S.A.U. (Chapter Eleven)

Don't you dare cry for them Nina, I scolded myself.

It wasn't drive with Paulina that made me want to fling open the car door and dive head first into the heavy traffic all around us. It was the fact that my own father betrayed me. The one person that I thought of as a friend and in some ways the older brother I never had. The one person, along with Bryan, who I confided my thoughts and feelings to as well as bore my secrets and shed my tears in front of. I laid my heart out and he just threw it down on the ground and stomped on it. It was like a hard slap in the face or a good kick in the stomach.

I reached up and felt around my face. It was swollen and huge in some parts, tender and sore in others. I must've looked horrible, like a boxer in a ring. All I needed now was two missing front teeth. I sighed and turned my gaze to the starry night sky above my head. Maybe it was a good thing that I was leaving L.A. behind and going to Washington. It wasn't like I had any friends to miss and my family made it clear that I wasn't wanted at home. Maybe I would end up liking Washington better the California and I'd be able to make at least one genuine friend that would see me as a decent human being even though I knew I wasn't. Maybe I would end up with a boyfriend. Maybe I would end up living a good life.

I glanced over at Paulina, who seemed to be lost in her own train of thought as well. Ugh. Who was I kidding? Nobody on the face of the earth liked me. Just seeing how this crazy bat was yelling at me at home only showed how things would only get worse for me once we were in Washington. I shuddered and wrapped my arms around myself. I should've seen this coming. Mom always had something up her sleeve. She was nothing more than a conniving snake in my eyes. Sure, I would always feel bad for making her go through the hell that I had put her, along with everyone else, though but at the same time, it wasn't like I hadn't gone through hell either.

I never understood what it was about me that made mom treat me like crap when I was a kid. I always thought I was doing something wrong when she put me down by calling me names, compared me to other 'normal' girls, and ignored me whenever I was around. I just assumed that I had done something bad and that treatment was her way of punishing me. But looking back at it now, I see that I hadn't done anything to deserve it. Or anything that I could remember. I never lied, stole, cheated, or did anything like that. I tried to be the best I could be for everybody by staying out of trouble or avoiding problems.

I was never one to tattle on anybody so when everyone in school picked on me, I decided that it was better not to say anything to anybody. When I was upset about something and tried to go to my mother for help, she would just get mad and shove me aside, claiming that I was just 'wasting her time'. In all honesty, I felt that mom never bothered to like me. She always hated me and wished that I would just go and disappear somewhere and never come back. However, her behavior with the triplets was a complete one-eighty. She loved them. She never treated them like she treated me.

I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the window.

Well now she had her wish. I was gone and out of the house so she could finally live the life she always wanted with those bratty monsters. Screw them too. All they ever did for me was get me in trouble on purpose. And as for dad…I shook my head to clear it of my thoughts. Screw him as well.

I wouldn't miss anyone there anyway. Well, except for Bryan of course. Whether for the good or for the bad, he had always seen me as a person with thoughts and feelings at one point before out fallout. Sure, he ended up being my worst enemy and my biggest bully, but at the end of the day, I couldn't help but feel pleased that I at least got to know what it was like to have one real friend. Even if things between us didn't last no thanks to my selfish actions. Even if I felt like I could never bring myself to fully trust him like I use to when we got back together as friends.

If we got back together as friends. I missed our good times: the laughs, the tears, the breakups, and the makeups. At the time, I felt like we were on a roller coaster as we went through the ups and downs of our friendship together. Some days we fought and swore never to talk to each other again, then we'd kiss and makeup and become the inseparable pair everybody knew we were. I smiled at little as a wave of vivid memories flooded through my brain, each image clearer and colorful then the next. Like the time when Mitch Russell from kindergarten got everybody to chase me around at recess with scissors to try and 'make me beautiful' by cutting off my hair. Or the time in second grade when Lacey Bennett and her followers locked me in the bathroom during lunch time. Even the time in seventh grade when Sasha Kennedy and her friends cornered me behind the school and beat me up.

All those times, I remember Bryan appearing out of nowhere to save the day. I wasn't sure what he did or how he did it, but no one ever messed with me again. At least not when he was around. So how peculiar was it that he would turn around and become the very thing that he used to protect me from. Maybe he just got tired of having to look after me. Maybe he just got tired of being shackled to me and decided that it was best if he just broke away and lived a life of his own without me in it? I shook my head glumly and sighed again.

How could I blame him? I was being selfish to burden him with my issues anyways. What did it even matter anymore? These memories were from the past not the present and Bryan wouldn't miss me anyway. Not when he had his jockey friends at his side and Claire Romano.

I frowned in displeasure when her face flashed through my mind.

What the hell did he even see in her anyway? She wasn't even that pretty. She was just a ginger with a big chest. The girl didn't even have a butt or curves. I bet she wasn't even that good in bed. My cheeks grew warm at the thought of Bryan in bed with a skank like that. He was too good for her anyways. Why would he want to get in bed with a girl who needed to flash her tits for some attention? What kind of girl that was worth it craved attention from other men when she had a perfectly good boyfriend right at her side?

He didn't deserve that. He could do so much better then that ugly, anorexic, Daisy Duke-looking slut. Ugh. I couldn't stand that dumb ginger.

"Have you eaten?" Paulina asked, breaking the tense silence of the car and pulling me out of my thoughts.

I turned my head slowly to glare at her. "Not hungry."

"That's one of the reasons why your mother chose to send you to me," she replied coldly. "That little attitude of yours. One week with me and you'll come back home more disciplined and obedient then a military soldier."

I rolled my eyes at her. I did not have an attitude. Excuse me for being ticked off that my own parents shipped me off to Washington to live with this ugly witch of a grandmother that I didn't even know in a place where I'd never been to. Who was she to talk to me the way she did? At the end of the day, she was still a stranger to me and just because we shared blood didn't mean she knew me at all.

"We'll see," I retorted without looking at her.

"Yes, we will," she replied unperturbedly. "You'll regret ever treating your loved ones the way you do, Nina Lynn. I can promise you that."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I said hotly and shot her an ominous glare. "Shut up and drive. Plus, don't call me Nina Lynn. You're not anybody to do that."

"I'm your grandmother," she hissed and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. "Remember it."

"No, you're a stranger that I really don't give a damn about," I corrected with a smug smirk.

"I will not tolerate the use of that language around me," Paulina growled. "So I suggest that you knock it off if you don't want to receive the consequences."

"And I suggest that you go rot somewhere and watch you're back. I'm not simply going to back down because you think you're so scary!" I barked.

Paulina wrinkled her nose in disgust. I rolled my eyes and turned back to the window before she could say anything else. Why did I have to go live with her of all people? Someone that I didn't even know but somehow managed to tick the hell out of me in mere seconds! Even her presence was annoying and all that makeup wasn't helping in making her look less ugly. I bet her outside appearance was a reflection of her hideous inside. The woman was soulless. Just like her son.

Don't even go there Nina, I thought and blinked back my tears of frustration.

I couldn't break down now. I had bigger problems to worry about then my family. Like starting my life over in the rainy state of Washington with this witch.

She paused once and tapped her foot impatiently as I struggled to pull my luggage out from the back of her stupid SUV. The least she could've done was help me. She could've carried my backpack while I carried my two overstuffed duffel bags. But no. Instead, she just glared at me the way mom did when I wasted her time. Like someone who had better things to do then to be with me. I gritted my teeth and wrapped my fingers around the straps of my bags.

The person who was supposed to be ticked off here was me. No one told me that I was going to take a long flight to another state with the Wicked Witch of the West. No one told me that my own father was going to turn around and stab me in the back the way he did. No one told me that I was going to run into the guy that tried to rape me twice. No one told me that my life was going to be like living in the deepest, darkness, more fiery pits of hell when I was born fifteen years ago. I didn't ask for all this in the first place anyway.

I blinked a few times to dry my eyes before the tears to fall down my did I cry so much lately? It wasn't like me to do so no matter how bad things out at home or at school.

I took a deep breath. Pull it together Nina. I was stronger then this. I had to be. I didn't have anybody that I could hide behind like Bryan or cry to like that treacherous man I use to call my father. I was on my own and I only had myself to depend on for comfort and support. No one else. I could do this. I could make it through this on my own.

Somehow those words only made me feel more depressed then happy. I took another deep breath through my mouth.

"Are you done daydreaming or can we finally get a move on?" Paulina snapped and glanced at her Rolex watch again.

"I'm coming!" I hissed and shoved my way past her and further into the crowded airport. "Sheesh."

I wove my way hastily through the throng of California residents, bumping them with my bags and grumbling artificial apologies as I went. As fast as I tried to move to lose the wicked witch in the crowd, she still managed to keep up with me in those black leather pumps. I snorted out loud and rolled my eyes. She thought she was so high and mighty just because she has some fancy clothes on didn't she? She wasn't even that good-looking. What a stupid, ugly person. The men that stopped short and turned to gawk at her as she passed were just as stupid too.

The power of makeup people! Open your eyes and take a good look. "Nina Lynn. Here."

She stopped behind a small brunette with a sobbing child clinging to her leg and two super-stuffed backpacks at her feet. I scowled at her and practically dropped my bags on the floor when I got in line next to her.

"Stop calling me that!" I said harshly. "How many times do I have to say it?"

A few people in line turned to stare at me like I was crazy or something. I sucked in my breath and rolled my eyes.

"What?" I shouted, earning myself a glare from Paulina along with more irritated frowns from other people in line.

"Poor insolent child," she muttered and turned to face the front of the line.

I sighed and massaged the palms of my sore hands. I could forget about making a good first impression on my…my grandmother. I shivered at the thought of being related to this creature from hell. As far as I knew in the short time that I'd spent with her, I had to say that she was the most annoying person I'd ever run into. She was like mom only ten times, no one hundred times, more irritating and I hadn't even known her for a whole entire day yet. I wouldn't have been surprised if she and mom were blood related. But her and dad—

I pushed the thought of him back into the corner of my mind. He wasn't my father anymore. So I had to stop thinking about them if I didn't want to break down and sob like a baby.

He wasn't worth crying over anyway. He and the rest of my family turned their backs on me so I had the right to do the same.

The line finally moved and we managed to reach a tall redhead with a handful of freckles dusted over her ivory skin and glasses that were too big for her face. She looked me over up and down before turning her stare to Paulina. I rolled my eyes at the way she stared at her like she was God in the flesh or something. People could not be this pathetic, could they? Why I the only one who had her head on straight in this whole entire building? Paulina wasn't even that gorgeous.

Ugh. People could be so blind sometimes.

"Tickets and IDs please," the woman demanded, looking rather bored.

I patted the pockets of my shirt and jeans and frowned. I never received a ticket and my wallet was packed with the rest of my things. How was I—

"Here they are," Paulina said and handed over two sets of plane tickets along with both of our IDs.

The woman looked them over and then handed them back to us. "Enjoy the flight," she said and smiled at Paulina.

"Thank you," she replied and half-dragged me into a longer line of impatient-looking people. "Have a nice night."

"I have legs to walk," I hissed and wrenched my arm out of her tight grip. "Sheesh."

"Be quiet," Paulina ordered and turned to face the front of the line.

Time in the airport passed by in a blur of voices, insults, and seemingly endless lines; before we knew it, we were sitting next to each other on the plane at thirty thousand feet in the air headed to our next destination. A town called Chagrin Heights.

Buried deep in the Olympic Western-most Peninsula and the Cascades of Washington State, a town named Chagrin Heights resided within its boundaries. The town was made up of two thousand five-hundred people with a mixture of farmlands, mountains, islands, and the big cities not too far away. It was in this town, this gloomy, forgotten town where I would be forced to start my life over in a private school for the wealthy where Paulina worked as the headmistress.

That wasn't even the worst part yet. Not only would I have to attend that prison of a school in a school uniform, but I also had to work my fingers to the bone as the 'dorm mother' for the school's boys' soccer team. Did I look like a nanny to her? Why did I have to babysit a bunch of sweaty, spoiled, teenage boys anyway? It was bad enough being forced to live with this awful, cold-blooded witch. Only God knew how things were going to turn out for me there.

I suddenly felt anxious and jittery all over.

Would I fit in and make my first friend? Or would I be there freak of the school here too? Were the boys on the soccer team nice? Or were they mean little pricks with sticks shoved up their butts?

I fell asleep on the plane with my thoughts.