Warped Minds

Chapter 4: Realize

Chapter Four: Realize

My mother is crying again and it's annoying me. She really needs help. "Why... Why are you... Leaving me? I... I raised you! Stupid g...girl how dare you disrespect me l...like this! How d...dare you! Go ...go go and leave your poor sick mother all alone because you don't want to move. Oh boo hoo. You are c...coming to America with me and that's f...final." I'm not going to help her. I can't save her. It's too late and my mind is made up. I'm staying here, I'll move in with Kellin until I have enough money saved up that I can get my own place. I'll use child support to go to college. By law they have to pay at least one third of my tuition each. I already have requested a court order for the emancipation. This is what is going to happen and I'm already feeling free. I'm already gone.
I walk upstairs, leaving my blubbering pitiful mother alone to cry to herself. My grandmother must have liked me because she left me some money in the will. It's enough to help Kellin pay the rent for and least a year or two. I have enough saved to buy a car and food and clothes and support myself. My mother has delayed her flight for another week so she can try and persuade me to go with her but I'm already packing because Kellin said I could move in on Sunday. I'm finally leaving.
My mother bangs on my door causing all my furniture to shake. I open the door a crack and see that she is holding a bottle of some sort of beer.
"Chrissy let's talk." She says this in a slur, her medication reacting with the alcohol. "Mother what is there to talk about? You don't have control over me and I'm staying." "But if you come *hiccup* with me you'd be H...happy!" I shake my head and open the door, taking a hold of her small arm.
"Come on let's go downstairs." She attempts to take another sip of her drink but I pull it out of her grasp and walk to the bathroom pouring the intoxicating beverage into the drain of the sink.
"Hey *hiccup* that was m...mine stupid!" I guide her shuffling feet down the stairs and into her room where she curls up on her bed.
"Won't you *hiccup* miss me?" I sigh and nod my head, telling only half the truth.
Back up in my room I begin packing again. Folding and shifting the clothes so they all fit in the small suitcase I bought at the Co-Op on my home from the park. My mother has been asleep for nearly two hours and I'm almost completely packed when I hear knocking on the door again.
"Mum go back to sleep" the knocking stops but is quickly replaced by a high pitched mock womans voice
"but chrissy dear I love you" Kellin begins to laugh and I open my door to let him in.
"You know, you do a really good impression of my mother" I state matter factly. He smiles and repeats in my mother's voice
"oh why thank you chrissy dear. Now let's skip off the the U.S Together so I can run away from my problems!" I fall back onto my bed laughing.
"How the heck did you even get in my house you creep" he scratches the back of his head and studies his feet.
"I might have maybe...possibly.... Maybe crawled in through your doggy door" he blushes a deep red and is even more interested in his feet and the carpet. I laugh even harder and get up to hug him. He picks me up and spins me in circles around my room. The ceiling whirls together with the walls and the carpet is flying around and the colors muddle together in my brain and I'm getting lost in the air and the wind and the oxygen that surrounds me and Kellin and everything and just the fact that I am so extremely, irrevocably, intoxicatingly free.
Kellin sets me down but the world is still spinning and the ground has turned into a snake that won't stop moving and squirming beneath me. Gravity is my enemy as it threatens to pull me under. He grabs my shoulders to steady me, turning serious. "Everything's all ready so you can come over tomorrow. I just came to check on how your mother is doing. Did you go to the courthouse at all?"
"Yeah I was just there. The papers should be through by next Wednesday and then I have to go to a hearing on Friday to tell them why I want an early emancipation." He pauses,
"Why do you want an early emancipation Chrissy?" This causes me to think. Am I doing it for myself, my mother, or my dad? Maybe even for Kellin? I don't know and I don't want to think so I practice what I'm going to say to the judge.
"I want to get an early emancipation so I can stay here in the U.K with my father and support myself." He smiles and looks at me with those sad eyes of his. Why is he sad? Why is anyone sad? Why can't we all just be happy?
"Ok, I just came over to see how you were doing so I have to go. Bye Chris I'll see you tomorrow. You can bring your stuff over around noon, just let yourself in." He handed me a small key that was attached to a chain that I could clip around my neck.
"Thanks Kel"
"no problem" he turns to leave but I stop him by placing my small plain hand on his shoulder.
"No, really. Thank you so much. For everything. For stopping the bullies and saving me and being here and staying with me no matter what even when it would have been so much easier to leave. I'm so horrible and you're still taking me in and protecting me and watching out for me and just thank you so much" I take a step forward and hug him goodbye and he wraps his arms around me again. We stand there for a moment, our bodies heating the cool fall breeze that intrudes through the open window.
"You can always save someone" and just like that, he's gone.