A/N: Love the books, love the characters, wish they were mine. Sadly they all belong to James Patterson. I just make them do my evil bidding! Mwa ha ha ha ha. Yeah. Please don't sue. Oh and this is my first time publishing, so no really bad comments please.
Angela J. Verne had never really liked her name. She had been nicknamed Angy when she was young, but to Denise and Roger, she was always Angela J. when she had done something wrong. Like right now.
"Angela J., you get over here this second!" Her mother screamed through the door. Overprotective, always had been and always would be, Denise Verne was currently very much upset with her daughter over the fact that her daughter had gotten a tattoo. Angela was not a bad child. She was dedicated to her schoolwork, and had never done drugs. Therefore, as this was Angela's first real act of retaliation, she could not understand why her parents were reacting so harshly.
"I am not coming out until you will actually listen to what I have to say." The bathroom door was locked, her mother stood on the other side having a meltdown.
"Just wait until your father hears about this!" Denise shuffled off down the hallway in a state of shear panic to call Roger, grumbling about tramp stamps and STDs.
Angela pounded her fist into the wall, but only succeeded in scraping her knuckles. It seemed like her parents had so many more issues than the parents of other teenagers. Then again, every fifteen-year-old girl thought that. The problem for Angela was that her parents were not her own.
Immediately after her birth, Angela had been left on the front steps of the Glenville Fire House, with not even a hint as to who her birth parents were. As her previous foster parents had often lovingly told her: "You are the common crack whore's failure to wear a condom while prostituting herself." She had been unaware until that placement that so many insults could be packed into one sentence. She had been through the failed system, lived with the paranoids, the losers, the perverts, and the ones who just plain didn't care. All things considered she was lucky to have the overprotectives, who were slightly insane only due to their need to keep her out of harms way. And yet, regardless, Angela was a damaged child.
She also had a host of disorders as well, all of them rare conditions she didn't notice or care about. Honestly Angela didn't even know all of the names. She did know her meds though. Pink pill after every meal, blue ones in the morning and before bed, and a nasty tasting beige colored one on her period. Denise kept track of all the other, more irregular drugs.
Angela thought the whole thing was just stupid. If she wasn't meant to live naturally, then she didn't want to live. She had a cutoff point. If she was sixty with a broken hip, was still taking more meds than she could count, and spent her days watching Seinfeld and Friends reruns like Denise's mother, than she would go skydiving without a parachute. She would try to hold on to her miserable life until then, though, on the off chance that something good happened to her. Which had about the odds of winning the lottery twice, but still.
As a marginally talented author with way too much time on her hands, I have always assumed that, the author is God, completely in control of her story. I was under the impression that I could make my characters do whatever I pleased. However I have lately realized that my characters have begun to rebel. I would have had Angela simply put on her "I'm-sorry-I-disappointed-you-and-will-do-better-next-time" face. Had she complied, she would have gone on to lead a perfectly normal life, gotten married, had kids, and grown old with her high school sweet-heart, which occurs in most lifeless, plot-less FanFiction. Yet, somehow, I stand in awe as my characters develop minds of their own. You see, instead of simply unlocking the bathroom door to face the music, Angela opened up the cabinet, popped off nine identical child safe lids, and proceeded to flush all of her medication down the toilet. She then refilled all nine now empty bottles with Motrin and Tylenol, and replaced them in the cupboard.
Someone once told me once that you aren't truly writing until your characters start writing for you. That person is very smart and speaks his mind, which is both refreshing and insulting, and has earned him more than one broken nose. I honestly hope he's right. I wish that Angela knew what she was getting herself into. The second she emptied that last bottle of meds into the toilet, she had become set on a path from which there could be no return.
Angela Julia Verne hated her name. Her friends just called her Angel.