CinderAli

Chapter 2

“Stank.”, Brooke murmured.

“And this is our resident player Brett.”

“I’ve met him.” Luca said, with an amused look on his face.

“Yeah?”, Ali inquired.

“Yeah, he bumped into me earlier when he was walking backwards, talking to some girl after first period.” He explained.

“Oh, yeah! That was you! My bad, but she was hot so can you blame me?” Brett apologized, but still managed to defend himself.

“Well no, not really.” Luca said with a chuckle.

The whole table laughed, and that’s how it went on for the entire lunch period. Luca adjusted quickly and the group opened him with open arms. Ali was relieved for him, she would hate for him to be new and not know anyone, and there was no better welcoming committee than her friends.

               Ali got a ride home from her friends, and entered her house expecting it to be empty, but much to her surprise, Charles was home.

               “I thought you were working.”, Ali said, not allowing the irritation she felt be shown.

               “I was cancelled.” Charles said gruffly and brushed by her, not caring that she stumbled, bumping into the wall.

               “Oh.”, she said quietly.

               Ali then went to grab her books to study, she had an important test the next day, and she needed to prepare.

               After an hour of studying, she subconsciously heard a thudding sound, which caused her to stir a bit, but it was when she heard the sound of Charles’ shoes thudding on the hardwood floor of the living room is what snapped out of her studying reverie.

               “Did you see the dog poop on the carpet.” Charles growled.

She had, and she had cleaned it up, which made her wonder why he felt the need to ask.

“Yes I have.” Ali answered.

“Then why do I still smell it.” He said, getting angered.

“I’m not sure.” She replied, perplexed as to how he smelt a thing, but then again, she had a bit of a stuffy nose at the moment which could have been hindering her sense of smell.

“Don’t tell me that bull! It’s on your brother’s shoe! Clean it off, I want it spotless, then mop this room and the kitchen! There’s smears in there too!”He was angry, and she could see it, so she didn’t say a word and picked up the multi-surface cleaner to clean up the poop itself so that she wouldn’t be smearing it everywhere with the mop.

“You are so lazy, how are you just going to clean up one spot of the kitchen. It’s still going to be dirty when you’re done. Now stop being stupid and get the mop.” He ordered, disrespecting her thoroughly.

“I was just cleaning this so I didn’t smear it all over with the mop.”Ali attempted to defend herself, but it didn’t help her much because he still managed to reply, calling her a stupid lazy teenager who thinks she knows it all.

She continued cleaning, and Charles continued interrupting her to put his hurtful comments in, never letting up, causing the cleaning to drag on for over an hour.

He followed up with a lecture about how stupid, unconfident, and fat she is and how she needs to fix herself. She knew she didn’t have the most confidence all the time, but overall she was confident when the situation called for it. She knew for a fact that she wasn’t stupid so he could talk all day about that and she wouldn’t care. But the fat comment was to much.

Ali had always been insecure about her weight. She was heavy, and she knew it, but she didn’t really look like it. She took up sports to lose the weight and they helped a bit, but she still wasn’t as thin as she’d like to be. No matter what her physical appearance wasn’t something she cared for. She felt that her face wasn’t the ugliest, but she still felt that it was below average; she felt like no one could love someone as fat and ugly as her, but she didn’t care, if falling in love meant dealing with someone like Charles, she didn’t want love. Period.

She got out her little black book, where she wrote multiple letters to Charles. Letters that she never gave him. Letters that contained all the things that she wanted to say, but couldn’t, for her fear for her life was to great.

She wrote about how much she hated him, and how he treated her. How her father should have lived instead of a ridiculous excuse of a man like him existing. She wrote about how badly he treated her, and how she wished to leave but couldn’t, because her mother and brother needed her around.

She wrote and wrote, letting out her anger leaving only sadness behind, but in her eyes, she’d rather have sadness, than both anger and sadness tearing her apart.

That night, she cried herself to sleep; which wasn’t new to her. She tried to tell herself that Charles wasn’t worth her tears. That he meant nothing, and deserved nothing, expecially not her precious droplets of emotion. But as true as those words were, she couldn’t stop, that comment had hurt. So she eventually gave up, and gave into the tears, giving them free reign to cascade down her face, soaking her pillow; because at that point, after that afternoon; she didn’t care. She just needed the release that crying gave her.