Chloe

Chapter 1 - Abandoned

They hated me. They hated that I talked like a Texan. They hated what I had to say. They hated that I had to share their space. They hated everything that encompassed me. Their beady eyes condemned me into silence and scorned me with heated hatred that forced me to disappear. My life became muted grays in a world of vivid color. They broke me.

They were my parents.

-Chloe’s diary

Chapter 1

Abandoned

Her back leaned against the cold wall in the tiny gray room with no windows. Her knees were drawn up to her chest as she stared sightlessly at the wall. She hated this place. She had wasted so many hours in this grungy room, in the same position pondering the same thing: was it possible for a person to be an orphan if one was living with their biological parents? She always came to the same sad conclusion, it was impossible, but it was exactly how she felt. She was an unwanted orphan, an inconvenience to two parents who barely knew her and obviously didn’t want her.

   The only sound in the tiny room was the wind whistling through the poorly insulated walls. She squeezed her knees to her chest trying to suppress what little warmth she had. 

It was another sleepless night. 

She eyed the ill-fitted door hatefully. It had offered her no solace from the cold or what lay outside of it. She closed her eyes as another involuntary shiver racked her body.

She had only lived with her parents for the two semesters of her junior year in high school, which was one semester longer than she thought they would last, and two semesters too long for her.

She shifted slightly hoping to avoid the draft from the gust of wind whistling under the door. Her heart pounded frantically and her eyes sprang open when a thud intruded the silence in her room. Her body clinched painfully, the muscles in her neck strained and tensed as she scanned the tiny room. It was a chip of plaster that had fallen on the floor. Her eyes immediately darted up the wall to the gaping hole in which the chip originated.

Years of decay and neglect had caused bits and pieces to fall off the mold encrusted walls leaving a hodgepodge of random cracks and exposed brick. She could relate to that wall. She imagined it was a reflection of her inner soul. But instead of plaster, it was nuggets of her soul crumbling leaving exposed bone and nothingness. The wall’s decay must have taken years, but her soul had taken merely months as her parents’ ruthlessness picked it like a bothersome scab. It seemed they took pride when another piece was peeled back, slowly killing her spirit, her identity, with one crumble at a time.

  What she felt for parents went beyond hate and disgust. They were heartless creatures, barely human, but perversely, she wasn’t afraid of them. She was afraid of where she would go if they ceased to exist because she was out of options. Therefore, she didn’t ask questions and she didn’t talk. She made herself not exist in their eyes. If she was invisible to them then maybe she could ride out her senior year in Germany and leave to go to college anywhere else.

That thought got her blood pumping and her body moving. Placing her palms on the soft tired mattress, she hefted herself to a standing position and made her way to the pathetic excuse of a suitcase that stored her clothes. 

She pulled out a sweatshirt a neighbor had thrown away and squeezed into a pair of jeans she had nearly outgrown. Finally, she laced up the shoes that were a size too small. At least they were clean, she thought. She made sure everything she had was clean. It was her way of fighting the poverty they subjected her to. She’d be damned if she were poor AND dirty.

  Fully clothed, she stepped out of her tiny closet room into the living room bypassing the yellowed mirror. She never looked at herself. Her blonde wayward hair was always frizzy and her clothes never fit right, but it was her nondescript gray eyes that reflected emptiness that she avoided the most. They showed the lifeless shell she had become and that haunted her more than anything.

   Her body slowly relaxed when she realized her parents had left sometime in the night. She picked up her tattered backpack and opened the front door where a blast of freezing air slapped her face. 

It took everything to fight the urge to recoil back into the lukewarm apartment. She hugged her body to compress her body heat as she stepped forward firmly closing the door behind her and began the three-mile trek to the American school located on a military installation. She loathed snow, she loathed the cold, but neither compared to how much she loathed her school. She almost hated it as much as she hated her parents.

   When she arrived at the school half frozen, people chatted in the halls and signed each other’s yearbooks. 

Eyes downcast she moved to her locker, alone. She didn’t have friends, but it was okay. Friends were complicated and asked questions. She hated questions.

She ignored her classmates as they walked around her never making eye contact. It was as if they looked at her, they would have to acknowledge her. But that, too, was okay, because if she didn’t exist then she couldn’t feel, and if she didn’t feel then her stomach wouldn’t hurt.

As if on cue, a sharp pain stabbed her stomach. It felt as if ragged sharp rocks rolled around piercing her stomach lining. She imagined her stomach filled with blood from the cuts giving her the feeling of never really being hungry. When the pain hit and if it was possible, she would curl into a ball on the floor and beg for the pain to stop. When she couldn’t, she simply blanked out. 

The theory was if she thought nothing and spoke nothing it wouldn’t hurt as much. That is what she strived for. She spent her days at school as nothing, thinking nothing, being nothing. 

   She glanced at the happily chatting crowd. Today was the last day of school and everyone was happy, except her. She made her way to her classes, always thankful for their warmth, and for the food at lunch. 

When the final bell rang, the people cleared out quickly and all was left was a trail of trash.  She, however, stood at her locker cleaning the hoards of papers she had collected. One paper at a time, she neatly packed her backpack. She knew she should throw them out as they were inconsequential nothings, but for some reason they were real and she didn’t want to discard them just yet. She had precious little left in this life and what was hers was important, even if was just notebook paper.

  She was stalling. Not because of the cold, although the thought of it made her never-quite-thawed fingertips hurt, but because she had mixed feelings about going home.

 What was she going to do? How could she possibly be invisible to her parents if she didn’t have a place to go in a country that she didn’t speak the language? Once school ended she wouldn’t have access to the military installation and everything she understood. She slid another sheet in her backpack when she felt someone watching her. She glanced up to the eyes of a disgruntled janitorial staff member. He sent her a dirty look. Damn. 

Knowing she couldn’t procrastinate any longer she shoved what remained of her locker into her bag. The final shut of her locker door resounded off the empty walls in the empty school, in her empty soul.

   Even though it was cold outside, she purposely took the long way home, as she always did. She never knew when her parents were going to be in the apartment and the fear that they were there kept her out longer than necessary.

As she meandered through the streets, a lovely fur-lined jacket displayed in the window caught her eye causing her to stop. She put her frozen hand up to the glass, closing her eyes briefly, imagining how it would feel on. It looked so warm. She dropped her hand and turned away. No need coveting something beyond her means. Besides the sun was beginning to set and she needed to get out of the cold.

   She walked faster as the coldness seeped deeper into her bones. Snow had saturated her canvas shoes and the bottom of her jeans. It was definitely time to return to the place she slept. It was not home.

   When she arrived at her parents’ small apartment she noticed the door was left slightly ajar. At first she thought it odd but as she walked closer, panic began to strum through her. She knew she securely shut the door before she left and her parents’ car was gone. What if they had been robbed? What if they were still in there? Indecision kept her staring at the door until a large gust of wind pushed it further open. She stood frozen, unbelieving. She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t breathe. Sharp pains in her stomach nearly made her fall to her knees.

   The backpack slid off her shoulder to the ground as she numbly walked into the apartment. Trash was strewn throughout but otherwise it was empty. She walked toward her two travel-worn bags positioned in the center of the room with a note taped to one. 

She stared at them realizing her worst nightmare came true. She was abandoned once again. With shaking fingers she reached for the note, tears blurring her vision, her stomach turning, and her entire body shaking. She had to wipe her sodden eyes before focusing on the hurriedly written scribble.

It simply said:

Had to go. A plane ticket to California is in the front pocket. Your aunt will pick you up at the airport. 

There wasn’t a signature or anything else. She turned the paper over, nothing. With trembling fingers she pulled the unzipped front pocket of the luggage and thanked God when she found a plane ticket to Los Angeles. Like the plaster on the wall, another piece fell inside her and she collapsed to the ground sobbing.