PART I;(THE AWAKENING): A Day From Hell

The sun God must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed today. The weather wasn't hot, it was searing, burning everything within sight. I wiped my brows for the upteenth time, trudging slowly towards home and succor from the punishing heat. I was thirsty and weak, not only from the bag of coals disguised as a backpack I was logging around, but because the hotter the sun got, the more it sapped what little energy I had left. I had walked this route a thousand times to and from school but it had never seemed as endless as it did today. What a perfect end to a truly terrible day. No one was meaner than a highschool cheerleader, especially when said cheerleader decided that you wanted to steal her boyfriend because you were his partner in chemistry class and then said cheerleader and her group of meanies decide to warn you by dumping dishwater-complete with rotten fruits-over you right after gym class. Now in the blazing heat, I was humiliated, tired and stinky. The smell emanating from my body was enough to make me retch. I couldn't risk taking a shower in school because my uniform had gone missing-surprise, surprise- and all I had left was the ruined gym clothes. I didn't put it past Tamara and her friends not to steal my gym clothes and leave me butt naked in the girls bathroom. Hence, my two miles walk of shame, looking like a sewer monster. The surburbs I lived in was semi quiet but cars passed every now and then and children played outside their homes. Everyone I passed stopped what they were doing to stare at me as I walked by. I ducked my head down and prayed for the ground to open up and swallow me.

What seemed like endless hours later, my blue two story house came in to view. There was no car in the driveway. Father wasn't home-thankfully-but mother would be home. She was always home, except when she went to the supermarket once a week for groceries or to church on Sundays. I unlocked the door and emitted a sigh of relief as the air conditioner on full blast welcomed me into it's cooling presence. I trudged into the kitchen before stopping at the counter and rested my weary body against it.

"Honey, is that you? Ugh...what is that smell?" My mother made a strange hacking sound as she got a whiff of the smell I'd dragged in with me.

"I'm the smell mother." I replied dully. I let my bag fall from her shoulders carelessly. It gave a small smack as it fell splat on the counter.

"Oh dear. What happened? Did you roll around in the gutter?" Mum wondered, her eyes wide as saucers.

"No mum. Tamara and her friends gave me a dishwater shower." At least I thought it was dishwater. There was spaghetti and several rotten fruits in the water and it smelled awful. I really hoped it was dishwater and not something else.

"Oh dear. What happened? Didn't she see you before she threw it away?" That was my mother, bless her heart. She was already making excuses for Tamara's assault. I'd be angry at her for trying to defend Tamara if she hadn't been defending father for years and she suffered worse treatment at his hand.

"No mum. She thought that I liked Scott so she decided to teach me a lesson, you know, to understand how much she would make my life hell if I took her man." I muttered to the wall. It wasn't like the school's star defender would ever take an interest in me, but still.

Mother tutted from a few paces away, she still hadn't come any closer to me. "Well, did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Do anything to make her think you'd want to steal her man?" I glared at mother, upset beyond belief.

"Man? He's barely a boy." When I was seven years old, I became severely I'll. For a long time, my parents believed I wouldn't survive, but survive the strange illness I did. The downside of my year long battle with the sickness that had no name was that I was hopelessly behind in schoolwork. Now I was a ninteen year old just finishing high school. I was older by everyone with two years and those cheerleaders loved to taunt me with it. Calling me retarded and under unprintable names. God I couldn't wait to be done with high school. "I didn't... I don't even like him! He's just a brainless jock. He has never spoken  one word to me, ever! I only asked him about our project and she poured dirty water on me. I don't even know where they got it from. It has fruit and food and paper and it smells weird mother! You think I deserve this? What could I have ever done to deserve this? Look at me mother. I'm fat, I'm ugly. I might as well be invisible for the attention anyone pays me in that school. Do you think a popular kid would be interested in dating me?"

She stood nonplused as I unloaded on her.

"Have you had lunch dear?" She questioned with a blank look.

Whether to scream or cry, I honestly couldn't decide which I wanted to do. No real emotions for mother, or anything that could hurt her perfectly happy home, even if that happy home was nothing but a pack of lies. I turned from her and ran to my room. I hated this house. I hated the stupid mean bitches that ruled the school. Damn it, I was legally an adult, why was I still staying here? 'I should pack my things into a rucksack and run away, for good.' I thought viciously as I rid myself of the disgusting mess that was my gym clothes and showered with hot, scalding water. Even though I'd promised myself, I still wept bitterly in the shower. Why would she do this to me? I'd done nothing to Tamara and her friends. I stayed out of their way and she had never had cause to turn her sights on me. 

When I'd run out of tears and the shower was turning my skin into that of a lobster, I wobbled out of the cubicle into my room. I wore my comfy oversized sweatshirt and matching trousers and drew my curtains closed before diving into my narrow bed. Covering myself with the duvet and some of my other clothes, I burrowed deeper into the bed as far as I could.