Enough

Chapter 1

"You told us last time that you were listening to us, Julie." My father all but shouted from across our living room. I just sat on the couch and stared at the black television screen on the wall behind him. "Just what do you have to say for yourself?"

I made eye contact with him and only smirked. "I'm glad that you're actually talking to me."

My father glared at me. His face flushed red in anger. "You do realize that the damage you and those... those hooligans you call friends decided to cause this time is going to cost me over one thousand dollars. You're lucky that the owner didn't want to press charges." He ran his hands through his dark hair. "Does the fact that you could have gone to jail this time make you feel anything?"

"I feel like I'm absolutely blessed." I snorted and leaned back into the couch cushions.

My father's mouth drew into a hard line. "I'm done with you. Absolutely done with trying to make sure your life is successful and your idiotic decisions don't ruin you life the way-"

"The way that your stupid decision ruined your life." I replied. "Go ahead and say it, dad. The way that I ruined your life."

~

And so that is how I ended up staring out the window of the airplane on my way to Atlanta Georgia to spend the summer with my mom's best friend from high school. Sherry and her husband, Jeff had agreed to take me off of my parent's hands for the next three months. I was being made someone else's problem. Typical. 

My parents had me young. My mom was barely 18 and my dad was 20. I'm sure the fact that they were barely grown themselves when they brought a baby into this world is a source of a good portion of their stress. They made the best of it all, though. My dad finished college and my mom took odd jobs here and there to help make ends meet until my dad's career in architecture really took off.

My parents met on my father's trip for school down south to see and learn about the architecture of the old south. My momma was walking with her best friend down the main street of her hometown, fresh out of high school, with an armful of groceries when my dad ran into her, knocking her to the ground and all but knocking her out.

Needless to say when my momma saw this tall lanky boy with dark sunglasses, his curly dark hair, and a dazzling smile, she was smitten.

When the time came for him to head back up to New York State where he was from and was attending school, she followed him, much to the dismay of her parents. Within a few months my momma was pregnant with me. They got married and rented an apartment, scraping by as my dad finished school.

I was 8 when my younger twin siblings were born. My parents had purchased a brownstone a few years before in a nice neighborhood and intended to have their own piece of the perfect american dream.

As the twins got older, my parents put them in soccer and ballet. My brother Jeremiah took up piano lessons and my sister thrived in art classes. My parents' weeks were full of shuttling them back and forth from school, to after school programs, literally anything that they wanted to do. I, on the other hand, got pushed to the back burner. With their minds and time occupied with the twins, I was left with all of the time in the world.

My mom always told me "Idle hands are the devil's handiwork."

I was 15, two weeks away from my 16th birthday with a handful of vandalism charges, an assault, a couple of thefts, and one possession of marijuana by a minor charge. My dad always paid the fines and kept me out of jail. They couldn't have a child in jail to blemish their perfect little family. I was the child my parents' didn't want their friends to see when they came over for dinner or holidays. I stayed in my room, or made sure that I was out of the house when they had company. Never seen. Never heard by anyone who visited.