If Only

Chapter 6- My Stereotypical Toxic Family

I wake up to the sound of a car roaring by. My head pounds as I stand. The world sways around me as I grab my bag and sweater that had been ripped off of me. I shove my phone, which was lying in the street, into my pocket. I am blatantly aware of what happened and how I got here. I touch my face. It stings and I cringe and whirl around as I hear a meow. The cat. I smile as the cat trots over to me and nudges up beside me. I pick it up and wrap it in my sweater. Its eyes begin to flutter shut. I smile and begin to walk home, slinging my bag over my shoulder. I walk a few blocks before turning right and continuing on that way for about five minutes. Then I turn left and then right once again after about three blocks. I have been smiling the whole time, mainly because one, the cat is adorable, and two, if I stop smiling I might burst out into tears. The smile I maintained the whole way home fades when I see my mother and father standing on the porch at my house in the distance. I pick up my pace and hide the kitten. They've always hated cats.

"Young lady! There you are! Where have you been?" my mother scolds. She doesn't even take into account that my face is bruised and covered in dry blood.

"You heard your mother! Answer her right this instant!" my father says, not even giving me ten seconds to answer.

"I got caught up in something after school." I answer bluntly.

"Like what? What could you possibly be doing after school that causes you to get home at 9:15?" my mother yells. I cringe. I can't tell them the truth.

"I was helping the football team practice until around seven and then I was helping the librarian. She needed help carrying boxes of books into the library, labeling them, and putting them onto shelves." I quickly lied. I knew that Mrs. Lilac the librarian would stick up for me, she always did, but I had no clue how I would get the football team to agree to pretend I was there.

"Until nine o'clock? Are you crazy?" my mother yells.

"I think she's testing our limits." my father mentions.

"What? No! I swear that's where I was!" I argue.

"Then why didn't you call and tell us?" he yells.

"Because"- I pulled out my phone that had gotten cracked in earlier events- "I dropped my phone!"

"So now you want to go and break the things we buy you?" they say, looking at my cracked screen.

"No! I just-"

"Go to your room! Now! You ungrateful brat!" my father yells. Tears start to roll down my cheeks as I clutch the sweatshirt, forgetting that the kitten is wrapped up in there. I heard a small noise and instantly loosened my grip.

"What was that?" my mother asks.

"Nothing!" I scream.

"Don't yell at me!" she screams back, staying on the porch. I ran up to my room, not responding to her, and shut the door behind me. I make sure to lock it. I gently lay the hoodie on my bed. The cat shakes free and explores my bed. I leave the kitten there and strip out of my clothes. I throw on an old t-shirt and a pair of shorts before going into my bathroom. I shut the door, lock it, and sink to the floor in between my shower and toilet, leaving the lights off. I bawl my eyes out until I have no tears left. And then I just sit and stare into the dark. I think about how things used to be, when my brother, Andy, was still here. We were happy. Happy and united, like a real family. We went to the park every weekend and played for hours, we drew random things with sidewalk chalk that our parents would fawn over, we would go to my brother's baseball games, we would eat giant pretzels and cheer him on from the stands. We would spend time, me and my father, at the library scanning over the shelves, sometimes not even checking anything out. Me and my mother would spend hours looking around at the store shelves and just walking around, sometimes not even buying anything. My brother and I would build snowmen and make snow angels in the winter and eat ice cream from the ice cream truck in the summer. We were happy. We were a family.