South Side (A Shameless Fanfiction)

Prologue

picture: Jessica Gallagher!

They say kids are influenced by the environment around them and the way their family acts. Considering my mother was absent from our lives since we were little kids, my father was an alcoholic who didn't give two shits about me or my siblings, and living on the poor, crime infested south side of Chicago, I'd say that's 100% true. And to add even more truth to that statement, here I was, standing around a burning car pretending it was an actual bonfire with my neighbors and siblings, holding a bottle of beer, even though I was 15 and underage.

I looked around at everyone as I drank my beer.

I saw my sister, Fiona. She was the oldest out of all of us; 21, and she was like our rock. She basically takes care of us because our dad doesn't do shit. She does so much for us, and I'm so grateful to have her as an older sister.

Then, there was my oldest brother, 17 year old Lip. His actual name was Philip, but he liked to be called Lip. He was super smart, he had straight A's and was in the honor roll. I have no fucking idea where he got his smart genes from, because my deadbeat parents sure as hell weren't smart, and the rest of my siblings could care less about school and grades.

Next in line, there was my twin brother, Ian. Even though we were fraternal, we looked extremely alike; light red hair, a sprinkling of freckles across our cheeks, and we even had the same smile. He was older than me by one minute, which made him seem to think he could act like it, which I didn't really mind. I had a special relationship with all of my siblings, but I was closest with Ian. Maybe it was because we were twins, or the fact that we were in the same age, or grade. We were both very protective of each other (Ian a little more so), and we did tons of things together. I loved Ian more than life, and I would do anything for him.

Next was my little sister Debbie, or Debs as we all seemed to call her. In my opinion, she was the light and happiness in our crazy family. She was sweet and caring and loved everyone despite their mistakes. She had a wide imagination, and could be capable of anything if she put her tiny 10 year old mind to it.

Then, there was Carl. He did what typical, carefree 9 year olds do; play in the dirt, bring home stray animals and attempted to keep them as pets, put living things in microwaves, and melt action figures. Okay, maybe not all 9 year olds do that, but ghetto ones sure do.

The last and youngest sibling in the crazy Gallagher family was Liam. He was only a baby, and fun fact...he was black. I'm not really sure why he was black, but according to our dad, him and our mom were on drugs when they had him, and that's why he was a different skin color. I think that's a total fucking lie, considering it was coming from my dad, but whatever.

I looked across the fire and saw my dad, otherwise known as the idiotic, always drunk, asshole Frank Gallagher, who happened to be downing two bottles of beer at once. I rolled my eyes and looked away. There wasn't much to say about him, except that he was never home, he was always out drinking, and on the occasion when he was home, he was drunk and expecting us to help him something, or expecting us to lend him money. As if we were rich.

I saw our next door neighbors, Kevin and Veronica, hugging and kissing each other. I smiled. They both made such a great couple. Besides that weird and gross kinky sex shit they did to each other that they always bragged about. Kev and V were like a part of our family. They were always over, always eating with us and laughing with us.

I saw Fiona socializing with some other neighbors. I saw Lip and Ian play wrestling with Carl. I saw Debs holding Liam on her hip and pointing into the fire, showing our baby brother the flames. I saw Frank drinking, but I could care less about that asshole.  I realized that even though our family was dysfunctional as hell and even though we didn't have much, we had each other, and we were happy.

Wait, let me rephrase that.

We were happy for now, because you never know what might happen in the South Side.