“How were your holidays?” Ms Cole asked me as I sat in my desk nervously. Why did we have to go through this stupid routine every time we got back to school?
The other students sitting in their desks around me suddenly became a pack of angry carnivores, waiting to pounce on whatever came out of my mouth. I could just say I had a great, or even an amazing time during the holidays, but why keep lying?
I could just remember the last day of school when I had gotten off the bus with a beaming smile on my face, only for it to be wiped off as soon as I got home. My parents had been having a go at each other. Why oh why did my parents have to be so different? My dad was just yelling at my mum, without listening to a word she was trying to tell him. The thing with my dad yelling is that he keeps on shouting the exact same thing again and again just to hammer it home. Yeah, like you could not hear him already.
Thankfully my sister was still at school so she would not have to hear the two idiots going off at each other. Me on the other hand, I was stuck there.
“God, Shut up!” I yelled at them both, slamming my bag onto the floor, “You’re like two babies.” With that I just ran upstairs to the safety of my room - and computer. For a while I could pretend. For a few moments I could forget.
But of course, peace never lasts.
“Lily, come eat,” my mum’s voice called from downstairs, a slight slur to her voice. I already knew what I would find there, and I was right. My mum had resorted to her poison. She had a glass of wine in one hand and the bottle - already half empty - in the other. Dread filled my mind as I thought of all the times I would have to go to the shops to buy her more bottles. How many times I would hand her the poison that was killing her.
A sickening routine stalked into each new day. A fight, a slammed door, a bottle. Another fight, the sound of our car driving away, another bottle. How many times did it have to go on before something finally cracked?
Going out with friends was an escape. I would try to plan things as much as I could, but although I seemed happy on the outside, my mind was always somewhere else – at home watching my parents row and my mum drink herself to sleep. I always dreaded the time when I would hug my friends goodbye and have to go home and face whatever awaited me. My friends hardly noticed how overly happy I tried to be, they did not think that much into it, I mean - why would they?
Don’t get me wrong, I love my parents more than anything, which is why I feared for their lives. My mum was not the only one who had bad habits, my dad smoked forty a day if not more. I was constantly worried about when something would finally happen to one of them. There were so many diseases that came with drinking and smoking. I would surf the net and basically scare myself silly, imagining all those things happening to my parents.
Most help websites suggested I talk to someone about my problems at home, even a friend, but how could I trust someone with a secret I had always tried my utter hardest to keep?
So I never told, I only thought. A new age Atlas, trying my utmost to withstand the weight of the sky, without breaking under the pressure of it.
“Lily?” My teacher asked, wondering why I hadn’t answered yet.
“My holidays were great, as usual,” I smiled, my mind exploding with what it contained. It was better this way.
Thanks for reading
Mia xx
