As soon as I opened the front door I could hear them arguing. Recently it was all they seemed to do.

“Why do you always have to complain about everything?”

“Well if you weren’t so lazy I wouldn’t have to complain, would I?”

It made me so sad that my parents seemed to hate each other.

You’re probably thinking this is just another story about a miserable family, well just wait and see what you find out at the end of this video, you’re not going to believe it!

“Well if that’s what you think about me, maybe I should just move out!”

“Do you know, that’s the most sensible thing you have said in a very long time!”

So that’s what my Dad ended up doing. I was upset that my parents were getting a divorce, but I knew it was for the best. They couldn’t carry on living together when all they did was fight.

When the day came for my Dad to leave, my parents told me that I had to decide who I wanted to live with.

“You are old enough to make your own decision, you must decide who you want to live with, me or your father.”

But how could I make that choice? I loved both my parents, how could I pick one over the other? So I decided I would leave it to chance.

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Life was pretty tough for me growing up, you see I didn’t live a normal life like you probably did. I lived alone on a deserted island. I’m not really sure how I came to be there, it wasn’t something I really thought about.

I didn’t have time to sit and wonder about my life, because I had to spend every waking minute looking for my next meal. I couldn’t go to a supermarket or get a takeaway, I had to hunt and fish and eat whatever I could find.

The first thing I did when I woke up every morning was go down to the ocean and try to spear a fish. It wasn’t easy, the fish were really fast, but I persevered and sometimes I got lucky.

I lived off wild berries and plants that grew on the island. Sometimes I would come across a bird egg in a nest and I would cook it over a fire made from twigs.

I had made a shelter to sleep in, but it wasn’t very comfortable and when it rained the water would come running through the ceiling and soak me in my bed. Sometimes, when I was lying there, I would imagine that one day someone would come and rescue me. But of course that never happened.

I tried not to think too much about the future, because if I did it would make me depressed. Instead I just concentrated on my daily tasks. One of my biggest concerns was finding fresh water to drink.

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“Hold on to my hand! Quick! If we don’t get out of here, you’ll be swept away!”

“I’m trying!”

I held on to Jeff and pulled him out of the sewer onto the rainy street. The raindrops slapped our faces washing all the muddy water away. We had no idea that today of all days, torrential rains would come and flood us out of our home. I almost lost one of my only friends and this was a scare I never wanted to have again in my entire life.

This is just a flashback of my most awful moment in the sewer. My life wasn’t always spent in smelly sewer tunnels – it was almost perfect. Make sure you keep watching to see how my perfect life turned into a life in an underground sewer tunnel and how I eventually became rich and helped everyone around me.

When life was normal, I lived in a pretty modern house in Las Vegas with my twin brother Camron and my parents. They were both well-known psychologists and had hundreds of clients – including some well-known celebrities. So we were pretty well off.

Camron and I didn’t have to share a room because our house was huge. Although we were identical, we had totally different personalities. I was the shy, quiet, introverted one and he was loud, popular and a bit nuts. At school everyone knew him and he was always invited to the cool kids’ parties. This made life a bit hard for me because people kept mistaking me for him. I didn’t really want to be bothered if you know what I mean. Popularity wasn’t a goal for me.

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I was always pretty content with my life, I mean, sure, of course I always dreamt that one day I would get a loving family of my own. But in the meantime I was happy living at the orphanage. 

So it came as a bit of a surprise to me the day that Mrs Wilson, the caretaker, called me into her office.

“Ruby, we have some good news for you.”

I looked at her in surprise,

“Really? What is it?”

“We have found a family who want to adopt you”

I can’t tell you how happy I felt at that moment, it was the day I had been waiting for all of my life! Finally I was going to have the family I had always wanted.

Mrs Wilson told me that the couple who wanted to adopt me were coming the next day to meet me.

“Make sure that you put on your nicest dress and be on your best behaviour Ruby. You want to be sure to make a good impression on them!”

“Yes, Mrs Wilson, of course!”

The next morning I woke up super early, I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to meet my new family. I got myself ready and went downstairs to wait for them in the lounge.

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“Good morning class,” a lanky man with glasses walked into the classroom. “My name is Mr. Jameson.” He wrote his name on the board. “I’ll be your History teacher until Mrs. Rose comes back from maternity leave.”

I smiled as I envisioned the next three months to be a breeze. There wasn’t a teacher at school that did not like me. Mr. Jameson however wasn’t any ordinary teacher. Little did I know at that point in time he would change my life for the worse. Watch my story to the end and let me know if you’ve ever had a substitute teacher like Mr. Jameson.

The first thing Mr. Jameson did as the substitute teacher was to implement a no device policy. He collected all our devices at the beginning of class and placed them in a box on his table until class was over. I soon realized that he didn’t want me or the other children taping him to show other adults how mean he really was.

It didn’t take me long to realize that Mr. Jameson had a personal vendetta against me. I had no idea what I did wrong! He always picked on me and my grade was the only grade he ever called out in class. At first I thought I was being paranoid but then I realized Mr. Jameson was as mean as they came.

One time while I was absent from school the entire class got in trouble because there was a fight in class. When I arrived the next day Mr. Jameson said that even though I wasn’t there I still needed to do detention, you know the “Peter pay for Paul” type scenario. I told Mr. Jameson that it was unfair that I’d have to do detention since I wasn’t at school. Do you know what he did? He gave me a week’s detention! A whole week and then he called my parents and told them that I needed to adjust my attitude if I wanted to reach anywhere in life.

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I picked up my lunch tray and headed towards the table where my friends were sitting eating. I had gotten about half way across the room when I saw her, of course she hadn’t noticed me, she was too busy fending off all her admirers.

I had had the biggest crush on her for so long, I mean, who wouldn’t? She was easily the hottest girl in our school.

As I got closer to her I took a deep breath,

“Hi!”

I waited for her to reply but she just completely ignored me and went sailing past me. My heart felt like it had been ripped out of my chest, I felt so sad.

I put my tray down on the table next to my friends,

“What’s up with you? You look so miserable.”

“It’s Hayley.”

“Look dude, just tell her that you like her.”

“But she doesn’t even notice me, I just said “Hi” to her and she didn’t even give me a smile.”

“Well don’t give up, you just need to find a way to impress her.”

“How am I going to do that?”

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“And now we welcome Miranda Walters to the stage! In case you haven’t heard about her before, she’s the ultimate brain box, a prodigy, the smartest girl alive!”

Another announcer was calling me onto another stage on what must have been my hundredth talk show. Everyone cheered and I sat in front of the host next to my mom.

“So, Miranda, how did you become so smart?” I was so tired of the same questions over and over.

I was different – an anomaly.

And I’ll tell you how it all started.

So… My mom is a neuroscientist. In case you don’t know what that is, she studies the brain. Before I was born she had a dream. She wanted to use her research to create the smartest baby in the world. She convinced my dad to allow her to experiment on their baby – which just happened to be me. My dad was easygoing and he had a lot of faith in my mom’s research so he let her. No one knows what happened in that lab while she was pregnant with me but after I was born everyone realized almost instantly that I was brilliant.

By the time I was five days old, I could count and recite the alphabet. At one month I could speak clearly and before I was a year old I could read books which were written for fifth graders.

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"Ewww, Frank, why are you wearing that hideous outfit?" I looked at Frank in disbelief.

"That hideous thing is the school uniform. You should be wearing yours, Principal Hudson has already written me three warning letters," Mom passed behind us with a basket of laundry.

"Well, he's going to have to write a fourth because I wouldn't be caught dead in that."

I went to grab an apple from the fruit basket on the kitchen counter then I noticed a tray with cupcakes.

"Whose cupcakes are these?" My eyes sparkled.

"Oh, Nikita dropped that off while you were in the shower for your birthday."

"But my birthday isn't until next week."

"Well, think of it as an early birthday present."

"Sweet!" I scooped up one of the cupcakes, bit into it and told Mom that I was leaving for school.

I strolled out the house and met Nikita, my best friend by the mailbox.

"Hey, Nikita, thanks for the cupcakes."

"What cupcakes? I didn't send any cupcakes?"

"Nikita, are you playing with me?"

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“I hate you! I should have never married you! You awful, hideous, stupid man! You have the IQ of a chicken!”

“Oh yeah? Well you’re the ugliest woman I ever dated! I only married you because you were pregnant with my child!”

“Well fine! We should just get a divorce then!”

“That’s the best idea you’ve had since our wedding day!”

These two nutcases are my parents. They’d been arguing like this since the day I was born. And somehow, they stayed together for a pretty long time and they even had two other kids – my little sisters Andrea and Janie.

But this time? It was final. They’d always threatened each other about divorcing in the past but this time they were serious.

My dad packed his bags and left that night. The papers were signed by the next week and the week after that, our family split up forever.

The judge made a weird decision. I was going to live with my dad but my younger sisters would stay with my mom. My dad decided he wanted to live as far away from my mom as possible so we moved from Texas all the way to Michigan. I was fine with that because that’s where I wanted to go to college. But I knew I’d miss my sisters and my mom dreadfully.

On our first night in our new house in Michigan my dad started behaving all weird.

“Coral, I really hope you like it here. But there’s something I really need to tell you and please... please don’t get mad.”

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As I pulled up to Moe's on Charlotte Boulevard, I still wasn't sure why my older sister, Catherine, wanted me to install microcams in my glasses. So far my sister's notes had been correct, this however was just weird. I walked into the bar, ordered a drink and sat in a corner, waiting.

After about thirty minutes, I decided it was time to leave. I stood up and walked to the door but I stopped in my tracks when the manager made an announcement that changed my life.

Hi my name is Carson.

Catherine and I have always been close. Being the younger sibling, my sister was a role model to me so it was no surprise that I wanted to go to the same college she did.

After she graduated and I received my acceptance letter to the university our parents were ecstatic. My sister was moving away to start an internship at her dream job and as Dad packed her car she knocked on my bedroom door.

"Hey, Carson can I come in?"

"That depends," I raised my eyebrows, "Do you have any snacks?"

Catherine tossed me a candy bar, walked into my room and sat on my bed. In her hand was a pile of pages, held together by ribbon.

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