Long checkered shirts

Before One.

I love the sound of my type writer. The clicks of the keyboard, the ding at the end, when the sentence reaches the end of the page.

It's where I get lost. Where I can have my own thoughts and my own opinions without anyone telling me I'm right or wrong, and criticising what I do all the time.

I get that a lot. Not just from school, but at home too. Every time I'm not in the mood to talk, so I just shrug my shoulders or say "I don't know" in response to anything my mother says, it's classed as attitude and I always, get the same response, each and every damn time; "you don't know much, do you?" Then she rolls her eyes and sighs.

Maybe she's the reason it started?
Maybe not?
Maybe it was my "dad"? Ha! Some dad.

My dad was a drunk.
I would say alcoholic, but he was too broke to be one.
That was a joke, so please laugh at my expense.
Anyway, my "dad" didn't actually get kicked out. He left.
And so, I was just another girl with daddy issues. Great. Thanks Mark.

Mark left when I was a small twelve year old who didn't know what the world beholded, and what shit I would get into.

The world could not do any wrong for me.
There was no such things as casualties and violence and sadness.
Only when it was fiction written in books.

Mark left because he could "not find any help in this household. I know you don't love me and I know you're the one that caused me to get this... This problem. You're a shit mother, and will never actually be loved by you're only two children. Good luck in life Janice. I will never see you again, you witch."

His voice plays over and over again in my head.

Then he looked at me, and saw the pure horror and sadness in my eyes.

"Alex. Don't show anyone you love them. Don't show you care, or that you even have a heart. The best way to not get your heart broken, is to pretend not to have one."

And with one swift turn around, he walked out the door. Leaving a damaged child behind. And also, not knowing, my pregnant mother.

That's when my mum started smoking, not just cigarettes, but weed and started drinking, and disliking me and Paul, but my sister, my sister was there for her. That's why she liked her. But I was useless, I was young I couldn't help it!

Both of them were useless.

"Utter assholes." I spit. Not realising I said it out loud until my older sister tuts at me.
"Mind your language" she mocks, shaking her head, while still looking at her phone.

*buzz*
Her phone goes off every two seconds.
*buzz*
Probably her new boyfriend.
*buzz*
She only broke up with her last boyfriend five days ago.
*buzz*
It's probably her friends again, planning a "night to remember." In which I mean getting wasted and finding the first guy they see, sleep with them, then wonder where the hell they are before realising what twats they had been, and quickly running out of a strange mans room in last nights clothes.
Classy.
*buzz*
"Going out!" She jumps.
"Where to, honey?" My mum smiles.
"With Kailey and that, the use," my sister could win an Oscar for that performance, which is coincidently what her new boyfriends name was, as I see on the bright screen of her iPhone 6 plus.
I smirk, and walk towards the kitchen, pushing past Masie and my mum, so that I could catch her just before she leaves.

"Okay, love. Have fun." My mum says, giving her permission for Masie to go out.
"Will do!" She shouts, kissing my mother on the cheek.
She slams the living room door.
Just before she opens the front door, I speak; "forgetting something?" I shake her phone in my hands.

She goes to grab it and I jerk back,
"Ah ah ah. Not until you tell me who Oscar is!"
"None of your damn business you bitch."
"Actually, it is!" I correct her. "Remember? I fixed the contract so that mum wouldn't ever see who you've been calling or texting."
"So?" She scoffs, shifting her weight from her left foot to her right.
"I can change that." I wink.
"My new boyfriend." She says quietly.
"And..?"
"And, what?"
"And why does he keep texting you?"
"You'll find out..." She winks, grabs the phone and runs out the door, slamming it behind her.

What was that girl hiding?

Just because I'm younger, does not mean, I'm not smarter than her. I have a lot of free time, so why not let that time be intellectual?

I walk back into the living room and find my mum sticking her nose into my new paper I had just finished writing up on the type writer.

"Mum, what the hell? You know I don't like you reading my stuff! It's personal!" I scream in horror, although I should've know better, she always does things like this. I was only writing what was happening in the world, like my own personal newspaper. Not just my life, but everyone else's too.

"Don't use that language with me! I'm your mother! And besides, you left it here, unguarded, what did you expect?"

"Obviously, I should have expected that you would read through it!" I start picking it up to run to my room, and carry on writing there.

"One day... One day I'll be gone... And... And you will miss me!" She shouts, being dramatic as always.

"Ugh, whatever. I don't want to fight again, I'll be in my room."
I put my type writer down when she shouts up at me again.

"You're always in your room," she lights a cigarette - inside - she knows I hate that. "What if I want company?"

"You know you're not good company, when you've been drinking. Besides you have Paul." Oh Paul. My poor. Poor. Baby brother, Paul. It's going to sound mean but I wish you would have dies when you were born. Or even got taken away my social workers. Your life would have been so much better. At two years old, and what a mess life is for you already...

"You're just like you're farther, you are. I have one glass of wine, and suddenly I'm a bad person" she shouts up.

I storm out of my room and get right face to face with this... Cow.

"A) I'm nothing like my farther, and he was nothing like a farther and B) we all know you're not classy, and had more than one beer, so get a grip because you're baby is crying and you need to act like a mothe-"
*SLAP*
Around my face.
Not the first time.
But it's been a long time.

"If your sister was here, she would stand up for me!"
"If my sister was here that would be a FUCKING MIRACLE!"

Silence.

My sister is never in anymore, and that's the only child my mum actually loves. She hates it here without Masie, but never admits to it.

Tears fill my mothers eyes.
I realise something has got to her. Something I said. I see her eyes and it's like looking through all her thought, and all her love for my sister.

"Go."
"Fine." I say walking up the stairs.
"No... Leave... Out... Out there. Go out..."
"What?"
"GET OUT!" She screams, like a knife digging into my ear drums, tears streaming down her face.
"Where?"
"I DON'T CARE! JUST LEAVE!"
"No."
She carries on sobbing.
"I won't. Because you push everyone out, everybody leaves you, and when that baby, grows up, he will leave you too, but if I leave now he will not be safe, so for now, he is staying here, and so am I. So..no."

"I don't love you," she chokes, "I don't love you, I didn't love your farther, and I don't love i-"

"IT IS A HE, AND I LOVE HIM. AND IF YOU WANT TO KEEP MASIE YOU HAVE TO KEEP US!" I breath, trying to calm down, choking back the tears.
"So what's it going to be? Huh? All of us, or none of us? Because Masie also love Paul, and she would happily leave you for him. And I'm not leaving that baby's side. You hear?!"

She falls on to her knees and sobs. Paul is now crying and I know that was me. I run into the living room and pick him up. I run to the living room door, with Paul in my hands, and see the witch locking herself in the bathroom.