The Alpha King's Mate

Chapter 2: HOME SWEET HOME

It is almost dark when I reach the house. The moment I enter the house I know my aunt is pissed. She is sitting on the couch in the living area, holding a cigarette in her left hand, her left leg over the right one. The TV is turned on at a high volume. I greet her but she does not answer instead she starts glaring at me. “Where were you ”she asks, “at work” I reply. “What took you so long at work? Have you seen the clock? What hour is it?” she starts yelling for no apparent reason. I don’t say anything because I know why she is mad. Every single time she messes up at work or the man she is seeing turns out to be a jerk. I have to deal with the consequences and my experience has taught me to not talk back or give any explanations or things will take a very bad turn for me. She keeps shouting and scolding until she is exhausted I on the other hand does not utter a single word. I don’t have to explain myself every time. I come back from work at this very hour every day, every f*****g day . When she is done I quietly leave to go upstairs to my room. My room is small, I only have a small bed in it. It is empty and solitary just like me. I don’t think I have been attached to anything else this much as I am to this room. It is literally my safe place. My little corner where I can be me and don’t have to pretend anymore. I always wonder how people can be so happy, smiling all the time or they might as well be just pretending like me. Lying when someone asks them how they are doing. Smiling when crying on the inside or maybe they are happy. They might have a family they love and like to spend time with. They might not have an aunt who is always mad at them for no reason and who is always reminding them of the worst experience of their life. I guess I would never know. I was happy too when I was a kid. I remember going on picnics with my parents , we would mostly go to the countryside, to the beautiful woods and I would forage mushrooms with my father. Those were the most delicious mushrooms I ever had. Sometimes we will go fishing too but would hardly catch anything. My mother would cook the tastiest meals ever, she was so good at it. They both loved me so much and I love them too. We were so happy together and now, now I can’t even think of happiness without becoming sad. Happiness is an emotion I cannot feel anymore. It is dinner time but no one call me for it and remembering my aunt’s mood it is better not to go but I am really hungry. My stomach starts growling and if I don’t eat on time it always starts hurting really bad. I grab my bag and look for the bag of chips I got outside school, thank God I did. I eat the chips and start working on my assignments. It is almost midnight when I am done with my work and I am feeling very thirsty. I start going downstairs to the kitchen but when I am still on the stairs I hear a noise and I freeze. Is there a thief in the house? I mean we don’t have anything valuable but still I am scared as hell. I hear some whispers coming from downstairs and some weird noises and like an i***t I start walking towards it. When I get into the living room I am about to scream before I recognize the people there. It is my cousin Chloe with our neighbor Mate. Chloe is shocked to see me there. “What the f**k are you doing here at this hour?” she whispers “I was drinking water” I say. “Then f*****g do it and leave and listen don’t make any noise or I will kill you. Got it” she threatens me “Got it” I answer. “And I don’t have to repeat myself to you about keeping your mouth shut in front of Mom, right” she warns me “Right” I reply and go straight to grab a bottle of water and head back to my room. This is not the first time she has sneaked in a boy. She started doing it when she was fifteen, she is eighteen now and a highschool senior like me. She is not very good at school and failed a couple of times too but my aunt wants her to get into college or else she would probably have dropped out. She is not the sort who likes to study. Chloe loves partying, staying out and dressing up. Sometimes she wears really strange sorts of dresses but not in front of her Mom. She wears them late at night when she is sneaking out. If her Mom finds out, she will be dead. My aunt is no boys till college sort of a person but my cousin is completely opposite. I don’t even remember the number of boys she has brought home. Every time I see her with one she gives me the same warning of killing me if I told her mother. Does she really think I am scared of her threats or I care what she does with her life. Even if she brought ten boys home at the same time, I would not give a damn. She is a horrible person. She is so evil that she bullies almost everyone at school. Every single person who is not rich or popular, is her target. Because of her I get a lot of hate too. When students find out that she is my cousin they give me angry stares, they hate me. They think I am like her but I am not and I never would be. She is pure evil. I cannot even imagine being like her. When I first joined this school. I am a transfer student I used to go to another school because I lived somewhere else. But then I had to shift here and started going to this school. I remember when I first started going there, there was another transfer student too. She was a nice girl, good at studies but she had the wrong body type. She was not as skinny as my cousin and her friends and if you don’t look like them then you are in trouble. You would be made fun of every single day. You would be called different names. You are not a human, you are a cow or a hippo. They used to call her hippo every time they would see her. My cousin would specifically call her a pink hippo because she had Rosy cheeks and as she is one of the most popular girls in the school, others would bully her too to get in my cousins good books. One of the cool boys told her that “When I see you I cannot eat for a week! Can you just not come in front of me! You are beyond hideous, you don’t even look human. I don’t even know what you are an elephant or a whale”. I saw her running to the girls washroom and staying there for the rest of the day. This went on for a couple of weeks at first she was a bubbly girl. She loved talking to others but then she became silent and then some time later stopped coming to school. Two months later we found out through news that a teen committed suicide due to depression caused my excessive bullying. They showed the picture of the teen a bright student at school. It was her. I don’t even know what her real name is, everyone called her a hippo. I really regret not standing up for her or trying to reach her but I was going through so much at that time. But deep down I know that this excuse is not going to work. I wish I had stood up to the bullies. I wish I had talked to her. The school made stricter rules against bullying but no one was punished and the bullying still happens and what is worst is the people responsible for her death don’t even care. It didn’t affect them at all. It was like nothing happened and that is why I hate Chloe. She is not a human and I don’t know what else to call her but she is evil, very evil. The thoughts of that girl makes me very sad and guilty again and I try my best to fall asleep so I would not be late for school.