Chasing Dylan

Chapter Three

The moment I arrived home, I could sense the tense atmosphere.

"Dylan, get in here now!" I heard Eliza yell from the living room. Her shrill voice making me cringe.

Of course, as if my day couldn't get more difficult I now had to deal with my hormonal, lunatic step mother. I dragged my feet across the foyer, taking my time to get to the living room. Once I got there, I saw her sitting on the sofa, and beat up Justin sitting across from her.

"How can I help you Eliza?" I asked sweetly, preparing for the worst.

"You can help me by explaining yourself Dylan. Explain to me why you had my son beat up, and why did I have to take time out of my busy schedule to pick him up from school today." She said sternly, her blue eyes filled with anger.

I laughed internally at the "busy schedule" bit, this woman did not have a job. She lived off of my father so I'm not exactly sure what this busy schedule could possibly consist of. Perhaps she meant that her online shopping had been interrupted.

"Well, I definitely did not have your son beat up, I'm not sure what led you to that conclusion, but it isn't true." I said, looking directly at Justin. "If that was the case, I would have been punished by the principal and not your son." I answered, switching my attention to her.

"I see, so you're calling Justin a liar then?" She asked, squinting at me.

Yes, I thought. Yes I am. Justin was a liar, he'd been a liar since the day I met him at 8 years old. Nine years later, and nothing has changed.

"Well it wouldn't be the first time." I said under my breath.

"You little bit-" Justin started, and was quickly cut off when his mother held her hand in front of his face in a silencing motion.

"You are digging a deeper hole for yourself young lady, and for this, you will be punished." She said as she stood to her feet.

"I will be taking away your reading privileges for the rest of the week." She continued, stepping into my personal space. She grabbed my bag off of my shoulder and dumped the contents on the living room table. Seeing the book I had been read The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, she immediately took it and held it underneath her arm.

My main source of solitude and escape from Eliza and her children, ripped away from me for something I hadn't done.

"This isn't fair Eliza! I didn't do anything." I cried.

She then turned to her son. "Look at her, crying over a book, I've never seen anything more pathetic." She laughed, as her son grinned.

These people are monsters, I thought to myself.

I held my breath and angrily wiped my tears away as they both continued to laugh at me. I grabbed the remaining contents of my bag from the table and ran upstairs to my room. I felt hopeless, even though there was so much I wanted to say to Eliza, I knew that I couldn't. My mother taught me to respect my elders and that was something I couldn't waiver on.

I lied in bed and stared at the picture on my nightstand. It was a picture of me, my mom, and my dad on my 6th birthday. The same year she had died.

"I wish you were here, mom." I whispered, as I stared at the picture.

I couldn't find it in myself to look at my father. The man in that picture all those years ago is not the same man I know today. That father would never have left me for months at a time with people that despised me. He would never have worked so much or called so rarely that sometimes I would forget the sound of his voice. And the father I knew in that picture would have never married a woman like Eliza. A woman that used him for his money, and degraded his daughter for being black. But to his defense, he didn't know about that last part.