Young Writers Society

"Dang it Stephanie stop acting like he's coming back! He left us stranded here and you know it! It was all a lie. He doesn't love us and he never did!" I screamed at my younger sister from behind our locked bedroom door. Why couldn't she move on? six years had passed since our father left, and she still expected him to magically walk through the door.

"You don't know that! For all you know he could come back any minute!" She yelled back at me. "He cares, I just know he does," her voice softened. I could hear her crying through the closed door. I sat down and rested my back against it.

"I'm sorry Steph. You're probably right. It's going to be okay," I lied, trying my best to comfort her. I reminded myself that she was always his favorite. That he did love her, it was only me he didn't give a second thought to. That it wasn't her he lectured when he left my mother, it was me. She was so young when he left, barely seven years old. She never saw that other side of him. He always managed to hide his true nature from her. I was the one who had to listen to our parents arguing every night. Who was I to corrupt her memories of him? So I sat there, telling her what she wanted...what she needed to hear. So what if it wasn't true? "Of course he loves us, he might still return. You're right not to give up hope."

My life was a tangled web full of lies and deceit. When my mother was seventeen she got pregnant with me. She gave up her future to marry my dead-beat dad and start a family. Even though she told me otherwise, I knew I was just an accident, a mistake, that ended up costing her her life. For my fifth birthday, the woman my father was having an affair with told him that she was carrying my half-sister Stephanie. After she was born, the mother wanted nothing to do with her, and she disappeared leaving Steph with us. Despite the fact that Stephanie wasn't my mother's daughter, she still treated her with as much love as she did me. If she was hurt by my father's cheating, she never showed it. She acted as if her marriage was perfect. But I knew better than that. I heard the things they yelled at each other in the middle of the night.

Then that fateful day came when he left. He packed his bags, screaming at me how he wanted more than this shit . He yelled how he was an idiot to get involved with my mother, and that the only reason why she had me was to control him.

"Daddy please don't go!" I begged him. "Please, I need you, I'll be good I promise! If you cared you would stay!" I grabbed his hand, pulling him in vain in the direction of the house.

"You could never be good enough for me. You're just as worthless as she is!" He spat. I felt the weight of his words fall over me. He ripped his hand out of my grasp, and shoved a crinkled twenty dollar bill in my palm. "Give that to your sister," he spoke, as he threw his suitcase into the back of our car and drove off. I stared at the now vacant road for what seemed like hours before stumbling back into the house. When i reached my room, I heard my mother's muffled crying. I smoothed out the bill, and saw that there was a message written on the side of it. Sorry...hope this helps, love you. I smashed it with my fingers and shoved it into a box under my bed. I had never regretted that I had a sister until that moment. He loved her. He was sorry for abandoning her. But me. He wanted to leave me. I wasn't good enough...