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Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She lived in a town four hours away from here, in a house on a street named Daisy Lane.
She had a mother and a father and her own room and a TV and sometimes could stay up late to watch movies on the weekend if she ate all her dinner.
She had a cat and three best friends and wanted to work with dolphins.
She had posters of them on her walls, and her computer screen saver was one, a dolphin with warm eyes and a sweet grin gleaming out at you. All her stuffed animals, except for the stupid ones her grandparents gave her, were dolphins.
One day she went to the aquarium. She wore blue jeans, a white shirt (no logos, no designs), and sneakers (white, with white socks).
She went with her fifth-grade class, and since it was three days before her 10th birthday, she thought her friends would let her sit by the window on the bus. They didn't.
And when they got to the aquarium, there weren't any dolphins and her friends got mad because she wouldn't loan them her lip gloss; it was new, it tasted like cream soda, and she didn't want to share.
She was a selfish little girl. She paid for it.
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