We're just kids

A delusional withdrawn mother. an older brother who craved to be a gang member more than anything else in life, a runaway sister and a father who constantly tried to put the family together. 

That was the John family. 

That’s what Ashanti John was living with. 

Not just her broken family, she struggles with her own demons. After witnessing her two younger siblings die in a school shooting, she is labelled “unstable”.

Worse, ever since then, she had reoccurring dreams that usually ended with a gun pointed at her. 

Her psychologist called it PTSD but she knew better, she knew she was going to die.

Determined to get rid of the nightmares and to escape the broken family drama, she chooses to ‘live life’ as her classmates are; getting mixed up with drugs, sex, parties, relationships and unfamiliar habits. 

The phrase “what you do now will affect you later” doesn’t matter to her or her classmates. All they want is a higher social status, to belong and most importantly, to forget. 

In the course of changing her lifestyle, Ashanti begins to ask herself the real question. “Am I living my life or am I just ruining it?’’. 

At the end, she wonders if it was all worth it.

This short story shows the extent at which kids would go in order to escape the harsh realities of life. 

The story of the good girl gone bad.