The Lust That Hides The Love

Fifteen-Water of The Womb

Amethyst's Pov

It wasn't forever. It couldn't have been. Sugilite would fix it, she always did. But a few days had passed and she still hadn't come to get me.

Living with my mom was the weirdest thing ever. Her apartment felt like the ones you see on tv and think nobody can live that way. There were storage totes with toys in them all around the house, and I kept tripping over random sippy cups and shoes. Not that I did much walking, I tried not to talk to any of the kids.

There were seven of them. The youngest was a baby and the oldest was thirteen. I shared a room with three of them, sleeping on a cheap cot until her boyfriend could get me a bed. I wondered how a bed could possibly fit in the room. There was barely enough room to walk around the bunk bed, plus the bookshelf and dresser, and the toddler bed that was blocking the closet.

"It's okay!" The six-year-old who slept on the bottom bunk said. "I can just crawl on your bed to get to mine!" The thirteen-year-old really didn't care because she had to climb up the end of the bed near the door anyway, but she thought it was a bad idea.

"She's gonna get uncomfortable because you have to pee a million times a night, Izzie." Izzie stuck her tongue out. I sighed.

The worst part wasn't the fact that I had to share a tiny room with three people, or that I suddenly found myself being stuck helping Nikki watch six kids, or even that dinner every night was a cheap tv dinner eaten on the living room floor while watching cartoons. The worst part was that I couldn't call Sugilite, or Pearl, or Peridot, or anybody back in Beach City to tell them about it. My mom and her boyfriend each had a cellphone, but none of the kids were allowed to touch them. Including me.

My mom wasn't even much of a mom to begin with. She and her boyfriend were almost never home, and when they were they didn't take interest in any of the kids except the baby. Nikki told me that of few of the kids had different moms or dads, and that there'd been a couple of other kids in and out of the house before. She said that no matter how many there were, the oldest few always had to babysit. 

"That's why I don't like summer," She said while we were giving a couple of the younger kids a bath. "We're usually home all day unless mom has money. The school year is better."

The school I was going to was definitely not better. It was a public school, with obviously not much funding. I don't know how mom was managing to pay for me and Sugilite to go to Crystal prep or help pay for Sugilite's phone, car, and tuition if she was sending all her kids into this school system. The area was urbaner than Beach City, not really city-ish but not as quiet as I was used to. Most of the kids were poorer like I was, but I still felt like an outsider. A lot of them could tell what situation I was in too, because a lot of them had gone through the same things. I didn't make any friends the first few days I was there. Not that I expected to. Nikki told me that a lot of the kids knew each other from some of the different programs around town. Nikki told me a lot of things, and honestly, I'm glad she did. I wouldn't even have gotten home if it wasn't for her. 

One of the weird things about the school was that a lot of people got home in weird ways. Of course, mom never told me how to get home, so it was up to Nikki to find me at the end of the day. It really shocked me because I forgot the middle school was connected to the high school. She reminded me that we needed to ride the city bus to the elementary school to pick up the kids that were in school, then take the bus home.

Mom and her boyfriend were home with the little kids when we got there on Wednesday. They barely grunted a "Do your homework" and ignored us until dinnertime, which unsurprisingly was tv dinners again.

"Hey, Amethyst." Mom said after I finished and threw out the plastic tray, which was the first thing she'd really said to me after the first day I was there.

"Yeah?" I asked. I wondered if she was going to hug me and tell me she loved me, or that she missed me and was sorry, but I had no such luck.

"So they finally dragged the ass in?" She asked.

"Yeah," I answered.

"Nice." She said, not looking up from her phone. I was quiet for a minute.

"Is there any way I could call Sugilite? Just to tell her I'm okay?" I asked. She looked up at me.

"Wouldn't that be kinda stupid?"

"I promised her I would. She likes to make sure she knows I'm okay." She looked back down at her phone.

"Why does she care? Shouldn't she be busy partying or whatever?" I looked at the ground.

"Sugilite always made sure I was safe and happy before she could be calm." Mom looked up at me and put her phone on the counter, pulling her hair into a ponytail

"I don't understand why she'd do that. But I guess she had to if that asshole father of yours wouldn't." She picked up her phone and walked past me back towards the living room. "Can you make sure everyone gets ready for bed? And make sure Isaiah showers." I sighed.

That night, I cried quietly on the cot. Because compared to Sugilite, it seemed like mom and her boyfriend just liked to yell at the kids and have them watch each other. I missed home. I missed Sugilite. And I missed sleeping on the air mattress on Pearl's bedroom floor.

(A/N) Wow, a lot. I just wanted to get the info out about Amethyst.

Random Fact of The Day: Because I remembered it's not mentioned a lot, have some character ethnicities!

Amethyst and Sugilite are Latina

Opal and Pearl are French and German

Ruby and Sardonyx are French and Indian

(So yeah you can guess their dad is French)

Peridot and Yellen are biracial(African-American and white)

Lapis is middle eastern

Alexandrite is Indian

If there are any other characters you're interested about let me know Love you guys.

Also, I'm going to be making a Google forms soon to see which characters people like more so keep an eye out for that.