Defiance by CinderScoria (best summer reads .txt) 📕

It wasn't as if I was mad at him, although that was normally the case. And I suppose it wasn't that it was my fault, either, because I was only telling him what he already knew. At least, what I already told him. But does he ever listen? Ha, as if he could ever listen to his daughter, like me.

The likely explanation was just that he was crazy. He had certaintly jumped off the deep end, so far gone that he couldn't know what he was doing but here enough to make it work to his advantage.

And that was what made my father dangerous.

Now, after my mother had divorced him, and that definitely didn't help his mood, he had been brooding and sulkish. I was only nine, barely old enough to understand such a horrible word as 'divorce', and yet he seemed to think that I'd appreciate him dumping his problems on my shoulders. I thought otherwise. Whenever we went over to his apartment, my younger brother and I, he would talk about the divorce. And what horrible things he would say! That my mother had never given him a second chance, and that couples were supposed to work out their marriges. As if I cared. My heart had already been split in two; I didn't need any reminding.

Caleb, as a younger brother, was my priority, I realize now. He had it the hardest, because he still didn't know what was going on. So I did what any big sister would; placed myself in the line of fire. Which was probably a stupid move on my part. Now, even though it is five years later, my brother looks up to him like he's a saint.

And now that I'm thirteen, I look back and realize how horrible he was to me. It was almost as if he couldn't see that he was hurting me. And even though we were right in front of him, he didn't seem to realize we were crying every night, simply because of what he said. Why didn't he care? Why not?

And yet, I couldn't hate him. He was a horrible, conceiving man, crazy, mean, and once he was onto something he wouldn't let go for anything. Why I couldn't find a reason to despise him, I'll never know. But he was my father. And I loved him.

That didn't mean I approved of what he was. What he did. He never listened to anything. He'd say the weirdest things; it was only until recently that I realized how impossibly jealous he was of my stepfather. That, and how more and more childish his rants became. It was almost as if he was a child, stamping his foot because he couldn't get a toy in the toy store.

Why I never noticed that before is beyond me.

He always has an arguement whenever I say something, which has made me realize how exactly like him I was. We'd banter for hours, and normally I'd end up crying. He broke down everything I was: Harsh, cold, sarcastic, it all fell apart when I was with him. What was that? It had never happened before!

And now what? Now that my stepmother, and yes, my dad had remarried, was having a child, what then? Would he stop obsessing over my two little half-sisters? Will he tear his attention away from us, my brother and I, to care for the new baby boy? That, I notice now, is my real fear. That my stepmother would leave him for this reason, and he would take it out on us. Not that I want my stepmother to leave. Honestly, it would've taken a lot less to make me leave my father, if he weren't actually my father. But she truly was a remarkable, wonderful woman, and I did not want her to leave.

Was that selfish, when my father was such a cruel person?

I didn't know. And as I sit in my room, chewing my nails in that nervous habit I've been told is bad for me, I realize I may never have an answer. My father hadn't been paying child support. Whatever that was, I didn't know, but it's had him upset, enough to rant about it to us, as usual. And my mother's threatened to take him to coart.

I wrapped my arms around my knees, and, knowing that the rants would get much worse if she does, I closed my eyes and prayed.

Publication Date: 02-23-2010

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