American Vacanza

one big happy family • madison

Is it possible for one single person to completely destroy your life?

Think about it. I mean, a lot of people would say no, because there's no way one single person could have that much power over you. But I beg to differ.

All right, let me back up a bit. When your dad's a billionaire CEO or whatever, you have the necessary resources in the world to throw an annual end-of-the-school-year rager when your dad's out of town on business and your stepmom's at the yacht club celebrating who-knows-what. Because normally, for said rager, your older brother keeps his mouth shut, and you have the house to yourself.

Normally, when throwing said party, you don't have anyone else, like a stepmother and stepsister, in your way. Normally, your new stepmother, who thinks she can run the show, doesn't decide to go to Italy for the entire summer. Normally, all your friends don't decide to go to dumb Stella Cho's birthday party just because yours isn't happening.

But my life isn't what one would call normal. At least not since the stepmother from Hades moved in and came to the conclusion she could -- you guessed it-- control the inner workings of my complicated social life.

Honestly. I'm sure my stepmom, Krystal, and stepsister, Siena, actually decided, snickering in one of their Let's Ruin Madison's Life Club meetings, that they were going to insist on leaving for Italy the day after school got out, just so I couldn't throw one of my infamous epic parties.

But somehow, I knew I shouldn't be surprised. I mean, it was Krystal-with-a-K we were talking about here; I'd known something was off since the first day I encountered that incarnate devil.

I did everything to stop my dad from proposing to Krystal nearly a year ago. I told him I wouldn't bless the marriage. Hell, I dyed my hair pink in protest. But he told me that he was "madly in love with her," or some dumb shit from a Nicholas Sparks movie like that, and if I loved him, I'd let him do it. Eventually, after relentless cold-shouldering and his endless whining, I caved, even though it felt a little soon. My mom had only died four years before, and I couldn't imagine him moving on so quickly.

After they were married, I realized my instincts had been right. Krystal treated me like a five-year-old, and her daughter Siena, who was two years younger than me, acted like I was some stuck-up rich bitch.

"Maaaad! Dinner!" Siena screeched, poking her blonde head out the house's glass doors and shooting me a saccharine smile. She knew I hated being called anything but Madison, but that wouldn't stop her. "It's fitting," she had explained a few weeks before, "because you're always so maaaad all the time."

If she only knew that the only people who had ever seen that side of me were her and her mom.

I sighed, getting up from my spot on our backyard's coziest bench. It was small and creaked when I sat on it, but it was in the middle of the garden. The garden definitely wasn't warm... or clean... or tended very well. But it was a quiet place, something that was hard to find even in our huge house.

"Coming," I groaned. I staggered upright and walked through the glass doors, into our house's dining room. My dad, Krystal, Siena, and my older brother, Isaac, home from Stanford in time for the Italy trip, were all seated. It felt strange, almost alien, to be sitting at this table. Like walking in on the Thanksgiving of a family in Iceland; cold, awkward, strange. You don't know why you're there, and you don't know how to effectively communicate with them.

"How was your nap, Mad?" Isaac asked, picking up on Siena's nickname for me. I rolled my eyes. Isaac went to Stanford, for crying out loud; he was too oblivious to notice that Siena's nickname for me was created out of hate, not out of great admiration?