Hope

1. Shit Parents and Shit Friends

Dancing. It's what Kate did to get away, to avoid life but mostly to avoid her. Dancing could take Kate away, take her into a whole new world where she could just lose herself in the music. A world where she didn't have to worry about anything else. Not her shit parents. Not her shit friends. And especially not her.

It was an escape. A way to express herself. And best of all, something no one knew about. It was one of the only things Kate had to herself. One thing that wasn't tainted by her horrible life. But of course, all good things must come to an end. Honestly, Kate was surprised she even had something good for this long.

It was a nice spring day, if not for what would happen later Kate probably would have remembered it as one of the few normal days. But as stated before, all good things must come to an end, and this day certainly had an interesting end.

Kate had just made it out of the hell-hole called School and was planning to head down to the field a half a mile from her house where she danced. The day had been pretty normal so far, it was far from good but Kate was used to that being the usual. Her 'friends' had been kinda distant that day, much to Kate's relief. She didn't like them at all, for good reasons of course. They bullied her almost every second they were around, and even though they claimed to be just joking Kate could tell they weren't. What she didn't understand was why they seemed to hate her so much. She couldn't think of a single thing she had ever done to any of them.

So, as usual, she just made her way towards home. She was forced to walk the four miles to school and back every day because her parents simply refused to drive her or get her a car, and no bus traveled that way. She was used to it by now and honestly, it had become so ingrained in her routine she even walked five miles on the weekend. When faced with a home life like hers, you would use any excuse to get out of the house as much as possible.

It's not like her parents cared at all what she did. They had told her, right to her face, in these exact words, "Why would we give a fuck where you are, or what you're doing. You could be getting murdered by a serial killer and we wouldn't care about your well being. Why would we, it's not like you really matter anyway, you're just the mistake that popped into our lives 17 years ago. If I could go back in time and stop you from being born, god, believe me, I would."

There was the fact her dad was drunk when he said that, that could be used to lessen the severity of the words, but Kate knew every single word he said came right from the heart. Well, the excuse for a heart he had anyway.

The only thing these words provided were that her parents didn't care at all what she did. So the fact that she left her house at 6 am every day and didn't return until around ten at night didn't bother anyone. Or didn't actually bother anyone, because, despite the fact that her dad really didn't care where she was, he used this as an excuse to beat her on numerous occasions.

By this point Kate was used to it, she had to deal with bruises and cuts since she was around eight. Everyone always assumed they were because she was a rambunctious child, I mean what would give them any indication it was something far worse. Kate's parents were saints in the eyes of the public and no one would ever expect her father to be the abusive alcoholic he is. Or her mother to be the drug addict she is. But Kate knew the truth and with knowing the truth came having to deal with the consequences.

Having to endure the beatings from her father, and listen to the screams of her mother when she was having withdrawals, was a regular occurrence. It was a pile of bad circumstances that just got bigger the longer it lasted. But Kate had learned to grow stronger so she could continue supporting the pile. Because she knew the moment she faltered, even a little, everything would come crashing, and she couldn't let that happen. Not when she was this close to getting out. To finally escaping from the hell she grew up in and cutting all the connections she had to this terrible place. So, she just made her way through the days, counting down to the time she could escape. Sadly that time seemed to be slipping farther and farther away from her.