The Monster and the Stones

One

"If you can't wake up in the mornings you aren't getting anywhere in life." Alex's stepmom was never very encouraging, which was okay, Alex didn't like her either. She jumped up, looking around her bright room. It was already cleaned out: moving day. Alex's abusive father and his new wife had found a nicer house far away from Alex's mom.

Before Alex's mother and father divorced, they were a very happy and stable couple. Alex's mother worked for an insurance company since she got out of college, making a good enough pay to support her daughter. Her father was a mechanic, often traveling for his company to fix anything from small motor bikes to large boats. He made almost double of what his wife made. They were a pretty normal family, living in a nice neighborhood in a nice town. Alex went to a very nice school until everything went downhill in the family when she was just eight years old.

Alex's mother was offered a promotion if she went on a business trip with her boss and a few other colleagues. However, this was no normal business trip. Instead of making appearances to meetings with other companies, Alex's mother had gotten into an affair after drinking and trying narcotics and becoming heavily intoxicated. While it may have been something that could have been fixed, she lost her job.

Alex's father also had some major anger issues. He was usually able to control them, but from that day he changed. He kicked his wife from the house and began shutting his family out, regretting ever being married to her. Naturally, he shut out his daughter, too, the child of their former love, a living memory of her. He got very strict and mentally and emotionally abusive towards Alex, who was spinning around in her own little world. She used to visit her mother regularly, however, soon after the divorce she got involved in more drugs and alcohol, making it difficult to keep in touch.

On top of that, she never found a new job and soon couldn't afford a home, so she moved in with a strange man who offered to give her free rent for favors. Since then, Alex's father had custody over her, and the judge refused to let her see her mother while she remains in that state. Now, Alex lives with her father and stepmom, who is not much better than her father. Naturally, her father would want to remarry someone more like him, making her new stepmom to be just as abusive and careless towards Alex as he is, if not in a worse way.

After being tossed around in her torn-up family for eight years, Alex now refuses to call her stepmom a mother at all. She decides to call her by her first name, Cassidy, and refuses to call Cassidy's son her new brother. Before marrying Alex's father, Cassidy went through many relationships and two marriages. In her second one, she married a US veteran and gave birth to her only son, Michael. After dying on the front lines, Cassidy jumped through many relationships. Michael tagged along, being the emotionless and careless boy Alex pertains him to be.

Michael is one year younger than Alex and is held up as an "angel" child to Alex's father and stepmom, getting perfect grades and playing in sports. However, Alex knows he is no angel. Michael never tried to get along with Alex and only uses her for things he needs. He tends to steal her things: socks, toothbrushes, chargers, computers, sometimes even bras. While he never admits to it, Alex knows exactly who takes them because she has more of a package than her own stepmom.

After pushing Alex aside, her father sees Michael as the son he always wanted, spoiling him with whatever he'd like: guns, cars, video games, and food. Alex gets nothing. She knows more than she speaks. Though he would never admit it, Alex's father always wanted a son, not a daughter, so he never really appreciated Alex from the beginning. When Alex was born he decided to give her a more "masculine" name and throw more "masculine" habits into her until she became more of a tomboy, especially since the divorce.

Now Alex is an outsider. She doesn't have many friends and often finds herself dragging herself along until someone can awake her from this misery, or at least until she can find a way to escape. She doesn't do well in school, doesn't join any clubs or play any sports like Michael. She lost all interest in hobbies, so she usually finds herself alone in her small room throughout the day, doing her schoolwork and watching the same show on Netflix repeatedly as her family shuts her out and tries to forget she is there.

Now that school is ending, Alex has another long and unbearable summer ahead. She is looking forward to sneaking out alone in the middle of the night and going for walks, her best way of getting out of the house and away from her family. However, she would if she weren't moving. She doesn't even see the point in attending her last day of school since they are moving anyways.

Alex stumbles out of bed, slipping on an old T-shirt that Michael outgrew and a very tight pair of jeans that she has outgrown. She brushes her short, blonde, and messy hair, brushes her teeth, and heads down the stairs. There boxes piled up throughout the hallway next to the landing, most of everything is packed away in them or already on the way to the new house. She looks around and sighs, she doesn't know how to feel about the whole moving situation. She doesn't want to be happy because she is still trapped with this family, but she doesn't want to feel upset or angry because she is tired of feeling those things, but deep down she is very troubled over the fact that she will be leaving the memories of the family she once had, when her mother was sober and when her father loved her.

Instead of pondering too hard, she walks into the kitchen to grab the last box of cereal. Of course, it is empty. She sets it down gently as her father walks in. "You better hurry it up, missy. You're going to miss the bus."

"I will just walk then," she replies back. "I don't even understand why I have to go today; we're leaving right after school, and Michael isn't even going!"

Her father grabs a box that is piled up near the door. He opens it and peers inside. "Don't bring Michael into this. He has far better grades than you. Now get your bag and head out before I make you!" He pulls out an old clock and surveys it, wiping some of the dust off of it with his fingers.

Alex sighs and leaves the kitchen angrily. Up in her bedroom she grabs her backpack and shakes it. It is very light, nearly empty. She probably has two folders, one textbook, and one notebook that she is taking with her today. She rolls her eyes. What even is the point? She throws the bag over her shoulder and heads out the door into the warm summer sun.