Stay Together for the Kids.

“BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEE-“ the alarm on the dresser blared loudly in its standard format, the sun already shining through the blinds on my windows. I squinted softly, still not opening my eyes, and rolled back onto my stomach to press my face into the black pillowcase on my pillow and inhale fully, sighing out lightly before groaning softly. My eyes ached and there was a dull throb just behind them from crying. Even though today was the last day of the weekend before my first year at my new school as a second year student, I had set an alarm to get up bright and early. I almost resented it now, wanting to sleep in instead of think of last night’s events. Groaning as I did, I turned over slightly to peek at the alarm clock; a neat 8:18 a.m. was flashing across the screen in red, much like it had this morning.

I rubbed at my eyes, letting out a tired yawn as I did so before withdrawing my hand and screwing my face up as I noticed left over eyeliner on the back of it. Remembering last night’s events, I was sure that there were smudged streaks down my face. Letting out an soft sigh, I sat up and let my feet dangle off the edge of the bed before getting up, throwing the comforter back to the bed as I walked through my room toward the small walk-in closet. I gathered up a pair of ripped jeans and one of my many plain black t-shirts before walking back across the room to the dresser my alarm clock sat atop of and fished through it, finding a pair of Halloween panties and a regular white cotton t-shirt bra, then trudged off quickly out of my room to the bathroom to shower.

After my shower I dressed quickly, not bothering to dry my hair thoroughly, wanting to get out of the house as quickly as possible. It was too quiet and that scared me just a little. I looked my face over quickly in the mirror, grabbing the stick of eyeliner that lay in the cabinet and then quickly lined my eyes with it before sticking it back. Musing my medium length curly black hair as I walked out of the bathroom I started to search the house for everyone, making sure I checked the living room first and saving my parent’s bedroom for last. That was the last room I wanted to look in, especially after last night.

“Mom?” I called out as I walked through the kitchen from the bathroom. She wasn’t in there, and she wasn’t in the laundry room. I frowned slightly as I trudged along toward the living room, calling out again, “Mom? Where are you?” My dark chestnut coloured hues searched the living room as I walked in, finding my mother sat on the reclining chair in the corner of the room with a book opened in her hand. “Mom,” I called out softly, so not to disturb her too bad.

But my efforts were to no avail and she jumped harshly at the sound of my voice, nearly launching the book across the room at my head; and I was prepared to duck. “Oh! Elizabeth, honey, come in. I was just reading,” I tuned her out as she babbled on. My eyes now focused on the light yellow spot on her cheek just below her eye. My stomach knotted up and I felt tears stinging the back of my eyes and I looked it over, remembering the sickening sound of the slap or punch, whatever the strike had been from my dad to cause that bruise on my mother’s face.

“Does that sound okay?” She asked quizzically, apparently not noticing that I hadn’t been listening to her the entire time she’d been jabbering away.

“I’m sorry, what?”

A soft grin crossed her lips and she closed the book she was holding, marking the place with her forefinger as she talked, “I said, your grandmother wants to have a barbeque dinner this weekend. Do you want to go with us? It’ll be the whole family. She said she wanted something like a family reunion, as much as she hates them. But it’ll probably be her last; she is getting older every day.”

Quickly I shook my head. The thought of being cooped up in Granny’s small house with almost all of our living relatives really dicked me off. I couldn’t be bothered with half of them because they were fake people. I kept to myself mainly, with the exception of my cousin Danielle, her older brother David and my two older brothers James and Alexander. It was that way at school too; I only spoke to roughly 10 people on hand and only considered maybe 3 of those people friends. I didn’t trust people so easily, I’d learned trust was something that takes years to perfect and earn.

Recently my family had moved to a smaller town in Illinois, as far as the name of it goes; I couldn’t tell you. We could be living in ‘Shit Hole City’ for all I knew. I sighed outwardly, still thinking to myself; lost in thought, my mother moved us here because she’d talked to my aunt Mary and had found out about a nice restaurant job here for my mother. She’d be a waitress of the day while my dad went out whenever, claiming he had a construction job; which was almost never true. This left me to wander around alone until we got settled in and I became familiar with the streets, which surprisingly hadn’t taken that long. Just the other day, Danielle and I had discovered a quicker way to get to the school.

Danielle had lived here for most of her life, maybe half. She knew where a lot of the places were here and for another two years, she’d be going to the same high school as me; which helped out a lot. At least I wouldn’t be alone there. My brothers both had moved out with their girlfriends, years previous, and stayed behind in Tennessee; lucky. I envied them because they didn’t have to hear the fighting and I envied Danielle and David because their mom and step-dad never fought.
“Elizabeth?” my mother drawled out my name sing-song like, dragging me from my thoughts.
I blinked quickly and looked back at her, “Huh?”

“Are you feeling okay today?”

I almost scoffed and asked her the same question, but I didn’t, “Yeah I’m alright. I’m probably going to go to aunt Mary’s and visit with Danielle again,” hesitantly I added, “Where’s dad?” Curiously I watched her features to see if they changed any at the mention of him, but they didn’t. They stayed cool, calm, and collected; her soft smile still on her face.

“He went out with your Uncle Joe,” she only smiled again before looking back at her book. I took the initiative and stopped talking about him.

“Alright, well I’m gone then.” I smiled before I crossed the room to the reclining chair she was sat in and hugged her gently, pressing a soft kiss against her cheek, “Bye mom, love you.” Before she could say anything back I grabbed my mesh backpack from the edge of the sofa and hurried out the front door and I grabbed my skateboard from the porch. I ran down the few steps at the front of the porch coming into my house and then across the walkway out front by the cracked and badly abused blacktop road, that had dulled to an ugly gray.

Quickly I glanced back at the house, it was two stories; which I liked a lot, and it had a wraparound porch, they’d always been my favourite kind of porches to look at. The house was white, some of the paint chipped off the bottom of the porch and it didn’t have shutters or anything, but that was fine with me. I always thought shutters on a house looked pretty idiotic and ugly.

With a satisfied sigh, I turned back around and dropped my board on the ground, briefly catching a glimpse of the neighbors across the street from my house. There were about 3 or 4 guys up in a window, all hanging out it as best they could, calling down to two other guys. I felt my cheeks flush lightly as I noticed the blonde haired one looking at me but, being as stubborn as I was, I didn’t look away first. He was cute, I’d have to admit. Gently I bit on my bottom lip as I hopped on my skateboard and slowly brought on foot down to the sidewalk, pushing myself off and starting to roll down the cracked walkway that was a beige colour; baked by the sun. I situated my backpack on my shoulder and glanced around quickly as I tried to remember the way to Danielle’s house, since I’d only been there a handful of times.

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The ride to Danielle’s house wasn’t, surprisingly, that long. Once I’d turned down a few streets I started to remember the way. Quickly stepping on the end of the board, making the front pop up so I could grab it, I walked up to the front door and stared at it for a few seconds, trying to decide if I should knock or if I should ring the doorbell. Being a bit unorthodox, I decided to do both and rang the doorbell before knocking on the window in the door. Uncomfortably, I shifted my weight from foot to foot, moving side to side a bit as I looked around their street waiting for someone to answer the door.

My aunt answered it and I hurried inside, grinning at her as I dropped my board down beside my cousin David’s and pulled my backpack back up my shoulder and I looked over at her, “Is Danni home?”

“Yeah, she’s upstairs in her room, getting ready for school tomorrow. Are you excited?” Of course she knew the answer, and was only teasing.

I wrinkled my nose before giving her my best straight-faced look, a slight frown denting the corners of my lips before mumbling, “No.” She only laughed at this and I started to grin before making my way upstairs, waving behind me to her as I did so.

When I got up to Danielle’s room, I smiled hearing feint music playing. She probably really was excited about the first day of school tomorrow. She was starting as a third year and had excitedly giggled away to me about giving the first year students a hard way to go. I was up for it, fully. Considering my first year had been terrible, so to say. Pulling myself from my thoughts, I quickly opened the door and yelled at her, “GAH!” I grinned wide, satisfied at having her jump at the loud and sudden intrusion. I stepped in the room and shut the door behind me, dropping the backpack with a few books and notes to the ground before trudging over to the bed Danielle sat on.

“Well. You know, just let yourself in, no big deal. You just scared the hell out of me, but that’s cool.” She grinned at me and pulled the books she’d been looking at out of the way so I could lay or sit down on the bed.

I sighed outwardly and plopped face first onto the bed, ready to spill my guts about last night. Danielle already knew what went on in our home, anyone that was slightly educated with the least amount of common sense knew that my parents fought like cats and dogs. Besides, even if Danni hadn’t been smart enough to assume it; I’ve already told her once before. She pretty much knew a lot about me; she was like my older sister that I never got, granted she was only about three years older than me. Burying my face into her fluffy white pillows, I groaned lightly, mumbling muffled, “Don’t want to go to school tomorrow.”

Danielle laughed softly, “When do you ever want to go to school?”

I grinned against the pillow, what she said was true. I’d always hated school with a passion, even since I was really little but I went just so I didn’t have to hear the constant fighting at home. Without a second thought, I turned my head and looked up at her sadly, “They’re fighting again.”

Her happy grin turned to a silent frown and she gazed over my face, making sure I hadn’t been hit; I was sure. On more than one occasion, in one of his drunken rages, my dad had hit both me and my mom. I’d told Danielle about it, her being the only one that I could trust with anything. She continued to frown as she looked down at me, her eyebrow now arching in silent question.

“No, he didn’t hit me…” I let the sentence trail off, not exactly wanting to explain further.

She nodded, “But he hit your mom?”

I nodded quietly, biting lightly on the inside of my cheek as I looked up at her, “Yeah. She’s okay though.”

“He went out with Joe,” she never called her step-father ‘dad’ or anything. Everyone else found it a bit strange and rude, but I understood. She told me why. Her real dad had died when she was just 5, she hadn’t got to spend that much time with him and it crushed her 13 year old heart when she learned that her mom was dating again. Not long after that, they got married and moved from Tennessee up to Illinois. Danni and David had gained two step-brothers and a step-sister, but they both hated them. They were all moved off in different parts of Tennessee anyway and hardly talked to their dad.

“Yeah, mom told me.”

Danielle took it upon herself to grab my mesh backpack up and unzip it, “What’s all this?”

“Ah,” I sat up cross-legged and watched her dig through the books and notebooks, “School shit. I wanted you to help me find the classes and see if we had any together.” I watched as she produced my school schedule from the jumble of books and unfold it.

“We have first class together, our lunch periods are the same and we have fifth and sixth classes together,” she smiled over at me, stuffing the schedule back into the bag sloppily before dumping it back onto the bed. “You’re taking Art?”

I nodded, “Yeah, I’ve always taken Art. I have to have at least one class that I’ll like,” I grinned but her facial expression remained the same and slowly my grin started to fade. “What?”

“The Art teacher is a dick here. He’s old and crabby, I’m pretty sure he hasn’t gotten laid since at least the 70’s.” her serious expression still held on her face and I couldn’t help but burst into a fit of laughter and giggles, letting myself lay back on the bed and wrap my arms around my middle as I did so, trying to calm myself.

The rest of the afternoon went like that; Danielle and I talking about school, her filling me in on who was cool and who wasn’t. We talked about silly things like that and things from our past, from when we were kids growing up as next door neighbors. We talked about the first time I’d stayed at her house all night long and David had cooked potato fries and covered them with chili and shredded cheese. I’d also ended up sick after eating it, might I add.

Before long, it was dinner time and I said my goodbyes, hugging Danielle and my aunt Mary before walking out the door with my skateboard and my mesh backpack. Uncle Joe hadn’t returned yet, so that meant my dad was still gone wherever, I almost smiled at the thought but then I frowned almost instantly. I hated that they fought so much, it really tore me up inside. One day I would find myself hating him and the next day I would hate her. It was like a vicious game of table tennis and I hated it.

On the way home, caught up in my thoughts, I hadn’t realized that the group of neighboring guys was now gathered on the front porch of the house in front of mine, until I heard them laughing loudly at something. I self-consciously clutched the skateboard to my chest as I walked up to my front door and quickly fled inside. I dropped my skateboard on the floor once I was upstairs in my room, my backpack now making its way to the floor as well. I climbed into my bed and glanced halfway at the clock on my dresser, it was only 8:23 p.m. but I was exhausted. My eyes felt heavy and my stomach was full from eating dinner at Danielle’s house. I stretched my body, groaning in content as the muscles relaxed once more. But before I could do much more, I had fallen asleep; exhausted, no doubt, from the late nights I sat up crying.