Kerosene

The Beginning

The good, the bad, and the annoyed.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m living with him.” I spat back at my mother crossing my arms across my chest. There was no way I was going to live with the excuse of a father I had. Not after what happened between him and my mother.

“Darling, I can’t stay here any longer. Your father and Savannah will take care of you, I just can’t right now. I need to find a way to take care of myself Camie.” She shook her head looking down at the floor as I saw the tears well up in her eyes. “I can’t get over your father, if I can still see him every day.” I grabbed her hands to keep them from shaking and kept them in mine.

My father had really done a number on my mom. He had cheated on her with his secretary, leaving my mother with the only choice she knew was right for her. Divorce.

Everything was going fine until we got a letter in the mail from my father announcing his wedding. He was going to marry the very mistress that broke up my parent’s marriage. The same woman who would be my step mother in mere months and the woman I would be living with at least until I was eighteen.  

“Mom, I hate him! You can’t just run away and move to Italy I won’t allow it!” I said trying to convince her that I was enough for her to stay, that I could somehow pick up the pieces that my dad had so carelessly broken.

“Pack your things. I’m taking you there in an hour.” She said leaving the room and ending the conversation.

It was clear her mind was already made up, but how could she leave me. I was seventeen, still a child who needed her mother. What I didn’t need was Satan himself raising me.

_______

I looked around my room one last time, it was finally empty. After filling boxes upon boxes I was surprised that my whole life could fit into five of them.

I waited in the doorway scared to turn off the light and accept that I was leaving. The memories overwhelmed me. Like the time I had fallen off the bed when I was five and spilt my knee open that left a huge scar, even how every night my mother used to read to me because my dad wasn’t home yet from a long day at the office.  Come to think of it he was never really in any of my memories and now I was going to live with him. I doubted I would be creating any new good ones with him.

I turned off the light and ran downstairs. I locked the door on the way out and met my mother in her run down SUV. I remember her fighting with my father who wanted her to buy something extravagate that let the neighbours know how much he made, but she wanted something that had character and a story. My mother was the most creative person I knew and my father never understood that.

“Ready?” She asked pulling out of the driveway. “No, I’m really not ready.” I said lastly putting in my headphones as we drove to Los Angles from San Diego. It wasn’t a very far drive about two hours but with traffic we could be in the car for hours. So I turned up the volume and stared out the video, there was no way I was going to talk to the woman who was abandoning me with a father I didn’t even know.

When we finally reached the Hollywood Hills I had fallen asleep only to be woken up by a knock on the car window. It was my father. He was smiling ear to ear and his finance was behind him with the same matched expression. It made me sick.