“Holy shit, she’s alive.” Lucas grinned from the new leather couch in the living room. Due to the stash of energy drinks I hadn’t seen anyone other than Damien in two days. He was the one who had set up the large furniture in my room that was too big for me to move around on my own.
“Shove it,” I hissed as I headed past him and into the kitchen. My mom was standing in front of the silver electric stove with a large spoon in her hand. On top of one of the electric coils was a simmering pot of thick brown liquid. Spices mixed in the air, making my mouth water and my stomach ache with hunger.
“What’s for dinner?” I asked my mother as I grabbed a can of Monster from the large silver fridge that it had been moved to.
“Chili,” she answered simply. I could hear the smile in her voice, she was happy that I had come out of my room. “It’s almost ready, so if you want you can go hang out in the living room with Lucas.”
I popped open the can while walking back into the living room and fell into one of the large leather chairs in the living room. Lucas had all of his attention focused on the large television that almost took up the entire wall ahead of us. The show was some dating reality shit that seemed to be rather amusing according to the laughs coming from Lucas’s mouth. Both the show and the laughter were slowly driving me crazy and I was just about to head back to my room when I heard my mother call to the whole family that dinner was ready. Everyone sat themselves around the round wooden table my mother had bought.
“I’ve signed the two of you up for school.” Damien said to Lucas and me. He pushed two small packets towards us before he continued talking. “The first day is two weeks from now but you have to be in your dormitories the day before.” I grabbed the packet closest to me and opened it up. The first page was a picture of a large grey stone building, large trees with bright red, orange, and yellow leaves surrounded the sides but left the front empty. A lush green lawn spread in front of the building while a cobblestone drive cut through it and curved by the front door. Sierra Nevada school for the gifted was typed in an elegant font across the page. The next few pages were maps of individual buildings along with a two page list of all the classes the school offered. The very last page was the information on how and what was needed to get into the school. It listed everything quite clearly: a 3.5 GPA and $15,000 worth of tuition and fees. I knew Damien and my mother had the money, it was evident by the new house and all of the new things inside of it. But my grades had fallen since I had started drinking and doing drugs. I had managed to scrap passing grades in all of my classes for two years but my GPA had gone from a 3.7 to a 2.8.
“How the hell did I get in?” I asked as I closed the packet and placed it in front of my bowl of chili.
“They accepted a donation in the stead of your low grade point average.” Damien answered, taking a mouthful of chili after he talked.
“I’ll take you to get new clothes and if you want we can get your hair done too.” My mother said quickly after, as if spending money would make me feel better about having to go to school or even about them having to spend money to get me in that school.
“Why couldn’t I go to a public school?”
“The closest public school is miles away and there’s no way to get you there. Besides, after the last experience dealing with a public school we felt it would be safer if you went to a school that’s more exclusive.” Damien smiled and went back to eating.
I had a feeling that Damien and my mother would never come right out and talk about the rape. I also had a feeling that this discussion was over. So I stopped arguing, if I kept on going I would get no where.
“When do you want to take me shopping?” I asked my mother, hoping to make her feel a little better about the whole situation. A truly genuine smile spread across my mothers face before she spoke.
“How about tomorrow? Do you want to get your hair done too?”
It was hard not to be happy when my mother was happy. That was the first time in two years that I had smiled without having to think about it.
The next day went by too quickly. My mother bough me anything I seemed remotely interested in, which I normally would have bitched about but I was going to let her have her fun. After getting all the clothes my mom thought I would remotely like we headed to a nearby hair salon. The woman, along with my mother, frowned at what I wanted to do with my hair but they let me have it my way. The first thing to change was the length of my hair. Never before had I cut my hair shorter than the rips reaching my shoulders. This time it was cut so that it was only two inches long. It left my ears with their piercings bear. My hair was not short enough to spike up, and I knew I would take advantage of that. The next thing to change was the main color of my hair. It was already a dark natural brown, when I dyed it black it didn’t change much. It was the last difference that made the color so different. Instead of having more natural steaks of dark purple through the black, I got pieces in the front bleached. I was happy when the bleached pieces didn’t turn yellow but the pure white it was supposed to be.
“What the hell happened to your hair?” Lucas asked rudely when my mother and I arrived home. “It looks like a skunk curled up on your head and died.” He laughed then went back to the phone that was pressed to his ear. He proceeded to tell the person on the other line about my “hilarious” and “disgusting” new hair style.
“Lucas, leave your sister alone.” Damien growled from his spot on the couch. “Personally, Amelia, I think its cool looking.” He went back to reading the newspaper. “So honey, what’s for dinner?” He asked my mother without looking up from the paper.
I grabbed the Bawls energy drink and headed up the stairs before I could hear the answer. I felt dizzy and unfocused. Being around people sober was making me feel unreal and I still wasn’t sure how to act. So I stayed in my room that night, drinking my energy drink without going down the stairs for food.
The two weeks minus a day passed just as quickly as the day with my mother had. I spent as much time as I could with my family so I could get used to being around people. Despite how much I tried, by the time my bags were packed, and Damien, my mother, Lucas, and I were all packed into the SUV, I still wasn’t sure how to act around other people, especially strangers. The SUV weaved through the trail that cut through a thick forest. The road went on for miles before the forest started to thin out. Ahead of us was the gray stone building from the school packet. It wasn’t any different from the picture, which I thought was unusual. Damien turned the SUV to a trail veering to the right of the main path. This road was narrower than the one before and we were lucky no other cars were going the other way. The car was pulled into a parking lot next to four large red brick buildings in front of it. The buildings were several stories tall, like apartments. There was a large sign posted near the parking lot in front of the group of buildings: Sierra Nevada school for the gifted dormitories.
“Amelia, you and your mother will go to the dorms in the building furthest to the left. You’re looking for room 513. Lucas and I will be in that building,” Damien pointed to the second building from the left.
My mother and I walked to the large dorm building without saying a word. A small plaque was hanging on the red brick wall next to the door of the dorm. It stated who donated the money to pay for the building; someone named Samantha Perry, and was followed by ‘no boys between the hours of ten and seven.’ I was betting that my parents had purposely put me in this dorm.
My room was on the fifth floor, which was the last floor. There were a set of stairs that were set in each corner of the building. But as soon as you walked through the front door there was a large glass elevator. On the inside of the elevator, near the buttons, was a list of what rooms were on each floor. The basement held room’s zero through one hundred, but those weren’t used as rooms for students, just probably for storage. When my mother and I arrived at room 513 the door was wide open. The dark wooden door that had probably been bare already held a dry erase calendar board. In find red writing the first day of school was marked clearly for the second, which was tomorrow. Half of the room inside was already set up. Two dark wood standard desks sat side by side with an ugly brown plastic trash can set between them. The desk on the right already had a silver laptop sitting on it, along with a pile of notebooks and new packets of pencils and pens sitting nicely on top of it all. Next to that desk was a twin sized bed covered in a faded quilt. Sitting on the bed with a book in her hands was my new room mate.