A Place Only We Know -Completed-

In the beginning...

In the beginning it was easy. Lee would go about her day like normal, get dressed, eat breakfast, fake her way through her forced singing lessons. Her mom always wanted to be a singer but gave up on it when she had Lee, unfortunately for Lee, she was actually a good singer. Which meant she'd have to keep going.

  Lee never asked much of her mother, a little support here, a little love there, but it was like pulling teeth. Her mother prided herself on being a tiger mom with the attitude of a sea turtle. Wanted to protect her child, but in the end always left her to fend for herself. She never asked her mother what happened to her father, she would come home from school and find her mother passed out on the couch murmuring in her sleep about “Stupid Steve.”

  Whoever Steve was, she hoped he was far away. She also knew that whoever Steve was, he didn't know about her.

 Lee got to her instructors house in time. She avoided knocking on the door. She stood on the step and looked up at the sky. The sky was a palette of blue and white, hardly any birds flew by. The Earth was pretty quiet when she stopped to listen to it. The small hum of the electricity that flowed through the power lines. The buzz of cars stuck behind one another. Small conversations from strangers on their daily commute. This life was one she hated. She hated coming from school and being stuck in more places with more people she didn't care for. People that didn't care for her.

  She finally snapped out of it and went to go knock on the door, it was open. Her instructor came to open the door for her.

“You're thinking too much. Come in.” He said, leading her to the living room by her arm.

  She sighed internally. She hated being here. She looked around as she dropped her backpack on the floor. Her instructor rolled his eyes and sat on the stool in front of the Grand piano. She straightened out her uniform shirt and put her hands by her side. The usual. She had to stand straight and keep herself calm so she could focus on her vocal exercises.

“Do, Ray, Mi, Fa, So, La…” she droned on. She hated it. Singing. Especially the way her mother expected her to. She wanted to run away from all of this. She tried to before. Her mother made her pay for that. She was forced to spend the night with her mother's boyfriend. A new welt or two would show after a few days, she told the usual lies to her teachers when they asked questions and she'd go about her day.

  

 As much as she wanted to complain about her life she knew there was nothing a 15 year old could do about two adults. Especially when the one using their hands to inflict damage had been a police officer and the one inflicting emotional abuse used her paid for looks to get away with things, and it always worked. Adults believed adults. That is the way the world works. She did everything her coach told her to do. Monotonously as always.

 After an hour and a half she finally got to pick her bag up. Her mom rapped on the front door lightly. She watched as her instructor walked over to open it. Her mother came floating in like some witch without a broom. Her mother gave her a fake smile and diverted her attention to the instructor.

 “How's her progress?” she asked him.  “Merely satisfactory.” he stated plainly.

Her mother seemed like she had a hiccup. She watched her mother cut her eyes at her. Trouble. She sighed and excused herself from the conversation. She didn't care to hear what came next.

 She climbed into the backseat of her mother's suv. She wouldn't be able to reach her from the front seat. It seemed like no one understood her. She had given up. On everything. Being a good student. Being a normal functioning person. She didn't care about anything anymore. She didn't care about being touched, she didn't care about being beat. She had taken all she could. She wanted to get out.