When I was little, my teacher told me that a girl deer is called a doe, and after that I thought that our farm was called Doe Run because that is what the deer did each morning when my father went to work in the fields. I told my father that; he laughed. He told me that our last name was Doe and a run was a small stream or river like the one that ran by Mom’s vegetable patch; then he told me I was the smartest girl in the entire kingdom.
In truth, I was just a normal girl. I got up early to do my chores on our family’s farm before leaving for school each day. I worked hard for my grades, and I struggled to get my parents to listen to me. I had a little brother, James, who was a complete pain, but I loved him. It was my job to protect him. My mother worked on the farm with my father and also part time at the school cafeteria. My father was the only thing that made my family less than ordinary.
My story began when I came home from school for the last time; I was happy with the thought that summer vacation was finally here. I had plans for my summer – swims in the lake with my friends, catching the local theatre troupe play some overacted thing, like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, by some pompous guy, like Billy Shakespeare, and just in general doing anything that didn’t involve homework, but this was not meant to be. Of course, my father was the one who went and screwed the whole thing up.
My father… What can I say about him? I loved him. He was fiercely proud of me; which, I guess is good. He was always bragging to his friends about me. “My daughter’s beauty surpasses all the other girls in the kingdom.” In truth, I was average in looks, grades – really everything. “My daughter is the most intelligent child in the known world!” he boasted to his buddies at the pub. My best friend told me she heard her parents talking about it one night. I was mortified. I told my father to stop lying – that it was embarrassing. In truth,...