Chapter Text
Gabriella O’ Hara is a very normal girl, with a very normal life.
She is 12 years old and lives in the yellow house at the end of the lane that's not too big and not too small, with her mom and her dad and her cat Marty.
She likes soccer, and vanilla ice cream and comedy movies that are a bit too grown up for her. She likes playing video games with her dad and when her mom is well enough to go on walks with her.
She's very happy.
Or she was at least. She was happy and carefree once, but that's all gone now. Well… the innocence is gone. She is happy, sometimes. It would be needlessly dramatic to say she was never happy. But she's not carefree anymore.
She remembers the last day of her childhood innocence very well. She has spent countless hours replaying it, after all.
It's a Friday, and she is awoken by her father. His name is Miguel O’ Hara. He's a tall man, naturally quite muscular, but always very gentle.
“Wake up, Mija, it's 8 am.” He said, gently shaking her shoulder.
“Five more minutes, Dad…” she grumbled and pulled the blankets over her head.
She heard her father sigh and smiled, thinking she had won, before she felt her blankets being cruelly ripped away from her.
“Hey! Dad, that is SO not cool!”
“Get dressed, Gabi.” Her father said with a laugh, before leaving. “You gotta go in 20 minutes!” He called over his shoulder before shutting her door.
Gabriella groaned, flopping back on her bed and staring at the ceiling for a moment, before sitting up and dragging herself out of her cozy bed. She grabbed whatever clothes her dad had set out for her the night before, hastily pulling them on, before rushing downstairs.
“Hi Dad.” She said as she stumbled into the kitchen, almost tripping over Marty, the large black and grey cat.
“Hey, Gabs. Hope pancakes are ok?” He said, gesturing to the steaming pan in front of him.
“Yeah that's perfect!” Gabriella sits at the kitchen table. She looks to the third seat.
“Moms not up yet?” She asks gently, as the father sets a steaming plate of pancakes in front of her. His face screws up for a moment, but only for a moment.
“...no, cariño. She's having another rough morning.”
“Oh… ok.” They sit in silence as Gabriella distracts herself by slathering nutella and fruit onto her pancakes.
“..she’s coming to my game tonight though, right?”
Gabriella watches his face closely.
“I don't know, Gabi. I’ll talk to her, see how she's feeling.”
“She missed my last one.”
“I know.”
“She promised she’d come to this one.”
“I know, cariño, I know.”
Her dad sighs, and she sees how tired he looks. She decides to drop it. They eat in silence for a few moments, before Marty jumps on the table, snapping both of them out of their thoughts. After shooing him away, they fall into easy conversation.
After they both finish up, her dad clears the plates away and packs her lunch into her bag. Then he grabs a brush from the counter and begins to brush her hair.
“Dad… I'm 12 years old! I can do my own hair!” She complained, but didn't pull away.
He just chuckled. “Every time you try to tie your own hair up you do it lopsided.”
Gabriella grumbled, but again, did not move.
He tied her hair into a neat high ponytail with a purple scrunchie.
“There, all done.”
“Yeah, thanks.” She stood up and grabbed her bag.
“I’ll pick you up after school, then we'll go to your game, ok?”
“Yup.” She says, picking up her bag.
“Do you want me to drive you?”
“Nah, I'll walk.”
“Ok, Gabi.” He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Have a good day.”
Gabi grins. “I will. Bye Dad!”
She rushes out of the kitchen and down the hall to the front door. She stops in front of her parents room, before peeking her head inside.
“Bye, Mom.” She says quietly, but gets no answer. She closes the door gently.
She leaves her house and begins the short walk to her middle school and has a perfectly normal Friday. She jokes around with her friends, barely pays attention in class, and can't sit still because of how excited she was for her soccer game after school.
When the bell to signal the end of the day rings at 3 pm she was the first one out of her seat, rushing out the door and practically running down the halls till she reached the outside.
Her father was standing by the gate, and when he saw her, he opened his arms and she leaped into them.
“Dad!”
“Hola, princesa! How was school?”
“It was good! Come on, we gotta get to my game!”
“Ah, no time to waste, eh?”
Gabriella giggled as she grabbed his arm and dragged him towards the car.
She froze, though, when she saw the empty passenger seat.
"Moms not here?"
Her father was silent as he climbed into the car.
"I'm sorry, mija, she's not feeling well."
Gabriella frowned, but climbed into the empty passenger seat. She turned her head away from her father, angry tears pricking her eyes. The car is silent for a moment, before her father speaks.
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah, just great.” she huffed, crossing her arms and staring out the window.
Her father sighed. “I don’t appreciate the sarcasm..” he is silent once more. “Gabi, your mother really wanted to be here but…”
“But what? She never leaves the house anymore! I'm lucky if I can have a single conversation with her in a day!” Gabriella hadn't noticed her voice raising. Her father flinched a little.
“Gabriella, you have to understand. Your mother… she isn't well-” he began.
“I know! God, I know that! But… I really want her to be there. To see how good I've gotten! And it's the semi-finals! I know that's selfish! I know! But…” she wasn't sure how to continue.
“...alright. I’m gonna drop you to your game, then I'm gonna go home and talk to her.”
Gabriella looked up in shock.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, but you can't be mad at me if she says no-”
Gabriella didn't even wait for him to finish, leaping out of her seat to give him a hug.
“Thank you, daddy.”
He hugged her back.
“No problem, princesa.” he patted her on the back gently, then pulled away, straightening up and putting his seatbelt on.
“Put your seatbelt on.”
“I am, I am.”
And with that, they pulled away from the parking lot and into the road.
The drive from the school to the soccer pitch was short, but pleasant. She jumped out of the car and, waving behind to her dad, raced to the changing rooms and changed into her soccer kit.
She left the changing rooms and went to find her coach and teammates. After chatting for a while, the game began. Gabriella looked through the crowd of parents and other kids watching, but couldn't see her mom OR her dad.
“What? Where are they?” she thought to herself grumpily.
She played pretty well that day. A little distracted, but still relatively good. As the game progressed she became more and more angry. Where were they?!
By the time the game ended, she was blinking back angry tears. She very much wished that she had her own phone, so she could call her dad and yell at him.
After ten minutes of waiting, she began to worry. Seriously, where the hell was he?! She wasn't really expecting her mom to show up, but her dad? He came to every game!
“Hey, Gabriella, you good?”
It was her coach!
“My dads not here yet…”
“Oh damn, you want me to call him? I didn't see him, could he not make it to the game?”
“I… I don't know.”
Her coach pulled out her phone and pulled up the contact for ‘Miguel (gabriella's dad)’.
The phone went straight to voicemail.
“Well, damn. How about I drop you home then?”
Gabriella thought for a moment. She usually wouldn't accept lifts from anyone but her dad, but her coach was cool.
“Yeah sure.”
The drive was quiet. Gabriella felt her anxiety rising as they approached her home. The police car outside her home only heightened it to a near unbearable degree. She jumped out of the car before it had fully stopped, ignoring her coaches' surprised yelp. Rushing up the short path to the front door, she began to hammer on it. The door was opened by a uniformed police officer, she brushed past him before he could even speak. She ran to the living room and stood in the archway that opened into the room.
There, sitting on the coach, her face buried in her hands, was her mother. Her tangled blond hair hung over her face and her shoulders shook with silent tears.
“Mom?” Gabriella said hesitantly.
Her mother looked up, her eyes red and her cheeks tear streaked. A police officer blocked her view.
“Hey there.” the officer said softly.
Gabriella ignored her, instead rushing to her mothers side and sitting next to her on the couch.
“Mommy?” she almost whispered. Her mother made no reply.
The two officers sat opposite her and her mother. They began to speak.
This part always got a little fuzzy.
No matter how hard she thought, she can never remember the exact words those officers said.
Shooting, robbery, suspect still at large. All things that made little sense to her. All she remembers is being totally numb as they told her that her father never even made it home. He had stopped at the bodega. He had bought her favourite chips and ice cream. A man had walked into the store, he had a gun. And her father. Her brave, stupid father had tried to get him to stand down. The man had shot her father with little remorse. He bled out on the bodega floor, while she was playing soccer and thinking so poorly of him for not being there.
She didn't say another word. The officers gave them their condolences and left. Her mother stole away back to her room, and she was left alone. More alone than she had ever been in her life.
She went to her room and she lay on her bed.
She knew that her father would not wake her in the morning.
She could sleep in all she wanted, she thought mirthlessly, as the tears finally began to pool in her eyes and spill down her face.