It Was Only a Dream...I Hope

The next morning, she tried, yet again to get into her own house to no avail. She still couldn’t believe that she was being kicked out. What made things worse was that she didn’t even know why. She spent another night at Andrew’s house; his parents didn’t object and told her that if she ever needed anything, she could always come to them. Four days after her first night at Andrew’s house, she was finally able to get into her house and her step-dad seemed a lot nicer than he usually was. The girl still wasn’t sure why she was kicked out in the first place; and now she was even more confused as to why, all of a sudden, she was allowed back in. She slept in her own room that night, on her mattress.

When she woke up, she was greeting with shouted insults and, much to her shock, slaps across the face. She was tossed out yet again. It was then that the girl remembered that the day before was Friday, the day her step-dad always got drunk. Her heart broke into a million pieces. All her step-father’s acts of shouting at her, insulting her, throwing her out onto the street, and most recently hitting her, were all acts he committed without the influence of beer. It was when he finally got drunk, that he let her back in and was civil to her.
She returned to Andrew’s house, not knowing where else to go. On her way, she ran into Andrew. He saw the red marks on her cheeks and grew very concerned. He asked her to join him on a walk and tell him how she got the marks. She didn’t want him to worry so she told him that she had passed out and her step-dad gave her a few smacks on the cheek to see if she was really asleep or if she was dead. He did not believe her story 100% but decided not to doubt her, since she had been so open before.

Weeks past and it finally set in that the girl was never going to get back into her house, except for on Fridays. She got used to living with Andrew and his parents and they accepted her as a new member of their family. She even started to get a little closer to Andrew. If you had asked anyone who had seen them together, they would have sworn they were together. But it wasn’t the same as living with her old family. What hurt even more was what happened to her step-dad’s behavior. Before her mom died, he had always been gentle, nice, and rarely ever got angry. Now it seemed he was angry all the time. If there was only one thing she knew about her step-dad, it was that he never let his sorrow show; it always turned straight to rage. She figured that he was extremely upset about his wife’s passing, turned into anger, and took that anger out on her. The girl felt sorry for her dad but knew that that gave him no justification for his actions. That explains him shouting “It’s all your fault”.