These Words to Her

After meeting with that girl, I realised that if I wanted to get Michelle and Brian to even think about broaching my childhood, I had to be worse. So all the sessions that we had for the last few days at the retreat were practically useless as I never said anything related to questions that were asked and stopped bringing up my feelings about being at the place. Naturally, this pissed off Brian even more but I was prepared to go further than I had before in order to get them to be truthful with me. All I wanted was the truth so that I would finally know and help me get over why they never wanted me.

The sessions, however, got worse. There were group therapy sessions which focused solely on how Michelle and Brian felt about the living arrangement, about how they felt about everything since I chose to live with Hannah instead of them, and then how they felt about the person I had turned out to be. If I'm honest, I think I turned out pretty okay, but according to them they were disappointed with how I grew up and blamed Hannah for it mostly. Another group therapy session was about how Hannah felt about everything, from the time that she first took me in up until before the summer started. I knew she wasn't being entirely truthful as we had talked briefly about this on several occasions. The final group therapy session was for me to talk about everything that I felt from my childhood up until now. Luckily for them, I opted to not talk and in accordance to their guidelines and rules, they couldn't make me talk if I didn't want to. Of course, Brian attempted to rile me up so that I would talk but I knew that I had to keep it in if I was going to somehow do what the girl said and get them in a position where they had to tell me about what I wanted to know.

A positive about approaching the end of our time at the retreat was that my birthday was getting close, as was the wedding that Peter had invited me to. Our final day at the retreat was the 24th, the day before my seventeenth birthday. It was also the time when I knew I would have to start thinking about coming clean to him about my age and any other lie I told him, such as who my parents were. It's not that I cared that Brian was in a band - I deliberately didn't tell people because I don't like thinking of them as my parents - but I hadn't been entirely truthful about what my parents do, what they did which led to me living with Hannah, and my entire feelings about them. Sure, he knew bits and pieces about my relationship with them, he definitely knew how I would hate to end up like Michelle and how I try and distance myself away from them, but he didn't know the things that I knew he would want to. It's just his want to know more about me is just unnerving.

On the final day, we had one last session that had five minutes with each of us talking to the therapist one-on-one before having our final group session. Over the last few days I had started to piece together what I was going to do in order to get Michelle and Brian to talk to me, and I had finally worked it out. Of course, it could only be put into motion when we had left the retreat so the last session we had dragged on as the therapist tried extra hard to get me to talk about something relevant to the questions but ultimately failed.

By the time we were released from the session and able to head to the cars while Brian signed us out, we were all ready to leave. The ride away from the retreat was one of the best I had ever had, right the way up until we pulled up at their house and I noticed that Brian's friends were there. They always seemed unable to be away from each other for very long, something which I thought was strange. They were grown men with a friendship like teenage girls.

"We're having a barbeque in the back yard," Michelle said, turning to look at me from the front seat. "Your Aunt Val thought it would be nice to welcome us back."

I rolled my eyes. Apparently eight days away warrants a get together. How they cope with being away from each other for the weeks on end is beyond me. "I'm not hungry."

"You haven't eaten since breakfast."

"And like I said, I'm not hungry," I snapped, undoing myself and opening the door to exit the car. Unfortunately, she could follow right after me. If there's one thing that Michelle is, that's persistent.

She reached me as I got to the door of the house. "Come on, you have to eat. I'm not going to let you starve yourself," she protested.

I couldn't help but laugh. "Starve myself? Hey, Hannah, did you hear? They won't let me starve myself," I mocked, making Hannah shake her head at me. That was a shocker.

There was talking in the house as we entered but I didn't pay any attention to it and headed straight to the staircase, with Michelle at my heel. "I mean it, Nicole. You are eating," she said, placing a hand on my arm.

I shook it off and spun round to face her. "That's the thing, Michelle. You can't tell me what to do because you are not the one who gets to do that. You signed those rights away all those years ago without being forced to by the courts because you didn't want everyone to find out the reason behind it. What did you tell your parents? Couldn't cope? I was too much of a handful? It was just for a few years?"

By then Hannah had already walked off to the kitchen, a hand on her forehead and a disgruntled look on her face. Brian still hadn't come in so I assumed he was still getting the bags out of the car in one go so that he didn't have to spend too much time away from his friends. It was just Michelle and me, and after bottling everything up for the last few days at the retreat, I was ready to go.

"I'm trying, okay?" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up. "What do you want me to do? Not care about you? You are my daughter, I will always care."

"That is exactly what I want you to do," I butted in before she had finished. "Don't care about me, it's something that you were very good at when I was a child." I watched her arms fall to her sides and one fist clench tightly. "What's the matter, Michelle? Do you want to hit me? It's been over ten years since you last did, I'm sure you're desperate to."

She looked horrified at my words and relaxed her hand. "Don't say that, it's not nice."

"Oh, so you do want to hit me!" I exclaimed, giving a laugh. "Go on then, nothing's stopping you. No one's around just like before. Hit me!"

"No!"

"That's right, because you're a perfect mother! Never once did you do anything nasty to me. You can't understand why I would ever want to live with Hannah over you," I retorted. "How dare I break up your perfect little family."

By now she looked close to tears and I hadn't even raised my voice. "Stop, Nicole. Just go upstairs," she said, trying to gain the control back. But she just didn't understand.

"Stop? Stop?! How can I stop when I never even start?" I gripped the banister and braced myself for what I was going to say next. "You can never tell me what to do because I hate you, Michelle. I hate you!"

The thing about me is that I knew the buttons to push to get Brian or Michelle riled up, but every time that I've done that they've always been together and managed to calm the other down before anything had happened. However, she was alone. She had no one to do that. So before I had gotten my final word out, her hand collided with my face with such force that I stumbled back against the stair behind me.

However, the thing I did not expect was the gasp from Hannah. "Michelle!" she exclaimed, looking horrified at what she had just seen. Taking my chance, I spun on my heel, ran upstairs and slammed my door shut, making sure to lock it.

It had worked. I had gotten the reaction I had wanted. I just didn't expect Hannah to have witnessed it.