Chapter Two: [Before the beginning]

HALLY! Turn off that light!” Suddenly an ear-splitting scream came from downstairs, I crept to the door. Mom was downstairs watching the 11:00 soaps with the lights turned low and the T.V. screen blaring. The Dramatic sound effects sounded almost realistic with the shadows creeping up the wall showing what kind of scene was next. Quickly I snapped out of it still angry at what happened last night. Then in an attempt to prove I was angry I slammed the door shut and banged down on the bed “Mom and her soaps” I thought rolling my eyes and turning a page. Then I went back to what I was I doing in my room. I was too busy reading the American girl Magazine to pay attention while in the back round the Sunday night Super bowl was on. My hometown was winning. I picked up the remote and blindly flipped through my 300 channels while with the other hand flicked through the magazine my hand shaking nervously. This is how it all happened: There was a time when I had what you could call a “normal” dad; he really loved my Mom and my brother and sister. We lived in Maine then and we never thought anything would go wrong, but then when Holly and I were three and Charlie about seven, things went wrong. Of course Holly and I were so young we didn’t really know what was going on, but Charlie always picked us up, put one on each side of him and with his arms around us and told us everything. Dad started seeing other women and drinking. Then he starting hitting Mom and sometimes didn’t come home for weeks. Then he went off to war, which was short and he came back starting his old habits again. Holly and I were about 7 and Charles, 11. Now at seven were aware of what my dad was doing. Sometimes mom sent us away when she knew dad was coming back to keep him from hurting us. It seemed that since Dad came back home form war, it changed him, started some kind of anger. Then one day he was gone, just like that…of course mom cried but the next week she already had a new boyfriend she brought home. Mom just wanted to forget about dad, and two weeks later we sold our house with all the memories of dad and moved to Maryland, then Virginia, then Florida on and on. We kept moving every time one of her boyfriends dumped her. We had to go in and out of school, Sometimes not going to school for 4 weeks at a time. Mom dragged us all across the country, then she had two more kids, Sam and Emmie and we settled down here in California. There ‘s more detail of the story but that’s basically what happened.