Face Your Past

Chapter One

Chapter One:

                  Stepping out of the car was the hardest thing I had to do, well besides getting in it in the first place. Driving the whole way here was my mother's idea of torture I'm sure. She called it relaxing, she called it family time. I called it hell.

                  Eighteen hours to remember why we had left, Eighteen hours spent remembering the hell it was the last time I was in this place. I suppose I should tell you why I didn't want to go home as my mother called it. Home...No....New York was my home, my savior. Not this place. This place, yes is where I was born to Kevin and Mary Frost. This place is where they raised my siblings and I, and this is the place where from the time I entered school I was tortured.

                 Yes, I know kids can be mean, oh boy do I know and back then I thought that's just the way life was. When you were the fat kid, who wasn't exactly the prettiest girl in class, it was just the way life was. I was settled in that fact. I kept my head down and I kept close to the two friends I had managed to get in my fourteen years.

                 Then my parents' marriage erupted like a volcano. It was a time I don't care to recall much, mostly because home had always been my safe haven, a place to hide, and then suddenly it was a battleground. That's when it all changed, Mom got a job in New York and she was reserved to take it, the only thing left was to fight out custody. There was no way my father was letting my mother pack up his children and just take off never to be seen again. He was a good father and he loved us. What happened you might ask? Well, my eldest sibling Jasmine was already nineteen at the time and was already off to a college in Houston. My brother was a golden boy. He was sixteen at the time and he wanted to stay where he was happy. School was everything for him that it wasn't for me. He had everything he could possibly want. So I did what any good teenager who has no control over her own life would do, I prayed and begged and made promises that I had no intention of keeping. I promised summers back in Fredric, Mississippi. I promised every other holiday, I was literally at the point of negotiating points of a custody agreement, which I should have not been doing, I just needed to get away, I needed something.

               I got exactly that, my dad gave in. Of course, I didn't keep my end of it, in the least which I knew hurt him terribly. In the last three years, I had come back to see my father and brother, once. During which time I had spent hidden in my room. Now here I was coming back. Jasmine was still in Houston but was due to be home the coming summer. Jacob, was in town working for my fathers' construction company, spending his time close to home and trying to relive his glory days as often as he could.     

             New York had been something I never thought it would be. I thought it would be a place I could hide in, a place that while kids were still going to be cruel, there would be so many of them that I could disappear into the business of it all. That's not exactly what happened. Sure I hid out for a while, most people didn't really notice me at first or didn't care to, that's when I met them.

            My friends. Not just two people who kind of dealt with me because they felt sorry for me like back home but real friends. Kyla was the first person that ever looked at me, really looked at me. A few weeks into being into New York City, I caught her eyeing me in the caff, and then she just walked over and stared me down before speaking. "So, what's your deal?" I looked up at her slowly, in silence not knowing what to say or do for that matter.

             "I don't have a deal." I spoke softly not trying to anger the perfect stranger in front of me. I knew what mouthing off to the girl who is loved by everyone would get me. It would get me back to where I was except this was a larger school and it would be pure hell to be on that shitlist.

    She huffed for a second and leaned down with her elbows on the table. "You soooo have a deal...You think you're too good for us? Hate the city? Miss home? Hate yourself?" She stopped at the last one, and she sighed. "That's it. Yo, Get up!" I remember the fear that coursed through me that day, that was the last time I was truly afraid of everything going back to the way it was. She grabbed my hand when   I refused to get up and dragged me to her table. the popular table. "Everyone, this is my girl... (whispers..what's your name?)" I smiled at her as I told her. "Serenity" she finished. Everyone looked me over for a second and shrugged, seemingly satisfied that I was now one of them and I was. The people at that table became my best friends. I was going to miss that. I changed after that.

    I walked everywhere, Kyla and I would go running every weekend and every morning in the summers. She became my personal trainer, ironically that is what she would be going to school for. The first conversation we had after that lunch was her asking me why I hated myself, and I told her. So she was determined for me to love myself, whatever it took. So I did. I may not be the most beautiful girl in the room, but I look nothing like I did before. By nothing, I mean that if you saw a picture of who I was and who I am, you would bearly see the resemblance. Three years ago, I was pushing 250 pounds, I had short Choppy Hair, I wore Big sweatshirts and baggy sweat pants, and I had glasses and braces. Now my weight stays between 165-170 most generally, I have long hair, no braces, contacts most of the time and I usually sport jeans and a cute top.

My life in New York is completely different than it ever was here in Mississippi. No matter how many times mom said we were going home...in reality, she was taking me away from my home this time. When we left I was happy about it. Home had been torture ever since I was a kid, but how was I supposed to explain that. I hadn't really let on too much to mom and dad about why I wanted to be rid of Mississippi. I just said I wanted to be gone. I knew that dad thought I was mad at him, that's why I didn't come around, that I was blaming him for the divorce when it wasn't his fault they just couldn't make it. That was either on both of them or none of them. Unless there was something I was missing, I was pretty sure that they just couldn't make it work. I hadn't heard of any cheating or horrible acts by either one of them. Unless they were just protecting us, there really wasn't anyone to blame. Her father didn't understand that she hated home, not because he was in it if she could pick up every single member of her family and move them all to new york, even her brother, she absolutely would. In fact, that sounded like a great idea. except for a few things. First, she would have to actually admit why she hated her home town, and instead of just leaving like she had, her dad would fight the world for her, he would have back then and he would now. It wasn't something she was prepared to do back then and now she could fight her own battles Kyla had taught her how. She honestly just didn't want to. S

Serenity Frost was no longer afraid of the people who shaped her, she hated them and she wanted not one thing to do with a single one of them.  Not a single one.