I could barely hear anything that was going on outside the locker as the small, cramped space with the metal door made it hard to hear, not to mention the fact that the guys had moved to the farther side of the room, their voices hushed.
I have no idea how long I have been in this small, cramped space, but if they continue like this I might just end up dying in here.
I could barely see, but from the small amount of light that streamed in through the cracks I could make out a sweater of some sort and a pair of gym shoes sitting on the bottom, both of them looking as though they have been dragged through the mud and chewed up by a rabid dog. I swear it smells as though something died in here.
I tried to get as comfortable as I can since I knew that they wouldn’t end their ‘bonding time’ any time soon. It was an impossible dream though.
I started getting lost in my thoughts, something that happens all too often. And the first thing that I think of is my mother and father. Of everything that they’ve done and everything they’ve put me through over the course of my short life. The yelling and the fighting; the screaming and arguing; but mostly the amount of beer bottles and other things that they lay around the house, things I would much rather not want to think about. My childhood has never been easy, it’s something that I accepted when I was very young, but I never stopped dreaming of a different family, one that was normal where you have dinner together every night, and where the father and mother love their children and would do nothing to harm them. That’s all I’ve ever dreamed of since I was a little girl. Well, that and having my prince charming come and save me from my dreadful life, but the first option always seemed so much more realistic than the second one.
I could feel hot tears begin to run down my cheeks and I angrily wiped them away. They were nothing but toxic in my life, and I was glad that I finally had a way out of their condemning ways. But at the same time, all I wanted was for them to say that I was enough for them to change their ways so that I could have a better life with them, but they just don’t care. They’ve never cared, and I don’t understand why they would have had me if they never even wanted me in the first place.
I tried to push them far from my mind, not wanting to give them any more of my time. And, almost instantly, my friend’s faces popped up in my mind, and I could almost feel myself cringe. They’ve protected me from a lot of things in my life, and for that I will always be grateful to them. But at the same time, they’re almost worse than my parents. They always show up to school intoxicated or under the influence of something, they’re all incredibly violent when they’re in this state and I always have to watch myself and take care of myself.
I wrinkled my eyebrows to the centre of my eyes. Why do I continue to hang out with them if they continuously act like this? And no matter how much I though about this, I couldn’t come up with an answer. Maybe it’s because I remember them when we were little and our parent’s world never existed to us. I’ve wanted those friends back since the first week of ninth grade, and I’ve been disappointed for the last four years.
I found myself looking out of the small cracks in the locker and over to where Cayden and his friends were currently occupying, and I found myself comparing him to my friends. In physical size there’s no comparison, Cayden is most definitely bigger than any of my friends and most evidently stronger than any of them as well, though I don’t know if that has more to do with physical strength or the fact that none of them are ever sober. And even though I may not have known him for all that long, Cayden seems a lot nicer than any of my friends. I mean, he may laugh at how out of shape I am, but at the same time I don’t think he’d ever really try to hurt me like my friends have in the past.
