I fished my house key out of my pocket and opened the wooden garden gate, which was also in need of a paint job. Before I could insert the key into the keyhole, the door aggressively flew open. Two pairs of angry eyes looked down at me with hatred. My instinct told me to turn around and run before I got hit, but I stood my ground, determined not to be intimidated, and waited for one of them to strike. First, I looked (a little scared) at my father's red face and then into my mother's piercing eyes.

"Can I pass?" I asked coolly, while my heart was anything but calm.

"Where have you been with your ugly face? Scaring people in a haunted house, I bet? I would be scared too if I saw such an ugly face! And you know what happens when you damn well deserve to be late. One more time behaving like this and you'll have two months of house arrest!" shouted my father, emphasizing every word as if I wouldn't understand him.

I blinked for a moment.

"But-"

"No food tomorrow," my mother interjected sharply.

"Do you want me to starve or something?!"

"Quiet your big mouth now or you'll sleep outside tonight. Do you understand?!" screeched my mother, cutting off my protest.

As I heard Ray snickering in the background, peeking through the small doorway, with his eyes gleaming menacingly, I felt a strong urge to hit him in his ugly face with a frying pan, but then my parents would send me to an orphanage for having aggression issues, my brother would say I tried to kill him, and I would be put in an isolation room for fear that I would stab someone. The only ones I wanted to stab were my parents, my brother, and myself.

"HELLO?!" My father waved his hand vigorously in front of my face.

I continued to stare ahead and ignored him.

Two seconds later, I felt a hard, cold hand slap against my cheek. Dazed by the situation, I blinked slowly. Soon, I tasted a faint metallic taste in my mouth and felt a tingling sensation across my face. A tear rolled down my burning cheek, but I did not complain.

"Would you like another one? I would gladly do it!" growled my father.

"Or you sleep outside, your choice," my mother laughed maliciously.

"I'll sleep outside," I whispered to the ground, as another tear slid down my cheek and dripped onto the ground.

Still cursing about my "unacceptable" behavior, I picked up my mini-tent and sleeping bag from upstairs. My parents did not allow me to bring my pillow.

Slowly, I trudged down and opened the back door to go outside. It had gotten a few degrees colder.

I quickly threw the tent on the ground; it was one of those tents that immediately popped open when thrown on the ground. I stuffed my sleeping bag, which had belonged to my brainless brother and was therefore too small, into it sloppily and walked back inside to sneak out a thin mini-blanket but even that was not allowed.

"But otherwise, I'll freeze to death!" I protested.

"Yes, and?" my brother asked cheekily.

"Don't meddle," I snapped.

"Be kind to your big brother, he just wants to help," my mother retorted. I wanted to say that he was not exactly big and that he was acting like a toddler, but I decided against it because I knew I would only get into more trouble.

"Yes, indeed," my brother said innocently and sweetly. "I just wanted to help."

I sighed loudly and felt like hitting him.

"Jeez, stop whining! Why are you so easily annoyed! Do you have aggression issues or something!"

I did say that I would be sent to an orphanage, into an isolation room due to "aggression issues."

My father slowly stood up from his slouched position on the couch and gripped my arm so tightly that the blood flow was almost cut off. He continued, "Make yourself useful and do the laundry!"

"I've already done that..." I whispered and felt my arm being crushed by my father's grip.

"Okay, then you may leave OUR house."

"Yes hello! I live here too!" I said with a trembling voice, and new tears pricked behind my eyes.

"This is OUR house, not yours. We live here, not you! You add nothing to our family, I wouldn't have cared if you weren't born! I have a great idea, you should listen. You can only stay here if you pay rent for your room, clean the entire house once a week, clean the toilet and your own clothes three times a week. Otherwise, you can live in the garden forever, and your adult brother will get your room as well! Understood?! And by the way, I really don't care if you freeze to death tonight, we say tidy up! Do you hear me?! I DON'T CARE IF YOU FREEZE TO DEATH! Now get out with your big damn mouth."

He opened the back door, which had by now slammed shut, and pushed me with all his strength against the half-frozen stone tiles of our "charming" garden, laughed the most sinister laugh ever at me, and slammed the door shut and locked it.

I landed on my elbow, which immediately did not feel right. Sharp pain shot through my arm, to my fingers, to my neck, to my head, and to my legs and feet and toes, and everything hurt even though I had only fallen on that one right elbow.

Through the thin glass, I heard my mother asking if he had been too hard on me, to which my father replied, "No, that child needs to learn her lesson, and I should have done this much earlier."

"Exactly! I hope she suffers a lot from her 'pain.' She deserves it!" my brother said.

"Well said, son," my father replied.

"Yes, okay, you're right. It's time for her to show some respect for her loving parents."

"Can I hit her too?" my brother asked.

"First, you need to build some muscles, like me," my father said. "Every day at the gym, two hours a day, lots of protein, healthy vegetable smoothies, and no bad sugars."

"Deal!"

I didn't want to hear the rest, and I was already scared at the thought of Ray going to the gym. I painfully got up and limped to my tent.

Shivering, I unzipped it and crawled inside. I squirmed into the small sleeping bag, with my regular clothes and an extra sweater still on. I curled my knees against my chest to conserve body heat.

If I died, they wouldn't care. If they found my body, they would just throw it in the trash.

Tears rolled down my cheeks.

I could suffocate. Their own daughter. They wouldn't care.

I started to cry softly.

I rolled over to my other side, but immediately felt the stabbing pain in my arm again.

I realized that no one cared if I hadn't been born. It was a twisted way of saying that he wouldn't care if he found a knife in my stomach.

I started to cry and fell asleep from exhaustion.

I dreamt of Noah's eyes, and they were very close. I felt his warm breath, felt his hands wrapped around my waist, felt his lips gently on mine...

I woke up suddenly from my light sleep state and fervently hoped that it would really happen someday.

It had been a short night; the ground was hard because I wasn't allowed a sleeping mat, I had no more moisture in my body from all the crying.

I'm never going to call him "dad" again.

I'm never going to call her "mom" again.

They hate me, I hate them.

And now I was about to go back to grandma's and live with her.

I thought back to when I was little, how things used to be. My parents had forgotten my third birthday, because grandma had told me a week or two ago (and I wouldn't be surprised if they had forgotten my 1st and 2nd as well), because my mother was pregnant with the little brat that had ruined my life. Later, they told me that my brother was the "gift." I wished that, like with bad gifts, I could just throw away my brother, but I wasn't allowed to do that.

Since then, Ray had been constantly favored by my parents. He received gifts, applause, or a pat on the back for every little thing he did, and they cheered for him when he got a B in history. But if I got a B on my test, I got hit, cursed at, grounded, and tutoring. And that had always been the case, day in and day out, just nagging in my head.