Tina walked into the park with her sister.

“I look pretty, don’t I?” Roxanne, her 8-year-old sister asked.

Tina looked at her and smiled. “You look amazing.”

Tina had worked her butt off to make the dress Roxanne was wearing, she had used old clothes of her brothers and sisters to make it, they didn’t have the money to buy a dress and Roxanne really needed another one because her old one was almost falling apart.

Tina had a big family. There were 8 children: Roxanne, Katrina, Gianne, Seth, Finn, Jeremiah, Amelia and Tina. Roxanne was the youngest with her 8 years, Katrina and Gianne were 11, Seth was 12, and Finn was 14, Jeremiah 17, Amelia 20 and Tina 22.  Her mother, Leslie was a cleaning lady and she was 44. Her Dad, Charles, didn’t have a job but he was trying to find one. Tina, being the oldest, took care of her youngest siblings. Her mother helped in a store after her day job. She couldn’t cook or wash so Tina did that. She would like to go live on her own, she had her degree to get a decent job but then she looked at her little sisters and brothers knowing that they wouldn’t have anyone that would care for them. Dad couldn’t cook and probably didn’t even know that clothes had to be washed so they couldn’t count on him. The whole day he looked for work and every evening he went to the café on the corner of the street to get drunk. In that state, he would come home and get angry at everything and everyone. The house they had, was small for such a big family. There were only three bedrooms. One for Leslie and Charles. One for the boys and one for the girls. It really wasn’t easy. To Charles, you couldn’t talk. Or he was drunk or he had a hangover. Leslie was almost never at home, because she was working and when she came home, she ate what Tina had cooked and went to sleep a few hours before she had to get up and go to work again. Tina decided that this afternoon, instead of cleaning the house, she would try to find a job. Somebody must be hiring a development executive.