A/N--This HAS NOT been proofreaded and I've put off studying for finals too long just to finish this so...yeah.  Deal with it :) If there's anything too terrible, though, lemme know and I'll make a quick change.  But anyways...I'm done with my freshman year of college in just a week and a day! Oh my goodness gravy, I feel so freaking OLD.  But I am stoked to have time to get some serious writing in so prepare yourself for lots of updates (I'm hoping!)

OH! And this pretty lady on the side is our leading girl Hallie :)

But anyways, as always READ/VOTE/COMMENT/FAN.  

I love you guys :)

XXXXXX 

"You're grounded, Hallie, for a month," my mom starts, her face the most vicious among the others in the room. After an extremely tense breakfast this morning, Ethan the only who told me "good morning," my mother called for family meeting. Everyone a part of this house included. So guess what? I'm getting embarrassed in front of a guy I barely know but somewhat like as a person.  

I wonder if she's doing it on purpose. Probably. I wouldn't be surprised. 

I nod my head slowly, knowing that something like this was bound to come out of her mouth. I figured I'd be grounded; hell, I figured I'd be shipped off to boot camp or something with the way she's been acting around me lately. A month? It'll be hard as hell but I'm sure I'll manage. I'll just work on my tan and sleep...sleep, a lot. That actually sounds okay if I think about it. 

She continues on without a touch of emotion, "And by grounded I mean these things; no going out unless it's accompanied by someone that we say is okay, so don't even ask about Jeanie or those two rocker bad ass guys that are always with her and no car. And phone use is going to be limited...no texting at dinner or social functions or anything like that." 

Knowing that it'll just make her go off on me even more, I just accept my fate and nod my head solemnly. While I know it seems crazy that I'm nineteen years old and letting my mom still ground me, it's just something that has to be done. The moment that I turned eighteen my mom told me that even though I was a legal adult, I was still living under her and my father's roof which meant that I had to follow their rules. And if I didn't...well, they'd kick me out of the house and force me to get a job somewhere. 

And even though living at home sometimes does suck, I've lived here my whole life. I can't imagine living somewhere else, I really can't. Besides, if I got a job, my grades at school would be even more terrible and I just can't accept that. Although everyone pretty much thinks that I'm a fuck up, I want to get good grades. I really do. And I won't have the same time to study if I ever get a job. 

So for now I'm at home and even though my mom can go overboard with the rules, I know not to test her. She's not all that fond of me and I know that kicking me out wouldn't be so hard for her to do. And I don't want to risk it. 

That's why instead of calling her out on going super overboard this whole thing, I just swallow back my argument. I don't want to fight with her again, I truly don't. Her and my sister already hate me and I don't want to give them another reason.  

"And also," she continues on a bit less harshly, looking a bit surprised by the fact that I'm not jumping at the chance to scream at her, "The news has unfortunately gotten some info about the crash and we can't have your dad's image at stake. Not when he finally has the chance to beat Taylor Swift at the Country Awards this season." 

"I love you daddy, but you can't beat Taylor," Darla pops in, and when I look over at her I see that she's pretty much curled into a ball in the hammock seat that's positioned in the closer corner of the room. She looks the epitome of Sunday afternoon cuteness, what with her oversized T-shirt and gym shorts along with her usually tight curly hair being in looser waves. I don't know how she always manages to look more put together than me, almost more mature than me, but she truly succeeds at it.  

He chuckles, looking at the younger of the two daughters with nothing but love and fondness in his eyes. That's how he always looks at her, how they both look at her. She's the one who doesn't make mistakes, the one who is perfect. I can only dream of them ever looking at me the way they look at her. He says happily to her, "Oh we'll see about that hon." 

Feeling a bit forgotten about and overlooked at their exchange, I cut into their happiness and ask, "Well what am I supposed to do to help?" I can't help it that my voice seems to be a bit miffed and irritated. 

Everyone's eyes snapping back to me, that light moment from a second ago already forgotten about, my mom says, "Well the publicist had an idea. There is a banquet coming up in a few weeks, and I was going to go with your father and Ethan. But now we're thinking that maybe you should go. Show up in a nice classy dress, be super polite and charming...give some interviews. That's all." 

"Seriously?" I ask, already dreading the idea. I hate getting dressed up, I really really do. I always look super awkward in dresses and I can never get my hair to look as perfect as everyone else's. The last one of these that we went to, I'm pretty sure I was the only girl in the room whose hair had frizzed. Everyone else's seems to be made of perfection or something. 

My dad jokes, "Don't sound too happy." When I shoot him a still untrusting look in response, he continues on sincerely, "Look, these things are boring, but they're not terrible. The food is always really good and I hear that steak is on the menu this year." 

"Well...that does make it sound a bit better," I say honestly, causing both of the men in the room to chuckle. My mom and Darla, though, I can still feel them glaring at me with nothing but hatred in their eyes.  

Speaking up for the first time since this whole family meeting, Ethan agrees, "It'll be fun. No big deal." 

I shoot him a quick smile, appreciative for the support when it is lacking so badly from my other family members, and then turn back to my mom and say, "Okay then...I'll go." 

"Great," she says, standing up from the couch and dusting the invisible lent from her pencil skirt. "We'll go shopping for your dress Tuesday, okay?" 

Already dreading the thought of spending the say shopping with my mom and most likely Darla-no shopping trip can occur without her presence usually-I lean back into the couch and say in what I hope is a decent sounding voice, "Alright." 

With that she leaves the room, turning around the corner that leads towards the hallway where their bedroom and the office is. She of course turns into the office, probably off to call my dad's publicist, and the three of us still left in the room hear it when she shuts the main door.  

Feeling Darla's glare on the side of my face and knowing that my dad is just too nice to do the same, I remove myself from the couch and say, "I think I'm going to spend the day laying out," before heading out of the room. 

But before I'm completely out of the room, Darla yells out to me, "Good! You're freaking pale!" 

A little pang of hurt hits me, but I've become so used to her little back handed comments over the past year or so that I just let it roll off of me. I hear my dad softly scold her for saying such a thing to me, but I know that he's just doing it because he knows it's the right thing to do. He probably doesn't care that she just loves taking any chance she can get to hurt my feelings. 

Not even letting it reside in my head long enough to hurt, I make the quick trek up the stairs and into my bedroom. Darko jumps off my swing chair in the corner of my room at the sound of the door shutting, and it's not long before the little black pug is jumping at my leg, itching for me to pick him up. I, of course, oblige, and curl the little dog to my chest as I walk over to my chest and go through the drawer with all of my different bathing suits.  

After grabbing my plain purple bikini, I place Darko onto my bed and he immediately trots underneath the cave of white comforter and curls into a little ball. I then shed off all of my clothes and then pull on the bathing suit, knowing better than to cast a look into my floor length mirror. Flat boobs and a not-quite-so-flat tummy is not fun to look at, that's for sure. 

I then pull on an oversized tee so that I can walk through the house without feeling exposed, and then after grabbing my pair of Ray bans and my head phones, I head back out of my door and into the hallway. Knowing better than to walk through the den at risk of seeing the three of them again, I take the long route through the laundry room and the game room-it's really just a pool table and a PS3-and eventually find my way into our backyard. 

One of the things I absolutely adore about our house is the huge backyard. My dad absolutely loves acreage and gets a lot of his song ideas from riding his lawn mower around it-I don't know, must be a country artist thing-and so he made sure to buy a house with a yard that rivaled the size of the local park.  

The main part of the backyard is the pool, and it's gorgeous if I do say so myself. The left curve of it is fenced in by large rocks and boulders along with shrubbery, making it look like a lake in the middle of a forest or something, while the floors and walls of it are painted a dark blue to make it look more natural than man made.  

And off to the far right side is where I spend a good amount of my time: the lawn chairs. It's not that I'm some huge tanner, not at all actually, but there is a big part of me that just loves laying there, listening to music and letting the sun beat down on my bare skin. It's extremely relaxing and that's something that I just do not get very often.  

XXXXXX 

The first thing that I'm aware of is the light pressure being applied to my arm. The second is that fun. is singing into my ear about All the Pretty Girls. When my eyes open, all I see is the darkness reflected off of my arm, my face buried so hard in it that none of the sunlight hitting my backside can seep through. But when I slowly remove my face from my arm, I see a pair of tan calves standing right in front of me. Squinting through the bright light, I look up further and see that it's Ethan and that he's got a somewhat concerned look on his face. 

I see his lips move as if he's talking to me, so I reach up and pull the earphones out my ears, barely noticing the stark pain that hits me when I do so. When the band's music is no longer filling my head, I say, "Sorry. What?" 

He says sheepishly, "Your back is really red, I just thought...thought I should wake you up before it got even worse." 

Oh...so that's what the pain in my back was. Awesome. I'm going to have one of the most intense sunburns ever seeing as how it's the beginning of the summer and I haven't really gotten my base tan yet. "Thanks," I tell him appreciatively, feeling somewhat happy because he actually cares enough to come up to me and let me know. I'm not used to someone being nice enough to me to do that. 

I then push myself up into a sitting position, grimacing a bit when the burnt tight skin on my back has to stretch at the movement. My God this is going to be super painful tomorrow. I go to grab my tee shirt from the ground, but before I can even move to do so, Ethan already has it in his grasp and is handing it to me. 

Feeling a bit taken aback and awed at how weirdly awesome it is to have someone just trying to help me, I give him a smile and say, "Thanks" yet again, taking the shirt from him and then slipping it over my head. Finding it a bit weird that I didn't even feel a bit self-conscious around him in my bathing suit, I then get to my feet and say, "Hopefully we have aloe somewhere in that house." 

He says, "Yeah, that looks like it's going to be a pain in the ass. Not even going to lie." 

I chuckle a bit, finding comfort in the fact that he does curse a little bit. For a second I thought he was some perfect saint who just loves to help stupid girls who fall asleep in the bright summer sun. It's like he's some beautiful and polite angel that I shouldn't even have the pleasure of being around. He's too nice to even want to be around me, so it's extremely surprising that he doesn't ignore me like the probably should. "I'm an idiot, that's for sure. Like good God, who falls asleep in the sun?" 

"Tired people most likely," he says easily, and then starts to walk beside me as I make my way towards the house. He says, "And besides, you've had a rough few days." 

"That's for damn sure," I mumble to myself, thinking about how differently my mom would be reacting if she was the one who found me sleeping out there. If she didn't just leave me there, which is most likely what would have happened, she would have said that that was fate's way of punishing me for getting drunk and going riding in a car that a drunk person was driving. 

So thank goodness gravy that Ethan was the one who found me.  

"My mom is just hell-bent on making my life as miserable as possible because I'm not perfect like Darla is, that's all," I confess to him, glad that there's someone other than a rarely-ever-listening Jeanie. Although he is pretty much a stranger to me still, he's a nice stranger and it's not like I have any other options of people to talk to. 

He steps a bit ahead of me as we reach the house, and then pushes it open for me, letting me walk through before he closes it behind us. A bit struck at his manners (no one other than my father or the occasional do-gooder at school opens doors for me) I say a quick, "Thank you". 

We're both silent as I head towards the kitchen, praying that there's a bottle of aloe somewhere hidden in the fridge for occasions like this. I'm vaguely aware of Ethan plopping himself down on a barstool on munching on some grapes as I dig through the fridge. But, of course, with my luck, after five minutes of digging I realize that there isn't. 

I go to curse underneath my breath, but Ethan cuts me off when he asks, "Can I ask you something?" 

"You just did," I tease lightly, shutting the door with my foot and then turning to face him. 

He asks me, "Why'd you get in the car with a drunk driver?" 

A bit taken aback at the blunt question, I avoid coming up with an answer by asking in return, "Why?" 

He shrugs his shoulders, trying to look as uncaring about it as he can, but I can tell by the somewhat intent look on his face that he actually does care. He says, "I'm just curious." 

Not exactly knowing what I'm supposed to say to appease him, I say a little bit cautiously, "Well I was drunk at the time, so I wasn't exactly thinking straight." 

"Oh," he says simply, but I feel as if that simple "oh" is loaded with as much judgment as there can be.  

Almost feeling offended that he's trying to delve into shit that isn't exactly his own business, I ask him a bit harshly, "Why? Do you think I'm an idiot for doing it too?"  

"No," he immediately goes to say, but I know the truth. It's not like he's exactly trying to hide anything. He's like a fucking open book or something. 

"Because it's okay if you do, you know," I say tightly, feeling myself starting to get all worked up again. "I mean, everyone else does. Just because you're nicer than they are doesn't mean you have to lie to me." 

"I'm not lying," he says quickly, but it doesn't even matter now. I've gotten to that point. That point where I'm just going to rant and rant and tear myself and other people down until I'm too exhausted to go further. It's the only way that I can get out what's been running crazy in my head ever since I woke up in the hospital and saw that furiously defeated look on my mom's face. It's been what's keeping me up at night and making me look in the mirror and hate what I see.  

I shake my head and say, "Whatever. Just don't...don't lie. I really fucking hate liars. I know everyone gets to the point where they hate me. If you're there just let me know so that I know. So I don't have to think differently, alright?" 

"I don't hate you," he goes to say, but I'm already tearing out of the room and up the stairs, trying my damndest not to let the tears fall. I don't know why I'm overreacting so badly about this whole thing, why I'm freaking out when he just asked me a question, but I just feel like everyone's judging me.  

I know that I was beyond stupid when I got into the car with Fred. I know that I should have done the responsible thing and said no and slept there or something. I know that I got off insanely easy just by getting some bumps and bruises. I know that there are thousands of people who die because of doing what I did, and that I just got lucky. I know that my mom thinks I should have gotten hurt more to punish me more. I know that. 

I know all of this and I'm beating myself up for it. I'm losing sleep over it. I'm crying over it. I'm hating myself for it. 

And so just to hear nicest, most decent seeming person getting onto me for it...it really sucks. He's the one person who I would've expected to try and make me feel better about it or something, try and help me maybe. He tried to help me last night when I saw the note from Darla; he helped me minutes ago with the sunburn thing. 

I thought he was the one person on the planet who didn't think I was some kind of huge screw up. 

But apparently he's not.