Sober

Chapter One

              "Fuck," I mumbled, my pale face only two inches away from my phone screen. I'd been on twitter, doing what I always do; aimlessly scrolling until every once in a while I'd find a tweet and retweet it so my followers didn't think I had died. I felt as if my mind was mostly empty; never had I composed my own tweets. I'd just get really nervous about how people would respond to them and quickly delete them.

    My wifi had chosen to go out, so I tossed my phone onto my bed and started doing homework. I let out a sigh and dragged my stuffed book bag to my desk.

         I slowly pulled a thick earth science book out of the bag and began to read.
       Minerals are crystalline solids. That means that they have an orderly arrangement of atoms.

        I sighed and decided to give minimal effort into completing my homework. I didn't really care anyways. I never asked to be born then thrown into 18 years of stress and exhaustion. I wished going to school could be my own choice because I'd rather not know that two added to two equals four and be relaxed instead of being stressed most of the time.

       Next, I started jotting down answers for math. I had a bad taste in my mouth with this certain subject. I didn't care about the equation Pythagoras created nor did I want to use it in the real world.

      After finishing all of my work, I ran to my bathroom with a towel to shower. I blasted cold water out of the shower head and started to scrub my body. Something about the cols water was appealing to me; I enjoyed the shiver it sent up my spine and the fact that when I stepped out of the shower I wouldn't immediately be cold.

     I delayed getting changed a few moments so I could see if the wifi had started to work again. It still didn't. I got changed quickly and decided to see if any books I had were worth reading. My father never had bothered to buy me anything besides clothes, so the only books I had owned were either my mother's or purchased for me when I was about ten years old.

       As I was looking through the books in my bookshelf, I heard my door slowly open. The hinges were old and had made an awful creaking noise. "Sydney?" It was my father. A lump had managed to form in my throat. I wanted to scream at him, kick him, and hurt him, but I couldn't. I was too weak. Even at his calmest moments I found myself resenting him. "Yes?" I barely managed to croak out the simple word.

      "Would you like to join me for dinner?"

        I stared at the digital clock that sat on my desk with glowing green numbers that would flash blue if you had set an alarm. The clock read 9:57 p.m. and I had known it was too late for my father to eat dinner.

        I turned to face him and noticed he was hiding half of his chubby torso behind the door. "N-no thank you," I stuttered, the lump in my throat making it harder to speak. My father nodded and just as he turned to leave, he threw a beer bottle at me.

      Luckily, I moved fast enough to avoid it and the glass smashed against the wall and tiny shards bounced off of it. Tears started forming in my eyes and I carefully tip toed to my bed. I cuddled up under the blanket and started to sob. I had been breathing in short, shallow breaths and holding my pillow to my mouth so my father wouldn't hear me and come into my room to try and make me cry even more.

      He had a habit of doing that; seeing me upset just triggered my father and made him want to upset me even more. Once my eyes were dry, I curled up into a ball under my blanket and tried to sleep. I couldn't go on like this. Soon, I hope, my father will manage to lodge a glass shard deep in my head, or maybe he'll go and get some help again and I can go back to my grand mother's.

      I knew neither scenario would happen, though. He usually never aimed for my head unless he drank too much, and he was so full of himself he always said everything was my fault.

       Maybe it was. Maybe it was my fault Mom got in a car accident. She might have been driving to pick me up from a baby sitter. Maybe it was my fault my father started drinking. I might had caused him stress. Everything seemed to be my fault to both him and I.

       But after spending so much time with someone who is short of more than a few brain cells, I guess you start to think like them. I closed my eyes and finally was able to drift into a heavy sleep.