Back Talk

Ch1: Welcome to my life, you won't be disappointed

“…and if I catch you out of your room one more time I’ll ring your neck!” Chet bellowed in the doorway to my room. I was quivering on the edge of my bed, hoping and praying he wouldn’t hit me. His fat face was red with anger, I had snuck out of my room because I was hungry and Chet had caught me. I wasn’t allowed to leave my room, probably because Chet didn’t want me to escape. Maybe if he fed me more I wouldn’t, but he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was lock me up in my room and coo over Darren.

“Well? After the 15 years on earth that I brought you into you still forget how to address me?”

“Yes, sir” I mumbled. I hated that he was my father and that he always pulled the ‘I made you’ thing. I don’t care that he ‘made’ me. I really wish he hadn’t.

“That’s what I thought.” His fleshy face contorting into what I guessed was a smile. He leaned over so he was right in front of me, he smelled of gross aftershave and body odor. I mean really? Did this guy ever bathe?

“And don’t you forget, I brought you into this world, and I can just as easily take you out.”

My name is Amanda Strifield and I'm 15 years old. My mom died in a car crash when I was 9, and no sooner than a month later my dad was to be married to a rich lady named Shannon Foler. She was pregnant in –get this– 6 months. I don’t know about you but I’m pretty good at math, and I figured that one out pretty fast.

Ever since the death of my mother, Chet and Shannon moved us to a small town south-east of Seattle, Washington near the coast. Since I’ve been there I’ve been to the emergency room 26 times, all from Chet smacking me around just ‘a little too hard’.

I shriveled up into a little ball on my ‘bed’ which was really just a really old mattress flopped down over in the corner in my closet-of-a room. It was about 10 by 10 feet and the wallpaper was peeling off at the corners of the room. I had thrown a white sheet over my mattress to make it look a little nicer. I also had a teeny-tiny dresser which matched my teeny-tiny amount of clothes.

I try to make my small little holding cell look as nice as possible, which is really hard to do considering that all I had was my mattress, an old-style dresser that Shannon had given to me when she first moved in. (Shannon is Chet’s new-time wife, old-time mistress), and a bookshelf filled with Shannons old books (bless her rotting little hart) that she also gave me when she moved in..

I have an also teeny-tiny bathroom that is disgustingly dirty because Chet never has the decency to buy me (or even lend me his) cleaning stuff. So my carpet is always dirty and my bathroom is always dirty.

I was now just laying on my mattress in the fetal position just going over the crappy oblivion that is my life. I know some girls wonder if some boy likes them or if their hair looks ‘like- super perfect’, but I wonder every night before I go to bed if I am going to eat or not get beat around tomorrow. I pray every night to my mom Carla Strifield, up in heaven that I can be rescued from this nightmare I live in.

But Chet had another thing coming if he thought I was going to put up with this for the rest of my God-given life. I wanted to end this now, but I didn’t want to give Chet the satisfaction of my giving up, no, I wanted to make my exit as extravagant as ever.

'Today was the most important day of my life,' I decided, ‘today was the day I was going to leave this hell-on-earth, today I was going to run away. I woke up this morning with nothing but sheer confidence. Why I will never understand, because I hadn't even come up with a plan. Would I just waltz out the door singing 'so long farewell?'

No.

My exit had to be planned, and easy to do. Just then my step-mom walked in my room and rudely interrupted my daydream. "We're heading to Wal-Mart with Darren. Be in the car in an hour." I smiled to myself.