Story by: Yves Adele Harlow - Reporter
Well all right, maybe not for weeks, but she hasn’t been in school for a while. Personally, this year I think it’s going to be very hard for Stephanie Littman to pass. If she does, I think she will just barely make it. Now, I know she just barely makes it every year, but this will be cutting it close. Remember, students who attend Taylortucky High School are only allowed to miss 13 days per semester and while I don’t know if Stephanie has missed that many days, I do know that she hasn’t been in school a lot.
If you ask me, I blame her family. Her mother married Stephanie’s best friend, named Josie’s father. I don’t think Josie is a very good person for Stephanie to be around. When I first met Stephanie, she was nice and she had quit smoking a long time ago, and didn’t do drugs, and all that other kind of bad stuff. But ever since she met Josie, she’s been getting into all of that and started smoking again.
At first, Stephanie liked Josie’s dad, but now she hates him. Josie, her sister Christen, and her dad moved in with Stephanie and her mom. Christen is far worse than Josie and actually made Stephanie’s mom have a nervous breakdown. So Christen left and went to live with her real mom. Then Stephanie’s mom and Josie’s dad started getting in really bad arguments and they were going to get a divorce, which even now, has never happened. But Josie’s other sister, named Brandine, has moved in. Stephanie likes Brandine, but I don’t have much information on Brandine.
Now, Stephanie and Josie hate each other, in fact, the whole family it seems is mad at each other. Josie moved out of the house (she’s only 16 mind you and has dropped out of school altogether) and has moved into her boyfriend’s house. They have no money and barely any furniture. After about a month of being out of the house, Josie called her dad and she wanted to have her bed back, but her dad said that she couldn’t because Brandine is using it now. Then Josie’s boyfriend had to have some surgery done on his teeth because he fell onto a window sill (??? Don’t ask me, it’s what Stephanie told me) and they didn’t have any money to pay for it. So Josie called her dad and wanted some money from him, but he said no because she was so sure when she moved out that she could make it on her own so he was going to leave her to it. The next week, Stephanie’s mom discovered that there was $144 dollars missing from the checking account and she thinks either Josie stole it or Josie’s dad gave it to her. And almost every month since then, she has been noticing bits of money gone. So now she has been fighting with Josie’s dad about it.
Stephanie has a lot to deal with when she gets home everyday and why she would stay at home for all of that, I don’t know. I just hope she gets herself together enough to come back to school, because she has told me she want’s to graduate high school and wants to go to college. If she doesn’t start coming to school, neither of those things are going to happen.