Die For Me (HS)

Chapter One.

Starting school is difficult, exceptionally difficult when the first day of your senior year is going to be spent 500 miles away from home. Portland, Maine, is nothing like home back in Philadelphia— the air here is too... well, it's too clean, and the people seem to friendly, and despite it being the largest city Maine has— it just seems too small. It beats spending another year waking up to purple walls and wellness checks, though. Anything is better than that god-awful psych ward.

From the driver's seat of dad's worse-for-wear Honda Civic, I see the cities passing attractions. Nothing screams YOUR LIFE ISN'T GOING TO BE A LIVING HELL at me and just further instills my lingering anxiety. The music plays lightly in a gentle humm, dad thinks loud music makes me want to kill myself, and I don't have the heart to tell him that the only thing making me want to die right now is him and this stupid move to the middle of nowhere.

"Now, Arabella-"

"Dad," I groan at the full use of my horrendous name.

"Ara," he corrects himself, "I know this move is going to be difficult for you, but I want you to know that this is for you. I'm not punishing you. I'm your father and I love you. I want you to be better."

You know nothing, is what I want to say, but I keep quiet, looking out my window at the zooming road signs and water. Dad is a good person, too good, I don't deserve him. He only wants what is best for me, he doesn't know that his attempts at saving me from drowning is what is pulling me under the water. I need to be nicer to him is what my therapist told me, understand that his methods may not be what I want, but could be what I need. I want to be nicer, but there is no kind way to tell him that he is driving me to the brink of insanity. Further insanity.

Dad's gps tells him to make a right turn and he turns quickly to avoid missing it, my body jolts to the side and back to the center of my seat as he clears his throat to begin speaking again. "You know, your mother would have known what to do."

I grow cold at the mention of my mother, her absence abundantly clear as I sit in the passenger side of the car that once belonged to her. "Mom is a coward."

"Don't speak of your mother that way," dad snaps quickly before recovering from his sudden outburst. I hate that he still defends her. "She... she just needed time."

"Yes," I agree, "time away from the family she loved ever so dearly."

Dad doesn't get offended by what I say, he only grins slyly, "I never did
understand where your sarcasm came from."

The rest of the car ride falls under
'comfortable silence', dad only speaking when a roadside shop or pretty looking building grabs his attention. It is obvious that he is trying his very hardest to make this move not seem so much like an impending doom, but rather a bright opportunity. Optimism has been uncharacteristically hard for me to come by lately, my once bright, understanding, loving self having been replaced by an aura of suffering and misery.

The seemingly never ending, ten hour car ride, comes to its final end as we pull up to a dingy apartment complex a few blocks away from the water. The sign on the leasing office glows a neon pink, looking more like it should belong on the outside of a cheap bar compared to a supposedly high-class apartment building. Dad and I are no longer high class though, mom made sure of that when she left with all of our money.

Dad's eyes widen ever-so-slightly when he examines our new home, which definitely did not look this run down and shady on their website. "Home sweet home, kiddo."

I make a not-so-pleased face that my mother would have probably called ugly if she were still here. Now that she's not here, I can make them all I want. I'll turn my face into a permanent frown. That'll have her reeling if she ever has the balls to come back to us.