"Stuck In The Friend-Zone Again and Again"

"Frusteration, Desperation"

{11 days later; Friday}

We were leaving for tour in 3 days, and I was starting to panic.

Partially because I was also starting school in like just over a week.

Like what? Where had the summer even gone?

True, it was online school and I could technically just do a bunch of my classes on the plane and be done before half of the tour was even over. (I DON'T KNOW HOW ONLINE SCHOOL WORKS LET'S JUST PRETEND THIS IS HOW IT WORKS MKAY?)

And it wasn't like I was taking shit like trigonometry or anything.

I was taking English, Advanced English (12th grade), Literature, Art, Social Sciences, French, and History. (I DON'T KNOW HOW HIGH SCHOOL WORKS EITHER OKAY SO DON'T KILL ME)

All of my favourite things, except for social sciences, which I took because it was the least horrible option. I didn't really know what social sciences even was. From what I had heard from friends it was something I'd be okay with.

I was still scared shitless of course, but my intelligence had always been something I was at least semi-confident in.

The boys were packing all their shit, which I didn't have to do because all I had to do was fold my clothes and stuff in the other crap.

In the near month I had spent in Australia, the Hemmings residence had come to feel like home, almost more than my actual one ever had.

It was different though.

My house back in Canada was home in the sense that it was where I lived, and had grown up, and it was where my family was. It had all of my things and my room and my memories. It was where I was happiest sleeping, in my own bed in my own house.

The Hemmings house was home in the sense of feeling like family.
It was warm, and happy, and bustling with life. Whether it be Jack or Ben or both stopping by, or the boys rushing in unannounced, or Liz making a delicious meal, the smells wafting through the house, or Luke and Andrew laughing over some joke Luke had made at dinner, the Hemmings household always seemed like a house that could be anybody's home.
They seemed like they could be anybody's family.

It was nice to have a proper family again.

Before my brother left for university, it was better.
My brother was the light of my parents' life, their perfect little boy.
When he left for Uni, my parents didn't know what to do.
They had me, of course, but I was always fairly independent and almost constantly well-behaved, whereas Ryan needed their help and discipline all the time.
When he left, and no one really needed their help anymore, that was when the problem started.
They picked up more and more hours, working harder, and on weekends, until mum got a huge promotion and dad's business was booming.
That left me: 11 years old, home alone much of the time, occasionally having to cook meals or eat leftovers because my parents weren't home and I was hungry, and growing used to solitude.
As I got older, it only got worse; "I'm going on a business trip to Seattle, your father has to come for a car deal"; "I have to go to New York for a few days while your Dad's at that conference in D.C.".
I was left for days at a time to fend for myself.

All this being said, I wasn't forgotten.
The pressure only increased.
Without Ryan to focus on, they began nit picking at things: mum was always pushing me to work harder in school and get better grades, even though I was top of my class every year.
I was eighth grade valedictorian and they were both an hour late to the ceremony, catching only the end of my amazing speech I had spent weeks on.
My dad was always on me to join some anything extracurricular, even though I was already in Art Club.

And my anxiety that had been less of an issue as a child grew and grew until it was this huge mountain that I now had to climb, like I told Luke.

They didn't even know about my anxiety.
They thought it was easy.
They didn't see me cry myself to sleep many nights out of worry, or cause myself to be sick from the amount of anxiety on my plate.

Sure, in some ways it was good having parents that trusted you and were never home.
I had been living with people they barely knew for the past month and was going on tour with a band for the entire school year, hadn't I?

But that just felt like even though they loved me, they didn't really care except about my grades and my future.

And that wasn't good.