The new year’s supposed to be all about change, right? Turning over a new leaf? New beginnings?

Yeah, well… Whatever this is the beginning of… I sure as hell don’t like it.

Hope and I really thought things were finally on the right track for Harper. Everything had been getting so much better for her lately.

And it took so much to finally get there.

She lost her old friends. She withdrew from her schoolmates. Her grades dropped lower than ever before. She didn’t have any kind of drive or direction. No ambition. No sense of responsibility. She always underestimated herself. It was a mess — one that I think had been piling up for a long time. And it physically hurt us to see her that way. We felt so powerless to stop it.

But then everything start turning around. Harper made new friends. Her grades started going up. She got a part time job. She was happy. She finally had a sense of responsibility. It was everything Hope and I could have wanted for her.

I know Hope and I made a few mistakes along the way. We probably weren’t making things much easier for her, at first. Back when we got in that nasty fight a couple months ago… God, I hate to admit it, but I knew Harper was right. We were being total hypocrites. Pushing her to go to uni was never the right thing to do.

Her mother and I couldn’t stand school. It was one of the things that drew us together back when we first started dating. We were two stupid kids with crazy dreams and plans for the future… And absolutely NO desire to set foot inside a classroom ever again. But at least we knew what we wanted in our lives (besides each other…)

It’s just… I don’t know what it is about Harper. I love her more than anything. She’s so creative and so smart. Her grades rarely show that… but she really is. And all Hope and I have ever wanted is for her to live up to that potential we see in her, y’know? A potential I still don’t think she really sees in herself.

But she’s just never had any real kind of passion or ambition or plan for the future. The closest thing is her writing… But’s she never actually done anything with it. We’ve tried to encourage her to join the school newspaper, or sign up for a writing class…. But she won’t do it. She barely even lets us read anything she writes either.

Uni was the only thing we could come up with that might help give her a little direction. We couldn’t really think of anything else. I mean, you hear stories all the time about that sort of thing, right? People who go off to study and end up ‘finding themselves’? Or, at the very least, getting some kind of career lined up?

That was the type of thing Harper really needed… But obviously it was something she didn’t want to listen to.

Tante Joce really loved teasing me about that… Reminding me just how much I hated being told what to do too, back when I was a kid.

“She’s her father’s daughter.” Tante Joce says it all the time… And so does Hope too, actually.

So… I decided to use that as inspiration. If we’re really that much alike, maybe the same sort of thing that got through to me could get through to her?

I started thinking about when I was her age (minus what a freaking idiot I was, I mean). I got that job washing dishes down at the Bistro. Just some crappy little part time job to help pay for my apartment. But look what it turned into… I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for that first job. It opened up so many doors for me.

So we set up our deal with Harper. And it really seemed to be working. She found a job, has been doing pretty well at it, and still managing to pass all her classes. I started realizing that Tante Joce was right…

But I guess Harper is like me in some not-so-great ways too.

I remember what it was like being her age. I understand what it’s like being a kid, and wanting to feel older or cooler…

But lying to us?! Smoking pot?! Spending the night at some older boy’s apartment?! And who knows what else she could be hiding from us?!

Devin’s father told us he’d said something about taking a pill too?! We can’t get Harper to crack on that one… But I’m pretty damn sure she must have done it too.

This isn’t like her… At all.

What the hell has gotten into our little girl?!

Thank God for Rylie’s parents. We never would have figured out about this whole thing if it weren’t for them.

They stopped by to pick up their daughter on New Year’s morning… I guess they wanted her home earlier than they’d originally planned. But since she hadn’t been answering her phone, they just decided to show up and get her… Because Rylie had told her parents she was spending the night at our house.

And, well… I think all of us were pretty damn surprised when we told them we thought Harper had spent the night with them.

Devin’s parents were the first people we called, of course. They told us he’d spent the night with his cousin.

We figured maybe that’s where the girls ended up too, so they gave Julia a call. And I guess it didn’t take much to get her to crack. She told them everything.

We’re still trying to wrap our heads around all of this… Especially Hope and I. I mean, how could Harper go behind our backs like this? And how had we have been so damn blind? I guess it was all just too good to be true.

Erik seemed like such a nice young man when we met him. Polite, friendly, smart… How could we have known? How could we have guessed what he was really after? How could we have known what kind of awful shit he’d force on my baby girl?! Alcohol, drugs… It makes me sick.

I know what guys his age are like. The kind who hang out with younger girls, and throw those types of wild parties. And I know all too well what kind of shit goes on at those parties too…

It kills me to think about what he could have done to her… Or what he maybe already did do to her. It’s not like Harper would have told us if he did. Hell, maybe he had her so hopped-up on drugs that she doesn’t even remember?!

Hope and I have definitely learned our lesson. Harper isn’t as responsible as we thought she was. Not as mature either. And now matter how much she screams and fights us about it, we’re getting her a new tutor.

Oma and Harper talked me out of calling the police on the stupid kid. But I made it perfectly clear that we’re calling the cops on him if he ever gets near our Harper ever again. We don’t want her associating with this Erik guy anymore. Not after everything that’s happened.

We’re having her take a break from Rylie and Devin for a while too. I know Harper loves them to death… But they got wrapped up in all of this too. And who knows what kind of role they might have played in this whole thing?

They’re both grounded right now anyway, just like Harper is, so we won’t have to worry about them seeing each other for a while. And honestly? I’m really glad that’s the case. I think they all need a break from each other, if you ask me.

I just wish Harper could understand that.

Hope and I tried sitting down with her and having a reasonable conversation about all of this, but no matter what we say, she won’t listen. And she won’t even try being calm about her side of the story either.

She just screams at us and goes storming off to her room.

How can this be happening?!

Like I said before, it was really starting to seem like things had been changing lately. But we thought it was for the better.

And instead, in the blink of an eye, Harper’s become this whole new person. One who tells lies and keeps secrets and goes behind our backs… It’s like we don’t even know her anymore.

What happened to our sweet little girl?

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Note: I’m not big on doing awards posts myself, but I wanted to give a quick thank you to Bugsie2016 and AuroraLockwood for nominating me for the Liebster award recently! (Bugsie nominated my comedy story, but it’s on a mini-break at the moment, so I decided to thank her here!) I appreciate you guys thinking of me ❤ 🙂