Titles

Chapter One - Daughter

!!TRIGGER WARNING!! - ABUSE

***

"I told you to get me another drink, so do it!" My mother slaps me across the face and shoves me toward the kitchen, fuming with anger in her early-morning drunken state.

It feels like that's all she does. Drink.

I can feel tears prick at the back of my eyes from the sting of the hit, begging to be let free, but really, I have given up on tears. The only thing they do for me is make my nose all congested and my breathing harder than it should be.

Sighing and rubbing my cheek with my sleeve, already feeling a bruise forming, I open the fridge and grab a bottle of beer from one of the shelves stocked full of them.

I take a few long, quick strides into the living room and hand my mom her bottle as she snatches it from me, mumbling about how I'm a useless daughter and good for nothing as I walk away, heading toward the bathroom to get ready for school.

I'm not going to lie and say her words don't hurt because they do. Her verbal abuse had left a longer-lasting effect than her physical abuse ever could.

Speaking of physical abuse... I look in the bathroom mirror and see a light purple and red bruise already on my cheek. It's not the worst I've had, but I still decide to cover it with makeup anyway. Better safe than sorry.

In this case, 'sorry' being my mother beating me nearly to death.

Before I apply my makeup, I climb the stairs to my room in the attic so I can change into my clothes for the day.

I have to share this attic bedroom with my neighbor, a boy in my grade, with whom I've been sharing this room since we were kids due to our conjoined houses. He leaves early in the morning for football practice, so I never have to worry about him over-hearing my drunk of a mom or seeing my brutally abused body without makeup.

Finally, I throw on a pair of ripped jeans, a tight, cropped t-shirt, and a pair of combat boots, everything black, before pulling my wavy, naturally black hair up into a high, tight ponytail.

I enter the bathroom again and expertly apply foundation and concealer to my face, covering the mark on my cheek, and finish the look off with a smokey eye, mascara, and winged eyeliner.

Makeup is my mask. Even the slightest bit of it can hide my emotions from the world and with my expert poker face and that combined? No one can ever see the true pain behind it, and that's exactly how I want it to stay.

I grab my bag for school and move to the door before my mother can see me, making sure to throw my leather jacket on as I slip through the front door.

***

On the short, 10 minute drive to school, I take to all of the calming methods I've taught myself over the past few years.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Repeat.

Repeat again.

I turn on the stereo in the old car and flip through the stations, briefly landing on "Scars to Your Beautiful", but quickly change it when I'm about to cry. That song hits deep.

I continue changing stations until I find a good song to help lift my mood and focus on relaxing my body.

Becoming calm is so much work.

As I near the school, I lower the volume of my music and wipe my face clean of any emotion, becoming the stoic self that everyone at school knows me as. I think only two people in my entire grade have seen me show any emotion besides annoyance and sarcasm in the past three years.

It's honestly impressive.

I pull into my parking spot, take one last deep breath, and step out of my car, shutting the door and locking it behind me. I walk away without a glance at it.

I don't want to see my car any more than I have to; it's hideous.

My mother, on the short budget we have, decided to give me $300 on my sixteenth birthday for a car, leaving me to find the cheapest one on the market.

Unfortunately, the cheapest one I would find was an old, lime green, Fiat X1/9 Bertone Coupe that looks like it dates back to the early 1200s.

Overall though, it's a nice car and the seller was insane for selling it to me for such a low price.

But... it's also lime green.

It definitely wouldn't be my first pick. Or my next. Or even the last, because if I could, I would take the existence of the color and set it on fire, then throw it off the edge of a cliff into oblivion.

But for now, I have to live with it.

I enter the school and walk down the halls to my locker with my chin up, scowling at any student who dares look my way.

The underclassmen should know how this works by now: they don't bother or look at me, I spare them a nasty look.

I swing open my locker, narrowly missing the guy at the locker to the right of mine, and grab my books for calculus, just realizing I didn't do my homework.

Oh, well. I just guess it'll be late.

I make my way into class and plop down into one of the desks in the back corner, as far away from the rest of the class as I was going to get.

Mr. Olsen walks into the room, his shiny, bald head nearly blinding me as he moves under the light. How does he get his head that shiny?

He begins sifting through the homework papers, quickly jotting down grades for everyone that returned their homework, before glancing back up to the class, his eyes set on me.

"Miss Sawyer, would you care to explain to me why you haven't turned in your homework?"

I roll my eyes and tap my pencil on the desk. "I've told you a hundred times, call me Arabella. To answer your question though, no, I would not care to explain myself, but thanks for asking."

I hear a few snickers around the room but ignore them.

"Arabella, if this becomes a habit, this could lower your GPA significantly."

I sigh and rest my chin in my palm, appearing completely relaxed. "Yeah, yeah, I get it, it won't become a habit. You'll have my homework by tomorrow, don't you worry."

He gives me an incredulous look, but lets me off the hook nonetheless, beginning the endless class that might as well be named boredom, because that's all that really happens in that class period anyway.

I can already tell it's going to be a long day.

I just can't wait until lunch.