugly.’ All the children who would talk with her attended the wealthy private school and even when she saw them at functions it was forced contact. At her school the kids looked at her as a snob. Her father had a chauffer drive her to school in a limousine while most of their parents lacked a car that worked properly.
Chloe’s rolled on her side and her spirits brightened as she thought of the girl who had invaded her quiet lunch space today. For the past two years Chloe read under an oak tree, shaded by the bushy branches and sheltered far away from her mocking classmates. Today Chloe was shocked to find another girl in the same spot. “Hello,” she had spoken cautiously.
The girl looked up at Chloe with her deep brown eyes and immediately broke out into a welcoming smile, “Hi! My name is Nella.”
“I’m Chloe.” Chloe stood, looking at Nella with curiosity. There was something about this girl that seemed different like Chloe. She did not run away immediately. Chloe noticed her double piercing, something not allowed at her school, and a pair of tennis shoes that completed her plaid skirted outfit, rather than the mandatory brown loafers. Nella must have noticed Chloe looking her up and down because she spoke, “Don’t these outfits suck?”
Chloe’s eyes shot up to Nella’s. This girl has spunk she thought as she nodded. Nella continued, “Do you want to come over to my house sometime? We could hang out, have a sleepover. You could meet my boyfriend Kyle.”
“You have a boyfriend?” Chloe said amazed, “You’re parents let you date at 14?”
Nella rolled her eyes, “Yes—they absolutely love him!” Before they could continue the lunch bell rang and the students were ushered inside, “Wait for me outside after school,” Nella shouted above the swarm of students heading back to class.
That afternoon Chloe stood outside the thick, brown doors as Nella bounded down the cement steps. “Hi! Where do you live? We can walk home together.” Chloe looked down at the ground. Nella didn’t know, that was why she was talking to her. She shifted her eyes up as she watched the limo pull up and Henry, the chauffer, get out and call for her. Uncomfortably Chloe looked at Nella and spoke rather softly, “That is my ride.”
“Oh cool! Your dad drives a limo, can I have a ride?” Nella shot Chloe an eager look and Chloe was too excited about having a friend to correct her, “Sure,” she replied as she ran to alert Henry of the role-playing.
Chloe looked up at Miss Wyatt’s concerned eyes as she finished recounting the story of her first and second meeting with Nella and Miss Wyatt’s concern turned to displeasure, “She will find out Chloe dear.” Miss Wyatt hugged her surrogate daughter once more before quietly exiting the room, leaving Chloe to contemplate her words.