This is a true story until the character Nathan becomes known. Names have been changed to protect the real people involved. A story that I would know all too well. So here is a story that begins with truth, because in the reality of this one, there is no happy ending.
Chapter 1: Saturdays
I raise my hand to the back of my head and lightly touch it. Warm, sticky blood is what meets my hand, wetting my dark hair.
Hmm, this isn’t as bad as it usually is. Usually I end up halfway across the room, sometimes unconscious, and always hit in any reachable somewhere.
Oh hi there. Didn’t notice you. Because I was too busy doing damage control.
My name is Isabella. Not that it’s a name that matters. My parents looked up the first name they saw on the most common names in some internet chart somewhere and gave me that name.
I’m getting off track again. But anyway, I’m 13 years old, in 8th grade, and I’m pretty much like any other person, just like you. Except I’m not.
I’m one of those few unlucky children whose parents hate them for no apparent reason. From the moment I was born, they have hated me. It’s never really showed, or I never really noticed, until about 7th grade.
You think you have it bad? Try having to fight off a killer mom who seriously hopes you get cancer and die in the most painful way possible. And then there’s the dad. He’s just as bad, if not worse. He’s the one who wanted me to go to boarding school because I was a “bad influence” for “corrupting” my little sister, who flirts with people online in her spare time. Once, when they discovered that my friends had bought me my (FIRST) pocket knife, they only let me keep it because they hoped I accidentally (or purposefully) stabbed myself with it.
I’m getting side tracked in self pity again. Sigh. But, getting on task again, I live in a family of five people. My mom, my dad, my sister, and my brother. Oh, and then there’s me. My little sister is in 6th grade. My little brother is in kindergarten. My dad is a worldwide investor in some worldwide company somewhere in the world. My mom is a “stress relief consultant”, which basically gives her the authority to tell people what is wrong with them and advice on how they can “change”. And she gets paid for this. Over $100 an hour. It amazes me how self pitying people are. God, I’m such a hypocrite.
So, getting back into the current view of events in the world, aka Now. I was just checking how badly things went this time with my mom’s yelling/beating fest.
I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed, and lightly feeling any areas that were hit by her unforgiving hand to make sure that they will show no noticeable damage. My sister leans in my doorway, smirking evilly at me. My 6-year-old little brother, comes in with wide eyes. “Isabella, are you okay?” he asks. I take him into my arms and hug him tightly, even though it hurts the tender areas on my arms to do that. I love him so much. It makes me overprotective of him sometimes. When I set him down, I lean down so that I look him straight in the eyes.
“I’m fine.”
My sister makes some snide comment behind her hand about what a liar I am, while I pretend I don’t hear her. I tell my brother to go play Wii. He loves playing Wii, so he dashes away excitedly. My sister goes off to scold him for the fourth time today about playing too much. I know that afterwards, she’ll sit down at her laptop and make Youtube videos of herself for hours, or take pictures of herself for hours, or maybe even both. Her two Youtube accounts’ backgrounds are tiled pictures of her.
