A/N---
Right. The re-write of the first chapter is now up. Hopefully I will get enough reads or such and votes hopefully to tell me which you people like better. Please vote.
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I’ve always been told, when telling a story, the beginning is usually a good place to start. It’s hard to say when that really was though. It could have been the day I moved, the day I met that boy, the day he left me on the side of the road. Maybe it was the day I first spoke to her, or the day I lost her. The day we kissed for the first time. I remember it all, perhaps not every single detail, but everything that led up to the end. To the beginning of the end.
I think I know where to start.
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As corny as it sounds, it really was just like any other day. The same wake up by radio, the same dressing of my younger brothers, the same “be safe” from Mum. There were still the same cracks in the footpath, the same roads to cross. It wasn’t the start of the year, it wasn’t my first day, I hadn’t just moved to a new town. That had gone down a few months before. There was nothing about the day that made it stand out, made me suspect anything new would happen. Nothing.
It was your typical, boring school morning. When I look back on it now, it strikes me funny how I never realised just how much my life would change. How my perception of life would change. I was so young and ignorant back then, a fourteen year old girl playing grown up. A game I would quickly and easily lose.
There was a girl on the school grounds, that wasn’t unusual for a public school, there were more girls with her but this wasn’t any-more strange than the first fact. These girls were surrounding one other, and if the first person had been anyone else, this would have been unusual. But the first girl was Charlie.
I should probably explain a little bit about her. Charlie was a bully. Or, more accurately, she acted like one. There weren’t many people in the school that liked her as far as I knew, and perhaps that was what made her so bitter. I didn’t know then, and mostly it still remains a mystery to me now. I had only spoken to Charlie on a couple of occasions before that day, a passing word here, a passed on message there. We’d never had anything to do with each other really. That changed.
I had been going to follow the unspoken rule the rest of the students had sub-consciously set, and ignore it when the taunts reached my ear and I had known I couldn’t simply walk by. They were teasing the girl for her orientation, for who she loved. Even then, I was big enough to stand up for what I believed in, I was strong enough to hold my own against the homophobic. There was something about Charlie that made you want to leave her alone, but I couldn’t do that.
Instead of walking by and leaving it be, I made my way to the group.
‘Hey, leave her alone.’ I was standing a few metres off, so had to yell to be heard over their own taunts and teases. The words stopped flowing in a shocked mute “huh?”
‘What?’ Typically, Charlie was the first to recover from my unexpected interruption. Her eyes were set in a glare, her dyed black hair framing her face in such a way to cast shadows and make her look more like a thirty year old villain than a fourteen year old bully.
The effect caused a block in my throat I had to swallow to speak around, my confidence fleeing. ‘I said… I… Just leave her alone.’ I was the knight in grey, dented armour, facing the feared, fire breathing dragon who’d defeated the bravest of knights. In my head, I was screwed.
‘Yeah? Whatcha gonna do ‘bout it huh? Slut?’
That hurt. From day one that had been most people’s impression of me, I don’t know why, or how, but that was it.
My eyes narrowed and my hands became fists. ‘Watch it Plastic, just leave her alone. I don’t want to hurt you.’ Anger was my confidence. My temper will one day be my down fall.
I tensed as she stepped forward; the threat in her eyes becoming increasingly clearer, anyone with more sense would have run. I never had much sense once I got going.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You heard me.’
Her mouth tightened, squeezing into a cats bottom before her perfectly manicured nails were swinging towards my face. I didn’t quite manage to dodge the hit in time and a nail caught my lip, splitting it.
That was her first mistake.
I scowled and narrowed my eyes further, my vision blurred. I could feel my arm swinging, and heard rather than felt it slam into her stomach, my other hand grabbing her talons as they rose to swipe me a second time.
She slumped and struggled for air, I released her arm and went to walk around her before she gasped, ‘Is… Is that all?’ and pulled me to a stop, one clawed hand scratching my arm in a flimsy grip, the other once again flying through the air towards my face, ‘Slut.’
And that was her second mistake.
I spun, breaking her grip on my arm easily and cracked my fingers on her nose. I left her kneeling on the grass, crying with blood trickling over her lips as she sputtered. Tears wetting her cheeks. The guilt did come later, but at that moment, I was too busy with the satisfaction of putting her in her place to worry about remorse. A deep breath calmed my temper slightly, and another significantly, until I was level-headed enough to look to the girl, I didn’t know her name.
Charlie’s clique had left, as soon as they saw their ‘leader’ go down. I had never understood why those four girls hung around her, I still don’t, but that’s unimportant.
What was important was the look the girl gave me when I walked up to her, wanting to know if she was okay. It was a look of complete admiration, maybe a little bit of awe. At the time I only recognised it as relief, or her being grateful. As a kid I wasn’t very good at reading expressions.
She grinned. ‘Hey, wow, thanks. Um, thanks a lot.’ A hand was brushing a stray lock out of her face and behind her ear.
I simply shrugged, crossed my arms and grunted. Feeling just a little bit awkward, I’d only ever played hero for my brothers and they’d never really thanked me. ‘Yeah. You okay?’
‘I’m fine, well, th-thanks to you I mean. That was really cool of you.’
‘I didn’t mean to hit her. Not really.’ I hadn’t. ‘But she called me a slut and scratched me.’ I lifted a shoulder, as if that said it all, making out like I hadn’t done it for her.
‘I’m, Jamie.’ She held out a hand for me to shake, and ordinarily I would have taken it. But for some reason, that day I ignored it and glanced back to Charlie who was by then clambering to her feet.
I mumbled something about leaving before Charlie finished staggering, and turned my back to her, ignoring the thankyou she called to my back. Instead of replying, I made my way to my locker, knowing ahead of time that by the afternoon there’d be a dent in the metal door. I preferred a damaged locker and a detention though, to a smashed face and a court case.
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‘How was school?’ Mum was home when I got back from school, there was sweat tickling the back of my neck from running almost the whole way, chasing my younger brothers. The twins always loved to rile me up, and on days like that one, it certainly worked in getting my mind off things. Even now it’s a working tactic.
‘I got two detentions.’ My announcement was met with a smashing sound, recognisably that of porcelain. I trotted into the kitchen, dropping my bag by the door. Mum was standing in front of the sink, tea-towel in hand and staring down at her bare feet, surrounded by white shards of what looked like the remains of one of our few dinner plates. She frowned at her naked toes, undoubtedly hating the vulnerability that came with being unable to move.
I pitied her, and pulled the brush and shovel from between the fridge and the cupboard. ‘I got it Mum.’
‘Two detentions?’
I had to roll my eyes at her response as I swept up the plate around her feet. The question sounded more like a statement and I knew it would take her a minute or two to process.
‘Why?’
‘I punched a chick then broke my locker.’ The fist I’d hit my locker with was still a little red, the knuckles sore, but the locker had definitely fared worse. It was a little bent on the hinges and wouldn’t close properly anymore with-out hitting it in so the lock would go on.
Mum sighed, ‘Why?’ She knew I got my temper from her. She was just a little better at bottling things up than me.
‘She was being a bully. Hating on this girl for being gay.’ I stood up, tipping the broken plate into the bin, watching with fascination the white shards clink as the flashed in the flat light, twisting and turning as the dropped gracelessly into the rubbish.
Mum tapped the floor with her big toe and bent down to massage her knee, happy about being able to move again apparently. ‘That’s not all is it?’ She stood up straight and ran a hand through her hair, she knew me too well.
‘The chick called me a slut.’
Mum didn’t answer me, only shut her eyes and breathed out slowly. She looked like she was trying to ignore this titbit, and I took it to be the end of it. She turned back to the dishes with a look of, not quite anger, but something I still can’t figure out to this day. It may have been something akin to annoyance or frustration. Whatever it was, it wasn’t an expression I liked seeing on her. I left the kitchen then, and headed for my room.
I can remember the layout of that room, better than the room I’d had before that, before we’d moved to that town, even though I spent less time in it. I remember how I had my own bathroom, how my double bed took up most of the room, and how I’d always had trouble with the cupboard door hitting the bed when I opened it. I haven’t had a bathroom to myself since I moved out of home, but I don’t miss it.
I fell back on my bed, kicking my door shut when I landed and slipped my shoes off. I was exhausted, purely exhausted. I lifted an arm up and sniffed my armpit, my nose instantly crinkling as I registered my own stink.
I debated on showering, but decided against it. I couldn’t be bothered gathering up clothes to take to the main bathroom, and the last few times I’d used my own shower, I’d suffered panic attacks. I wasn’t keen on risking another.
The girl from that morning snuck into my thoughts. I couldn’t picture her in my mind, the memory of her face had been deleted along with all the other faces I’d seen. Unless I made a real effort and was forced to remember, I wouldn’t. What I did know, was that she’d had fairly average looks, she wasn’t really pretty, but she wasn’t bad looking either. I could remember her hair though, it’d been up in a loose pony tail, a dark brown with natural blonde highlights. I frowned at the cream ceiling, wondering why she was in my thoughts. I normally would have been thinking about… actually, I’ve no idea what I would have normally thought about. Probably not homework, I never did any anyway.
A knock broke through my thoughts, and a jingle of keys could be heard through my bedroom door. I knew it was Mum, the twins never knocked.
‘Sweetie, I don’t have time to cook dinner,’ Not much of a surprise really, she never did. ‘But there’s left over pizza in the fridge and noodles in the cupboard if you think the pizza’s off. I’ve got to head off now Hun, I can’t afford to lose this job.’
I sat up feeling dejected, she almost always had to work through the night, and her boss was always threatening to fire her. To be honest, a lot of the time I had wished he would hurry up and do it already. I hated that place and I hated him.
‘Okay, Mum, I’ll be right there.’
She wanted a hug before she left; it was like a tradition for us. I have to admit, even now I hate when she leaves me without her hug, I feel empty when she does. I’ve always felt that way.
I stood up and opened my door, walking right into Mum’s open arms. I was fourteen but felt three, grasping Mum’s jacket and pushing my face into her side. Trying to hold back tears of frustration at the thought of Mum being gone another night. My brothers had watched some movie at school that day. I knew they were going to have nightmares, were going to wake me up, sleep with me, not Mum. Because Mum wasn’t there.
I had hated Mum once for leaving nearly every night for work, but then I found reason and realised it wasn’t Mums fault. It was her bosses. I didn’t hate Mum, I hated him. I hated him for taking my mum away.
Mum was gone.
I sat on my bed again, listening through the thin walls to my brothers chatting to each other, and making sound effects. The explosion and squealing sounds they were making led me to believe they were playing with their matchbox cars.
I was blinking back tears. I wanted Mummy. I remember still when I was little, only four years old, before the boys were born, before she moved out of Grammy and Julie’s house. She was always home, and always on the computer.
‘Mummy’s at school,’ She’d say to me and pull me onto her lap, ‘But you know what? Mummy needs a break from school.’ Then she’d play with me. She’d help me dress up in Grammy’s clothes, and watch me parade around in her high heels. She’d laugh when I got into something harmless that I shouldn’t have then copped the punishment for me. As a four year old, I never realised just how lucky I was to have a Mummy like that. Carefree and loving, forgiving but still firm when she needed to be. That was before the twins. That was ten years ago.
I missed Mummy.
Mum worked as a waitress at the only strip club in town, The Leaver Beaver. I didn’t understand the name, and don’t care to try now, but even then, I knew she hated working there, and that it wasn’t the ideal workplace. Especially since Mum had her fear of men. It was only mild, but that didn’t override the fact that it was there.
She complained about her work quite often, not as much as she would have liked to, and never when the boys could hear. She wouldn’t let me hear the worst parts about working there, and I never saw her uniform around the house regardless that I’d already seen it a number of times. Something about wanting me to retain my innocence or something. It was already gone by that point.
That’s something else I remember, albeit fuzzily. I remember being in this room, the walls were dirty, and I was scared. There was a bad man standing over Mummy and he was angry. Mummy was crying and trying to get away from him but he didn’t care. The bad man didn’t care. He hurt Mummy and she was screaming. Mummy was screaming and I was crying. I can remember Mummy’s hand on his arm when he turned around. When he looked at me. Then he touched me. He touched me and it hurt and I screamed. My screams mixed with Mummy’s screams and it hurt. It hurt and he hurt Mummy and he hurt me. He was a bad man. The police found us but we couldn’t walk when they did. Mummy couldn’t walk and I couldn’t walk because it hurt. The bad man doesn’t know my brothers’ are his sons. My brothers’ don’t know the bad man is their dad. I never wanted them to find out.
Mum had won the court case and he was thrown in jail. It had taken Mum years to trust men again, her boyfriend at the time cheated on her and left because she couldn’t be with him physically. Which was a bit of a dick move really, I mean seriously, just because she was too scared of sleeping with him? Guh. Arsehole.
I’d gotten over my trusting issues a little faster, slightly due to being a naturally trusting person, mostly due to being so young. Unfortunately, and that’s a massive unfortunately, that wasn’t the last time a man took me against my will. When I was twelve, I was walking home from the corner store, a carton of milk in one hand, rainbow ice-cream in the other. It was next to a school that it happened. I was pulled behind a large oak, and his hand was sufficient enough to shut off my screams.
To this day I hold a nervousness in my breast around guys, I’m not afraid of them by any means, I’ve had enough good male influences in my life to assure me that most men are nice. That most are worthy of my trust. It just takes longer for a guy to earn my trust and friendship than even the bitchiest of women.
A solid thump against my door, a shh and a giggle. The twins. I smiled, glad for the distraction from my thoughts and slid beneath the covers on my bed. Hiding myself just in time for the hinges on my door to chatter, signalling the boys’ entry.
‘Shush.’ A hushed demand and my bed dipped.
I could hear them shuffling on my mattress and doona, could feel the blanket shifting over top of me. They were both on the bed, one on either side of me. I counted it down. One… two…
‘RAAH.’ I burst up, the doona went flying and my arms flung around my brothers, pulling them into me. Putting them both in a head lock they couldn’t get out of. ‘Gotcha ya little rascals.’
They squealed and laughed, I let them go, chuckling happily. My former dark mood was successfully dashed by the two bright lights in my life. My brothers. They were identical, the same hazel eyes, the same button nose, the same elephant ears sticking out the side of their heads. They even shared the same baby cheeks.
‘You guys hungry?’ I checked the digital alarm beside my bed and realised it was almost seven, they’d be crazy if they weren’t hungry by now.
‘YEAH. What’s for dinner? Huh? What’s for dinner Sis?’ They shouted it simultaneously, as though they’d rehearsed it.
‘Pizza, how does that sound?’ I grinned to them, clambering off my bed.
‘Sunds amsome Cary.’ That was Rafael, he should have been going to speech therapy but we couldn’t afford it.
‘Awesome, pizza. We love pizza.’ Tonno jumped up and down on my bed, clapping his hands like an excited little school girl. The only thought in my mind to that was; if he doesn’t turn out gay, then I know who Paris Hilton is.
Actually I still don’t know who she is. A singer? Actor? Somebody famous.
‘Well? You guys know what to do.’
They both scrambled onto the floor, standing as straight as they could and puffing their little chests out. ‘Ma’am yes Ma’am.’
‘Well what are you waiting for soldiers? March.’ I commanded in my most regal voice, using what I had believed to be the most accurate hand gestures for an army commander.
‘Ma’am yes Ma’am.’ They chanted together before marching on the spot, then out of my room.
They were on a very specific mission involving pizza, and their tiny little stomachs.
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(Is this one, or the original first chapter better?)
EDIT---
I just realised the chapters are labelled incorrectly...