My House Rules

Savannah

The most pissed off times in my life are numbered.

Like the all-time most painful or all-time happiest.

In my top five is a day when I was in the sixth grade; my baby brother Morgan had started in kindergarten and it was his first week in school.

This dirty motherfucker by the name of Ashton Downs thought he would take my little brother’s lunch money. Unlucky for him, Morgan didn’t miss a meal.

With no lunch money, he got no lunch.

His little legs booked it to my classroom, flinging the door open and marching up to my desk like a man on a mission.

Tears streaking down his little face, blubbering on about how he was starving to death, nothing but skin and bones.

How he was dying of thirst and how this Ashton Downs took his lunch money and now he was going to die of starvation.

I calmed him down, asking my teacher for a second to get him back to his class with food, which my teacher allowed.

I would take Morgan back to his class, just after I handled Ashton Downs.

With Morgan’s hand in mine, I climbed the stairs to the middle school and went into full-on battle mode.

I remember Morgan sniffling, saying how he was happy I was his sister.

I went past a few doors holding Morgan up in the window until he saw Ashton in study hall. Pulling a page out of my brother’s book, I flung the door open and marched in.

“Ashton Downs, you have five seconds to give my brother back his lunch money before I kick your ass.”

The other kid sitting in the back looked like he might actually shit himself.

“Five. Four.”

Morgan let go of my hand and took a step behind me.

Ashton sputtered, standing up before he worked this conniving grin along his dry, thin lips.

“Like you really could.”

“One.”

My fist went flying, landing right in his ear and knocking him back down.

I took him by the back of the neck, the other kids forming a circle while Morgan stood so proudly behind me.

“His. Money.”

I kept him pinned down. His ear under the dyed black hair was bright red from my one punch.

His face smushed against the tabletop and forcibly held in his seat.

“Get the hell off me! I don’t have it. He’s lying!” He thrashed but my knee in his rib cage stopped that.

“His. Money,” I demanded again; this time Ashton went into his pocket and slapped his chain wallet to the table.

“Morgan, get the money out of it.”

He was all too happy to help move this along, taking the cash and smiling with a “got it!”

I leaned down, meeting Ashton’s eyes.

“If you ever so much as ~look~ at my baby brother again, the memory of your name will be held as a reminder why you don’t break my rules.”

I shoved his head up and rammed it back down, letting him go and taking Morgan’s hand, leading us out of the room and back down the stairs.

Morgan held his head so high.

No trace of a tear on his cheek, not a sniffle to be found.

I got his lunch, and carried it back to his homeroom. Letting his teacher know this wouldn’t be happening again.

I sat Morgan’s tray down at his assigned seat, giving him the finger guns and heading out.

Before I shut the door, I heard a little girl ask him who I was. My baby brother told her I was Wonder Woman.

That’s how he saw me.

Not as some hot-headed bitch or just his older sister who didn’t take any shit.

He saw me as ~his~ Wonder Woman.

Ashton never rode our bus again.

That memory hurts now. No longer filling me with that pride it once did. Now it fills me with heartbreak and bitterness.

Now, I see how far I’ve fallen.

If Morgan could see me now, he would be so disappointed in me.

I’m no longer Wonder Woman.

The daughter of Zeus.

I’m no longer that Amazonian goddess.

And what hurts more than any of it is the knowledge that I will never be again.

I can never be her.

***

Uncle Jonah woke me up for dinner, having me come downstairs and set the table.

That memory stayed right at the front of my mind: the smile on Morgan’s face.

It was nice to see again but settled inside me with bittersweetness.

“Dinner time,” Uncle Jonah called to Percy, who was playing video games on the couch.

It has been three days since I got shot and thrown under the bus with some absolute garbage about me getting drunk in the park with three other people.

How Damon happened to be driving past and saw me stumbling down the road and got me back to the club so I could sleep it off since I was so “unruly and aggressive.”

How Damon should have taken me home but since him and I were friends he did what he thought was right.

But how his father thought my uncle needed to know that his niece was out partying and needed help.

I have been under house arrest ever since, getting a police escort to and from school, random check-ins at school, and a job at the damn police station.

I say job but jobs pay.

I am not getting paid a damn dime.

Damon has tried sneaking me notes, texting me, or calling—trying to get me to speak to him, but I won’t do it.

The only thing I have said to him is to ask where my jacket is, which he replies with some bullshit of him not having it or knowing where it is.

If he can so easily trash me, then fuck him and his father.

Percy has noticed my hip wound but hasn’t seen it.

Do you have any idea how shitty I feel for lying? For even having Percy believe in the bold-face lie Lucien told about me?

I get he can’t say I saved his son’s life, but that? No.

My jacket hasn’t been returned.

My anxiety has turned to level ten.

Percy and I have looked for it—I even went back to the alley saying I “remembered” it being here but can’t find it.

I’ve been taken out of my classes and put in isolation since I keep snapping off and starting fights with my teachers, or anyone but Percy and Uncle Jonah.

I haven’t had a chance to go to the bar and demand it back. Dallas or Jagger act as my personal bodyguards.

“How was school today?” Uncle Jonah eyes me from the head of the table.

“We both know you got a call, so let’s just get into it.” I stab my fork far too aggressively into my chicken noodle casserole.

“Try that attitude somewhere else. I did get a call, but I’m asking you. Savannah, how was your day?”

Uncle Jonah follows my lead, the glass plate tinks louder than necessary under the pressure of his own fork.

Percy sweating bullets, nibbling softly to the side.

“Like shit! That’s how!” I jump to my feet, my chair flipping out behind me.

“How my days have been since the fucking car crash, like shit! Like fucking horseshit! How the rest of my days will be until God finally shows me some kindness and takes me out of this shitty fucked-up world!”

My sudden burst of anger takes a toll on all three of us. My Uncle Jonah stands up, not a trace of anger on his face.

His blue eyes soft and remorseful.

“I’m sorry. I-I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have said any of that. You didn’t deserve to be cussed at. I know better. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me anymore.”

I hung my head in shame and said excuse me before heading upstairs into my room.

I knew Uncle Jonah and Percy would give me a minute before coming in to check.

My door shut, that heavy suffocating silence back at it, like a nine-to-five job with overtime and benefits.

My room may be silent, but my thoughts screamed inside my head like a bullhorn.

What I said echoing…

My brother’s voice asking me for help for a million and one different things in the memory I had managed to keep…

My mother’s smile. My father’s laughter.

It was storming in together to break more of me. I could hear it all—the TVs on beat but to something else and overlapping.

Some bits of happy memories faded away to let in a mix of random ones from all over my life.

Crouching down in the closet, I wrap my arms around my legs and try to focus, but this nagging buzz won’t turn off.

My sights lock in on the culprit, my anger spiking, panic attack imminent.

If only I was a robot, my screen would have different gauges and a red light would flash.

Like Robin Williams’s version of genie in ~Aladdin~, where he is a bee and goes “Warning! Warning!” could be heard.

My phone on the table buzzes, unaware of the storm brewing on the opposite end.

My thumb on the green emoticon without even reading the caller ID.

“What?!” I snap off into the phone.

“What’s wrong?” Damon’s voice comes out loud and clear over the hundred different pictures in my mind.

I scoff, annoyed and agitated with him. With everything but him being the tipping point.

“What’s wrong? Fuck off, Damon.”

“Cut the dramatics and just say it, Savannah.”

His own attitude like hitting the boss in a street race.

“Say what, Damon? How I need my goddamn jacket back?! How messed up it is you let your dad lie on me like that?

“How pissed off I am that you followed his every word like the mindless, bitchass lackey you are! How friends don’t do that to each other! How friends stand up even to their own parents when they’re wrong.

“And Lucien Henley is so fucking wrong for that. How fucked I am right now and will be for the foreseeable future since my uncle no longer trusts me. Trust I destroyed by not telling the truth.

“Or how my best friend in the entire world believes your biker king and I can’t even tell him? I need my jacket back.”

I took a breath and listened for Damon’s rebuttal of something that would take this phone tag fight to the next level.

“Watch your fucking mouth, you’ve gotten away with that disrespect before but—”

“Disrespect?! Oh, you haven’t heard me get disrespectful! That’s stating facts, you dumb motherfucker.

“Talk disrespectful with your daddy, bitch boy, you’re so far up Luci’s asshole you only see the light of day when he opens his mouth.

“Disrespect? You mean like how your king talked shit about my uncle? About Percy being bi? About my last name? How he would fuck my dead mother?

“How he didn’t even have the balls to shake my hand after I won fair and square?

“Fuck you and him. My jacket better be at school tomorrow.”

I hung up on him and punched the wall.

Again and again until the door opened and Percy pulled me to him. Into his chest and deepening the hug.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it. I’ll fix the wall. I’ll fix it, I’m sorry.”

I tried to shake it out of me.

The anger settled, but the panic didn’t.

Percy let go after a few minutes.

I added to the lies and told him I was mad at my stupid self and took it out on the wall instead of my body.

It was maybe twenty-five percent true.

I agreed to try one of the soothing methods from my therapy classes and turned to the relaxing exercise of taking a safe shower.

Warm water, but not enough to hurt me.

I had been doing enough of that lately.

Now, to ~relax~.

Here goes nothing.