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"So now what?" I think as I sit on the train, isolated by strangers, 70% of which looked about five times my age. Except for one, I couldn't see their whole body, but I did see a non-wrinkly hand, slumped over the side of a seat. I would've seen who it belongs to, but the last time I tried to speak in transportation, we were in a ditch. I continued to think, and remember, my family. You know, before the alcohol part.

August 5th, 2004

"Marlee!" I heard my dad call. I ran over to him and the relatives we were greeting at the door.

"Grandma!"

"Marlee, happy birthday, darling!"

"Come on in." My dad said, fake smiling. He knew my Grandma didn't like him, she always imagined my mom marrying her friend's son, Nolan, who was 7 years younger than my mom, but she didn't seem to mind that her 25 year old daughter would be marrying someone who just graduated high school.

"Joel, um, hello." She replied, walking right past him. You could hear my dad sigh heavily as she left the room.

"Mar, go help Grandma set the table." My dad sighed, again.

"Why? Its my birth-"

"Go."

I slumped my way over to the table, grabbing a dish from the counter.

"Marlee, sweetie, go play, you don't need to help."

"But daddy said to."

"Yes, well, your daddy isn't the-smartest. Go play."

Suddenly, I drop one of the plates by accident, and ceramic glass goes everywhere, and I feel a pain in my right arm, and start to cry.

"Daddy!" I wail.

"Marlee-what happened? Never mind, here." My mom runs in, and lifts me onto a chair, pulling a shard of glass out of my arm.

"Ooh," My grandma says, "It looks deep, I think we need to go to the hospital."

"F***! Get the phone!" My dad runs in, shouting at her, and my grandma looks offended.

"Joel, I don't think thats a very nice way to talk to your mother in law,  ALSO in the presence of a-"

"JUST GET THE DAMN PHONE!" He shouts.

My grandma runs into the other room quietly scolding him under her breath as she goes.

Soon there's a truck in the front lawn, and I walk out, accompanied by my mom as we step inside the truck, with other relatives and friends waving to us sympathetically.

I didn't think it was a big deal, it was just a little cut, a deep cut, one that I got stitches for instead of having a birthday party, but still just a cut. Still, I lay back and relax, while doctors prick and prod at my arm for hours.

~

I look down to feel the scar still on my arm, right where I got the stitches on my 5th birthday, but I smile from the memory. Suddenly, the train comes to a stop, and no one stands up but the girl with the limp hand, but a familiar girl, big scratches and bruises up and down her arms and legs, which all I noticed before I saw that it was my stop, we were at the school, the same school the familiar girl was stopped at. Sylvia.

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