Drugs & Dior

Chapter 1

Angela

I wake up to a bucket of ice water being poured on me, a big clump of ice cubes hits my temple and gives me a pounding headache. I jump up, adrenaline powering me. Chunks of ice are in my hair. There's a high pitched ringing in my ear.

My mother is standing in front of me. She smells like whiskey and cigarettes. My eyes travel around her wrinkly face, her messed up caveman hair. She's wearing the same raggedy clothes she's been wearing for months now. Her pants and T-shirt, both too big for her malnourished body, have new rips and holes in them.

"What are you lookin' at, child?" She snarls, tossing the dirty blue bucket to the side. Her voice is rough from the amount of cigarettes she's smoked in her life. I cringe at the smell of her breath, but try to hide it in case she's in a violent mood.

"Nothing," I say, averting my gaze to the floor.

"Mhm." My mother turns to leave, her bare feet walking through the water that is now spewed across the floor. She turns back to me once she gets to the doorway."Your sister pooped in her diaper and has been sitting in her own sh*t for who knows how long, and your taking a nap." She laughs.

I look up at her, stare her in the eyes. Anger rises in me. She always does this. 'Your sister' instead of 'my daughter'.

I fight the urge to talk back but fail. "She's not my daughter," I mutter.

My mother takes a double take and is in my face in a matter of seconds. She pushes me back into my mattress and grabs a chunk of my hair. She pulls so hard I feel it starting to tear out of my scalp.

"You want to be a smart a*s?" She asks, her face so close to mine I can feel her disgusting breath hit my skin. I flail my legs around but she's incredibly strong despite how small she is and pins them down with her own legs. "She's not your daughter, no," she laughs, spit spewing all over my face. "But she sure as h*ll is your responsibility."

Since my mattress doesn't have a bed frame, we're both half on the mattress and half on the wet floor. I'm soaking wet and can feel the water my mattress absorbed seeping out into my hair from the amount of pressure my mother is pushing me into it.

After a few minutes of struggling, she lets me go with a push as she gets up. Once she leaves the room, I feel the back of my head for blood and sure enough, it's there. I don't know why I decide to talk back to her, it always ends with me hurt.

I get off my mattress and walk through the water covered floor to the pile of clothes laying in the corner of my room to change out of the soaking wet ones I'm wearing.

I don't have a bureau. They're all too expensive for me to buy myself one and my parents have never showed interest in getting me one. For years I thought it was normal for people to just pile their clean clothes on the floor, not that my clothes were ever really clean. They have a permanent smell of cigarettes and alcohol, everyone at school thinks I'm a loser.

Maybe I am.

No matter how many times I scrubbed my laundry, no matter how long I spent cleaning it all by hand, it always smells bad. Like a curse. A constant reminder of my home. My parents.

I throw on the sweatpants I stole. Every time I see them I feel bad that I did it, but I need clothing. I'll pay the store owner back one day. Along with the sweatpants I throw on a plain light pink T-shirt, the shirt I bought myself with my first paycheck.