Chapter 1

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In my house, I was known as the one that screwed everything up.

 My mother didn’t believe anything that I had told her. She claimed that I was making big messes out of nothing just to input drama into our lives.. And she would go on and on about how much she wished I was more like my sister.

  My mother adored my sister. In her eyes, she could never do wrong. She made straight A’s in school and would come home on weekends thirty minutes before curfew. She was the president of the Student Council at her school and cheerleading captain. She scored the nerdy boy who vowed never to do anything with her until they were married and well off into their careers. My mother always seemed to believe the front that my sister put on. If she only knew that my sister had gotten drunk and smoked every weekend and would come home thirty minutes early because her nerdy boyfriend wouldn’t do what my sister wanted to do, then maybe she wouldn’t be such an angel and I wouldn’t be the devil.

  My father, on the other hand knew my sister and I well. He knew what Sam would do on weekends and he knew that I had never once tried to do anything of that sort. He knew that I didn’t want to. And I think that is what made my mother angrier. I had a better relationship with my father because he understood me and took the time to. He was the one that would hold me in his arms and tell me everything was going to be okay. He was the one that would make me cookies and milk in the middle of the night whenever I had a bad day.

 When my father died, it was like I lost all hope of getting things back to normal with my family. I’d come home from school and go straight to my room. I’d throw my bags on the ground and just sit on my bed, looking out my bedroom window praying that God would just take me now also. I didn’t want to be there anymore. But something in the back of my mind pushed me to do better. I wanted to get through to my mother.

 So I decided to go out for Class President. My grades started to pick up and I had landed a spot on the school’s volleyball team. This made my mother start paying attention to me. She started coming to all my team sporting events and whenever I came home from school, she’d smile and ask how my day went.

 The day I scored the quarterback of my school’s football team, she went from being my mother to being my best friend. She asked me everyday how Maddox and I were doing and if we were planning on going anywhere Friday nights. She even told me that I didn’t have curfews anymore considering she loved my new boyfriend.

 “You landed an amazing guy your first time!”

 Sometimes I wondered if she’d wish that I would drop him so she could have him.

 The day I told her about what had happened, she dropped her whole “best friend” act and started to fade back to the way she was, but worse. She started to look at me disapprovingly and shun me whenever I walked into the room. She claimed that I was destroying our reputation and that this was low even for me to do. Maddox is a good guy. Why would you do such a thing to him? Why can’t you be more like Sam? And she’d go on and on about how much she wished I was more like my sister.

 It had gotten to be so bad that I locked myself in my room and prayed that she wouldn’t come back and start yelling at me. I started to flinch every time she would come home and make noise downstairs. I’d pull out my book and try to block out the screaming and yelling that my mother was doing towards my sister whenever she brought about the subject.

 “Riley, you have to get out of there,” Hannah told me as we sat around the table at lunch. Students were piling around the few tables that were set up outside as I opened the rancid burrito I had bought back in the lunch line. Hannah made a face as I opened it completely. The burrito looked a tad bit green so I just pushed it aside and decided I’d rather not get sick today.

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