You Remind Me Of. . .

"Holly! Where the hell have you been?" asked her father as she ran inside the house.

"I'm sorry. The school bus broke down and I had to run all the way here." she answered as she quickly climbed the stairs.

"Come back down here! We need to talk!" he yelled as she stopped.

She turned around as her long black hair fell gently on her back. Her piercing blue eyes locked onto her father, "What?"

"I would like to know where you were." he said as he crossed his arms.

She sighed as she leaned against the banister. She had her mother's looks and her father's eyes. Though she never did understand how they could be so different. "I was with Shelly." she said with a shrug.

"You need to check in first. Alright? We just want to know that you're safe." he said sternly.

"You just want to keep me locked up here in this prison!" she screamed as she went upstairs.

"Holly... HOLLY!!!"

"Honey, please calm down and just go talk to her like a normal person. Yelling will get you nowhere." said Sarah soothingly as she hugged him from behind.

"Alright." he sighed as he went up the stairs.

Holly entered her room and threw her back pack on the floor. She huffed as she flopped on her bed. She reached over and grabbed her remote and pushed the "on" button. Her cd player began playing Pantera's Cowboy's From Hell album. She grabbed a book from her nightstand and began reading.

It had always been a favorite of her mother's. The Labyrinth was always a book that she had enjoyed since her mother had first read it to her. She turned to the same place that she had left off at when she heard someone knock on her door. "Come in." she said boredly as she kept her eyes fixated upon the pages.

"I'm sorry for yelling at you, it's just that I would like for you to check in more often."

"Uh huh..." she muttered as she kept on reading.

He ripped the book from her hands, "I know that you probably have more important things to do like chase faeries or whatever, but once in a while I would like for you to listen to me."

"Give me back my book and I will!" she shouted as she tried to reach for the book.

He held it higher, "Not until you listen to me..."

"I get! Check in more often! I'm not deaf. Now give me back my book!!!"

"What is so interesting about this thing anyway?" he asked as he looked through it.

She growled as she sat on the bed, "Can I just please have my book back?"

"Fine. Here, dinner is in ten minutes." he said as he exited her room once again.

Holly looked at the book. "Fucking asshole..." she muttered to herself as she smoothed out some of the pages that he had crinkled. She began reading again but found that her mind couldn't focus on it. So she shut it and placed it back on her night stand. She went to her vanity and looked at herself.

Her hair was curly today and looked like a mess since she had been running around in the rain. "I would like to be somewhere far from here... Anywhere would be paradise." she said as she looked herself in the eyes. She saw something move in the corner of her eye. She turned around and didn't see anything, but she felt an odd presence prickle her skin as goose bumps rose up. She jumped as she heard something bump against the wall.

"HOLLY!! DINNER!" yelled her mother from downstairs.

She shook her head and laughed at herself for letting her imagination runaway. "Holly, you're beginning to lose it." she whispered to herself as she opened her bedroom door and began walking down the stairs.

Her mother and father were already sitting at the dinner table. Her mother smiled warmly as her bright green eyes shined.

"So how was your day?" she asked.

"Well, it was pretty good. Shelly invited me to her birthday party." said Holly as she sat down.

Her father scooped some mashed potatoes into his plate, "Absolutely not."

"Sam, not now. She's almost eighteen. She deserves some freedom." said her mother in a calm tone.

"Mom's right. I've been getting a 4.0 grade point average, I haven't missed a day of school yet, and I've been doing all that I can to take responsible for myself." said Holly.

"I said no and that's it. Alright?"

"Sam..."

"Sarah, please. This girl is so damn insolent as it is. She needs to learn discipline. She came home late..."

"And that was beyond my control! I ran here as fast as I could!" exclaimed Holly as she stood up.

Her father stood up and narrowed his eyes at her, "I don't give a fuck if you were caught in a shoot out! The rules are the rules. Break them and you face the consequences. Now sit down and eat your dinner." he said as he sat down.

"I'm not hungry anymore." she said as she threw her napkin down on the table and ran out of the dining room. She stomped her way upstairs. She got into her room and shut the door. She made sure to lock it, knowing that she had pissed her father off more than ever.

"GOD! He's such a bastard!" she screamed as she fell back onto her bed. A picture frame fell off of the shelf and scared her. She looked over and seen it laying face down on the floor. She carefully got up and picked it up. It was a picture of her and her mother when she was just six years old.

Things were much better then, before everything came crashing down. Her father lost his job and he began experimenting with drugs. A choice that nearly cost him his life, and now she was left to pay for his crimes. She placed the picture back on the shelf and smiled to herself.

"Holly, honey. Look, I'm sorry. Please, just let me in. We need to talk."

"I'm doing my homework." she said as she grabbed her back pack and pulled out a binder.

"Holly..."

She growled as she stood up and unlocked the door for her father.

"I'm sorry. If you really want to go, then you can go."

"Alright." she said as she closed her binder.

"I just want you home before six and I will have drug and sobriety tests for you when you come back." he said as he locked his icy blues onto hers.

"I'm not like you!" she said as she slammed a fist on her binder. "Sometimes I wish that I wasn't here!"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he asked as he watched her stand up.

"I wish that everything was the way that it was before!" she said as she stared at him.

"Like what? With all your little faerie stories and happy endings? Well, things don't work like that sweety." he said.

"I wish you would understand what life is supposed to be like..."

"Like what? Like this? What the fuck is in here?" he asked as he grabbed The Labyrinth.

"Stop it! That's not mine!! It's mom's!!" she screamed as she tried to grab it from his hands.

He just chuckled as he shoved her. She fell to the ground. "Here's a line that I would like to come true. 'I wish that the goblins would come and take you away right now'. That sounds like a good line. No wonder why you've got such silly ideas. Goblins indeed." he said as he threw the book down at her.