Miss Independent

Her name is Riley Anne Mitchell and she's twenty-three.

She grew up like any normal child should; a mom, dad, brother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. All that good stuff, but there was just one thing wrong with the picture, her dad was away in combat—not that bad—but her mother didn't do much to provide for her and her brother, Luke, when her dad was away because she was living in fear of him never coming home. When he did come back home, she took on the roll a mother was supposed to. With all that attention taken away from her and her brother for the time in between, it were as if they were raising themselves, and after a while of it, her brother was fed up from the lack of care towards his sister, seeing as how he provided for her.

So finally, when their dad came home and all was normal, he brought the subject up about their mother not doing anything. His father didn't believe it so he put his son down... hard, for saying those appalling things about his wife, saying how much she was a help. Luke just shrugged it all off and didn't say another word while he took his wailing sister to his room to comfort her.

She didn't understand for she was too young to comprehend anything that was going on, all she knew was that everyone was fighting and she wanted it to stop.

So after it all blew over, and their dad went back to combat, her brother started taking home videos to show how nonproductive his mother was. His father was shocked and never went back to war. He tried reuniting with his son to apologize for not believing him, but he was already off the deep end, not accepting the apology.

He started going out, partying, drinking, getting into drugs, and would always come home late either drunk, stoned, or maybe even with a girl, sometimes all three. He thought he was living and there was no other way to be.

Riley would nurse him on Sunday's from the hangovers he had from the night before while everyone was gone to church. She took up for him on everything, not like the normal little sister would do, but returning the favor because he took care of her when she most needed it and from when she was little.

This went on for a few good years and when she turned fifteen, she was well educated on all the bad stuff that existed because of her brother being into it.

Even with all of that education, it couldn't prepare her for what was about to happen.

One day, their parents went out of town on a vacation for about two weeks, and since that was Luke's only chance to throw a party, he threw the biggest one there ever was. Since it was a big party, he couldn't keep his eyes on everyone, he soon got caught up with a girl and started to head back to his room in the back of the house. His friend Kyle knew what was about to happen, so he tried to find him someone to hook up with as well. He searched, and roamed around the house until he found Luke's sister. He was a very relentless drunk, so when he had his mind set on something, he never backed down. So he went for it, and after a while, it registered in his mind what he was doing and who he was doing it with, but it was too late to back down now because it had already happened; he had raped her.

She was too scared to say anything as Kyle had sworn for her not to tell after realizing, but it was only days later when Luke found out on his own. After he did, he went straight to Kyle's house, getting into a fight with him for making the moves on Riley.

Luke accused Kyle of raping her and was going to press charges but Kyle insisted that, "It wasn't rape if the person was willing," but that wasn't true, and Luke knew his sister well enough to know that was as true as him being sober of anything. Which no one could believe even if you bribed them with one million dollars.

He still put charges on Kyle, not believing a word that came out of his mouth. They weren't friends after that but had to put up with each other for the consequences; Riley had gotten pregnant.