Better Than Milkshakes, Better Than Boys (girlxgirl)

[39]

The first time I felt rage like this was when I was seven years old and my parents wouldn't let me take the stabilisers off my bike.

I screamed and I cried and I didn't speak to my family for a whole week. I was so sure that I was ready to ride my bike that I attempted to take them off myself, and when I couldn't do it, which looking back on it seems obvious as I was seven and had no idea what I was doing, I screamed and I cried some more.

I couldn't explain why I was so angry at my dad for putting the tools away instead of helping me. I couldn't understand why they didn't think I was ready to ride my bike on my own. I was so infuriated I slammed my hands on the floor of the garage until I took all of the skin from my knuckles.

I couldn't feel any pain, only pure, hot anger coursing through my little, child veins. "Why wouldn't they just let me ride my bike?"

I begged Will to help me, but he refused, siding with my mom and dad for the first time ever. He never sided with them.

"Not this time, Alex." He said to me as he fixed his helmet to his head. His cheeks were chubbier than they are now, his boyish dimples easier to see. "Mom and Dad know you're not ready just yet."

I understood a few days later the method behind what I thought was their madness. I stole my brother's bike, a bike much too big for me, and I tried to ride it without anyone watching me.

I figured I could do it.

That was the only positive to the fact I clipped a curb and went head over handlebars, scraping my knees and slamming my head on the floor. I cut open my eyebrow and my lip, scarring my street with my screams of agony.

I felt the pain of my failure. But nobody was there to see it.

My parents were there to pick me up, my mother gently cleaning the blood off my face whilst my dad soothed my cries.

The second time was receiving that photo proving that the first of my friends was a backstabbing bîtch who liked to sleep with my boyfriend behind my back and then console me when I cried about him.

I think I've already explained myself regarding that situation, so I won't bore you with the tedious details again. All I will say about the matter is that two of the people I deemed closest to me are still very, very dead to me, and they will continue to be dead to me until I grow old and less bitter.

This, seeing this, is the third and only time rage has consumed me on this scale. I don't know what it is, but I can't help but think that what is unfolding in front of my very eyes is the one that hurts me the most. April has been my best friend for as long as I can remember. She was the first girl I managed to become friends with, we bonded over soccer not long after I met Clay, and we've been inseparable since.

April knows everything about me. She knows my deepest darkest secrets – hell it seems she knew I liked girls before I did. She promised she'd keep all of my secrets to her grave, and I promised the same to her.

I don't know what part makes me angriest. The fact she's sleeping with my brother, or the fact she couldn't even be bothered to tell me, or at least prewarn me about this.

Actually, no, it's not even a case of prewarning. It's the fact that she has told me throughout the year that I can trust her with anything, that I could trust her with my sexuality and my feelings for Mackenzie, and she wasn't even brave enough to talk to me about her feelings for my brother.

I'm actually not mad that she's with him. In fact, we always joked about how one day we could be sisters. No, the infuriating part of all of this is her blatant hypocrisy.