CHAPTER22
All weekend long, I work hard, and it’s great. I don’t see the Mutineers at all. Maybe things will be better this upcoming week.
Yeah, right. Monday is fast approaching, and I'm sure that Tyler, at the very least, will have it out for me. Maybe Liam will too. He can't be happy with me, not after I ratted him out to the principal, not that it did me any good.
Ugh. It's a toss-up who I hate more.
No, no, it isn’t. Not at all. I hate my father first and foremost.
My father. Brandon Slade. A drunk. A rich asshole. He used to stink of booze all the time. I can still remember the first time I smelled alcohol on him.
“Father!” I cry. I’m maybe five years old. I run up to him as soon as he comes home.
He scoops me up and stumbles a step. “You’re putting on weight. Maybe you shouldn’t eat so much.”
I giggle. “Father, I don’t eat too much!”
“She doesn’t eat enough,” my mom says, coming up to us.
Father shakes his head and kisses my cheek. “She can’t gain too much weight. Better to keep it off than to have to lose it.”
“Father, your breath.”
“What about it?” He breathes in my face.
I laugh but wave a hand in front of my face. “It smells.”
“Erika!” my mom scolds. “That isn’t nice.”
“It’s the truth!” I protest.
“Erika,” my father says, “there is nothing wrong with my breath.”
“It just smells weird.” I wrinkle my nose.
“You don’t like the smell?” He breathes in my face again.
“Brandon, is that necessary?” my mom asks him.
"I'm just having some fun with my daughter," he grumbles. He takes a few steps, swerving and almost falling. I laugh, not at all scared because I know he wouldn't let me fall.
He does collapse into his seat, and he asks the maid to get him a beer. Not asks so much as demands.
“I can get it,” I offer.
“Go ahead,” he says with a smug smile.
“Brandon, I don’t think she should—”
“What father doesn’t want his offspring to get him a beer? You can go with her and bring me one too.”
My mom isn’t the happiest, but we go together and fetch him two beers. He offers me a sip, but my mom refuses and yanks me out of the room. She goes back in, and I linger by the door as my father asks my mom to go down on him right then and there.
I didn’t know what that meant, of course. A maid came by and got me to move along, and I don’t recall what happened later on that day. My father was drunk at least half of any given week, and it was enough to make me put off beer forever. The smell of it churns my stomach, and the few times I did try to drink it, I got sick every time. Mental? Physical? Maybe I’m allergic, or maybe my father just put me off beer forever. Wine, though, that I can tolerate, but I don’t see myself spending any money on drinks of any kind. I can drink water at school. Get a water bottle or two. Fill them at the water fountains. Yes, water fountains are disgusting in general, but I gotta do what I gotta do.
That’s how I’ll survive.
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