Chapter 10: The Downfall
Gravity is completely undefeated.
When the fourteen-day eviction notice expired, the county sheriff arrived at the house. My mother and Mia were forced to pack whatever they could fit into Mia’s beat-up Kia. The landlord changed the locks on the front door, permanently sealing away the life I had paid for.
With no credit, an active eviction on their record, and absolutely zero savings, they couldn't rent a new apartment. They were forced to move into a dingy, weekly-rate motel on the industrial outskirts of Columbus.
The cramped room smelled of stale cigarette smoke and bleach. There was only one bed.
The delusion of their superiority shattered overnight. Mia’s boyfriend, who had been perfectly happy to date a girl with a free house and paid tuition, blocked her number the second he saw her carrying garbage bags into a motel room. Her carefully curated social media presence died; she deleted her accounts after the comments sections were flooded with people mocking her for throwing away a billionaire sister.
To afford the weekly motel rate, my mother—who had spent the last decade complaining about her "bad back" to avoid working—was forced to take a minimum-wage job cleaning rooms at that exact same motel.
Mia, utterly devoid of any marketable skills or college degree, had to sign up with a desperate, high-turnover catering agency, working grueling twelve-hour shifts on her feet just to afford gas and cheap takeout.
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Every night, they returned to their cramped, depressing motel room. They didn't speak to each other. The resentment was a physical, suffocating presence. My mother blamed Mia for recording the video. Mia blamed my mother for throwing the coffee.
They were trapped in a prison of their own making, forced to survive in the very reality they had so arrogantly condemned me to.
