The Pieces of Me

chapter one

I have my overnight bag and accompanying handbag sprawled on the ground of my passenger seat, having left the house in a hurry. As to avoid another one of my mother's hypocritical lectures about drinking responsibly and making safe decisions; what made it worse was the glass of champagne in her hand while she said it.

Over the last twenty years of my life I have become quite good at nodding patiently at her words without bursting and telling her that if she wanted to yell at someone; I could direct her to the nearest mirror. I think that my mother and stepfather, Bonnie and Joel, truly believe that they are pinnacles for which their children should follow through life, which is depressing considering the way they treat others.

Instead of being a teenager, all that really sticks out about my childhood was the fighting and constant feeling of dread that consumed me every time they opened their mouths. I lost count years ago of the amount of times I have held Sienna or Justin while they cried or the many times, I was the one that taught them the right thing to do.

They don't need me for either as much anymore, which I suppose should be a relief. Justin being seventeen and Sienna sixteen means that they are reasonably capable of looking after themselves or finding a way out of a bad situation, although I do get the occasional knock or call when something feels particularly stressful. Sienna usually calls about her boyfriend and Justin about his college options, not to say that they aren't grateful for the many other things I do for them, over the years we just came to talk about it less.

It is obvious that they know how bad things are with Mum and Dad, well their Dad. They experience it just as much but as long as I am still living under their roof, then they are at least temporarily shielded from the harsher verbal abuse that I face. It isn't hard to work out why, I was always the accidental child that my mother never wanted and that my stepdad begrudgingly accepted.

Due to their drinking habits it is the normal that whatever money left over from paying my own bills and whatever they can't cover of theirs, is left for me to clothe, feed and support myself. Which is why I was only able to get a car over this past summer and haven't moved out, doing a double degree of Forensic Science and Psychology doesn't make me want to add dorm living to my loan.

I only live thirty minutes from campus which was the only thing my parents commented on when I told them what I was doing after I graduated High School, which wasn't strange. The girls offered to let me stay on the couch of their share house last year, but I only tend to do that when things get really bad; only Claudia and Hugo know the extent of it most times and even then, it isn't something I enjoy addressing.

Luckily for me the drive to the boys share house and Mark and Cassie's apartment is only twenty minutes from my house and a fifteen-minute walk from campus, the girls' was a ten minute walk a few streets over. Most of the houses and apartments around the campus were used for close-to-campus-living. The three-person, one-bedroom dorms were most people's last resort when starting here each year.

Claudia and Rosie's cars are parked out the front of the boy's large house that they had landed this year and next, when I arrived. Parking on the other side of the road I tug my bags roughly out from the floor and hurry across the usually busy road.

"She has arrived!" Claudia cheers when I push open the front door, our policy for getting keys or leaving the door open obviously extending into this new 'bachelor pad' as they guys liked to refer to it as. Her now shoulder-length curled brown hair bounces off her shoulders as she throw's her arms around me, her body radiating first party excitement.

"I saw you at the café a week ago" I muse stepping back and walking into the already unpacked living room, which I suspect was Cameron's doing, he hates a house full of boxes and I don't blame him for that.