Legacy

Chapter 74

Six weeks had passed with the same torture the girls had been facing. Each night the girls would come home from school one would be chosen to go down to the basement. The mother would pit them against each other. Sarah Mitchell enjoyed toying with her youngest daughters Addy and Beca the most, seeing the look on Stacie's face and not being able to help them make it even more enjoyable. In the meantime, the girls would only see each other on the way home or to school in the car they spent a little time with each other actually inside the house. Addy had become a shell of her former self mainly doing schoolwork in every spare moment studying harder and harder and hoping to make her mother proud of her which she knew was an unachievable goal. They had all just taken their midterms and were going to receive their results on parent-teacher day, which for the first time their mother was going to attend. Well, she was only going to attend Addy's. She knew all the other 3 girls received good grades and as Beca hadn't gotten in trouble at school since Aubrey there was no point seeing their teacher. She could receive the letter with their scores. She knew Addy's weren't going to be good, as hard as Addy could try she wouldn't be able to get those grades but Sarah Mitchell was more eager to see the teacher that had tried butting into her business. Addy had thought that the exams went okay, she had been studying hard but she also knew she struggled through them a lot. 

Beca had been hanging out with Chloe by the side of the school. She hadn't been her normal self but Chloe was just glad she was back and hadn't pushed Chloe away too much, Beca had put up obvious walls but had explained about her mother's disdain for them being together so that's why they couldn't hang out outside of school. Beca had also encouraged Chloe to speak to Aubrey and give her a chance but Chloe had none of it. She was still angry with Aubrey and just because Beca was back she wasn't going to forgive that easily, especially as Aubrey hadn't even tried to apologise. So Chloe and Beca kept together she went around the side of the building with Beca most days where they would sit and mostly be joined by Jesse and their other friends and actually enjoy their time together laughing and forgetting everything else that was going on.

Emily like Beca had spoken to Ali about her mom's opinion and that she was back more often now. Ali had known previously she was away more than there. Ali wanted to think that was a good thing but once everyone saw the state of Addy she disagreed. Ali and Emily had enjoyed their time together on occasion they would join Beca and Chloe. It was the longest she had ever been away from Ali's house but they had managed to secretly go shopping together one weekend. But Emily felt so bad about having to keep a secret she thought was best for the moment not to do it again for a while at least. The price of getting caught was too high.

Stacie had begun focusing on school, with all her work starting to catch up on her she would relax with her friends at lunch but then say she couldn't hang out because of a partly true reason: school work. She had spent a lot more time actually revising for tests and reading as both Beca and Addy would spend their time locked up in their room mostly. She could go and sit with Addy more but Addy would just be doing school work and there was no talking, Addy was too afraid their mother would walk in and with Beca, they could have a light conversation but Beca would refuse to meet Stacie's eye. She could sit with Emily who would be ever the optimist about trying to get her sisters to be together more and help them, but sometimes that was even too much for Stacie. So spent time in the evening cleaning the house to make sure there was one less thing for their mother to complain about.

And then there was Addy, who as hard as she tried she couldn't go back to who she was. She became a shell of herself. If her mother wasn't punishing her or making her feel worthless she spent time trying to study. She was in constant pain and was barely sleeping and you could almost forget about eating. Her sisters noticed but every time they tried to bring it up it was falling on deaf ears. Stacie tried to make her eat and she would briefly but would panic and get back to studying. She would sleep in the car to and from school and she did try at night but sometimes their mother would often keep her up and with all the tests happening it wasn't helping her revise. She wasn't sleeping anymore in classrooms and had also been in and out of P.E. class for the last term, sometimes her mom would write a note other times she had to wear long sleeves and leggings under her sports kit to hide the bruises claiming just to be cold. She still hadn't done anything in art too scared if she started she not be able to stop. Miss Ranyon and Miss Holmes had become increasingly concerned she would keep her head down and they couldn't deny that yes her maths had managed to improve but English was still a struggle. Her homework was better as she could spend time doing it three or four times but her work in class wasn't improving much. They had offered for Addy to sleep in their room but she had denied it each time no matter what class she would miss, opting to spend breaks in the library even Morgan was concerned and had spoken to Miss Holmes who had agreed to talk to her but each time Addy made an excuse to leave. Miss Holmes had noticed a change in all four girls who were a lot quieter than they had been at the start of the year but other than Miss Ranyon no other teacher would take her concerns seriously.