Life Sucks

Prologue

A/n: This story has been in my head for quite some time, so I'm glad to finally post it. It'll be a tee story with all four sisters eventually. I tried to include real information on their teen years and expand upon it. This chapter is in Piper's POV...the next chapter will be in Prue's. Prue is 17, Piper is 15, Phoebe is 13 and Paige is 11. Enjoy the story! sadly, I don't own Charmed.

My name is Piper Halliwell, and I'm 15 years old. It's not as if I expect you to remember any of that. I'm nobody…the human equivalent of invisible. I don't have any friends, although it's not like anyone in my family would notice. I spend my days going to school and being invisible. Then I come home, where I try my hardest to stay that way. School is definitely a daily torture, but home is not much better.

It's not like I have a bad home or anything. I have a nice house, and all the material things I could ever want. My sisters make my life a little difficult. They don't really mean to do it. They can't help being the way they are. How are they, you ask? The best word to sum up Prue and Phoebe is perfect. They're everything I wish I was, but no I never would be. They try to be nice to me, but we all know that I can never be equal to them.

Prue is 17, and the social opposite to me. Where I am a looser geek on the chess team, she is a popular cheerleader, and president of the student body. If that wasn't enough, she has the hottest boyfriend on the planet. Andy isn't only cute, but he's also really nice, even to me. Prue is graced with good looks, beauty, and confidence. She is so good at just about everything, that I could almost hate her. Almost.

The thing about Prue, about both my sisters actually, is that you can't help but liking them. They seem to have this likeable quality that I just lack. We might even be friends one day. That is, if I ever stop feeling so very inferior around them. I'm not really great to look at. I'm not that smart either. I've gained the status of nerd simply by trying really hard. Come to think of it, I'm not good at anything. I'm just Piper, unremarkable, ugly, and invisible.

My sister Phoebe is two year younger than me. She was cooler than me since she was five. She was very different than Prue, but just as popular at her middle school. If I had to chose one word to describe Phoebe, it would be rebel. Just to make our grandmother, who we called Grams, angry, she'd do just about anything. Phoebe's never met a rule that she didn't like to break. She was even caught shoplifting once.

Despite her tough exterior, Phoebe was actually very nice. At least Phoebe could never make me feel stupid. Phoebe was the worst student in the world. She was also a lot of fun. She was always after me to lighten up and have a good time. Maybe I didn't know how. I was just always the calm, level headed one. Grams always said I was the one who kept the family together.

Grams was another reason that home was never very fun for me. Strict and old fashioned, she had raised my sisters and I since I was five. We were never aloud to go out late, or do much at all. Prue and Phoebe, especially Phoebe, never had any trouble breaking those rules. As if I had ever even had the chance to do something exciting. I'd never be invited to anything. If I was though, I'd be much to frightened to break the rules.

I had always been this plain, boring and unremarkable person. It didn't help that I had always looked plain and unremarkable as well. I was the shortest person of my age bracket, and my classmates would never let me forget it. Trying to make my hair look nice was a loosing battle. It was a dull shade of brown, and it fell just past my waist. It had just enough frizz to never look tamed.

The only feature I even semi-liked about myself was my eyes. I have extremely long eyelashes, which have always worked in my advantage. My eyes of course were not remarkable. They were dark brown, and Grams sometimes said they reminded her of the colour of chocolate. The real reason that I didn't cringe every time I caught sight of my eyes were that they were one of the few things I had gotten from my mother.

Before I was five, it was my mother who raised us. She drowned when I was five. I don't remember very much about her, but what I do remember was wonderful. Snatches of memory come back to me now and then. When I was four, she taught me to bake cookies. For my fifth birthday, only a few months before she died, she bought me the Malibu Barbie I had begged her for. One of my earliest memories was of her funeral.

I missed my mother a lot, but not as much as I think Prue does. She was there when our mother died. She never did talk about it. I knew she thought about it sometimes. When she thought nobody was looking, she would go to the lake where our mom died and just cry. She never took swimming lessons with us. Prue was terrified of water, and I knew exactly why.

Grams raised us since our mother had died. Shortly after our mother's death, we lost our father too, but in a different way. No, he didn't die or anything. When I was 8 years old, my father left and never came back. I remember the last time I saw him. It was my birthday, actually. Horrible things always tend to happen on my birthday.

He had gotten me such a beautiful doll. I still have it, although I never look at it. He was fighting with Grams. I don't remember exactly what they were fighting about, but they were both really angry. It frightened me. Then I remember my father saying that he wouldn't let her raise us like that. He walked out and slammed the door. I never saw him after that. I didn't even receive so much as a card on my birthday.

When I thought of my mother, I felt a great sadness. When I thought about my father, all I felt was anger. That's why I tried not to think of him very much. Grams and my sisters were never any help. I couldn't talk to any of them about how I felt about anything. Grams would tell me not to worry about my idiot of a father. She never did like him much. Then she would go on to say that I had a great destiny that didn't involve Grams. She was big on destiny.

I tried to imagine what my sisters would say if I ever tried to talk to him about anything. If I ever tried to approach Prue, which I would never do, she'd probably be to busy to even look at me. Prue was involved in a myriad of extra curricular activities. She was always busy with cheerleading, or the school play, or the basketball team. I knew she would never take the time to even think of me. If I did try to talk to her, she would do nothing but judge. That's why I didn't try.

Phoebe was a slightly different story. She was a bit more approachable than Prue. She was the one that I talked to last fall when I sent dad a birthday card, only to have it be sent back. Phoebe would understand, and she would listen. That was all well and good, but it was what she would do after that worried me. Phoebe would want me to get my mind off of whatever was troubling me by doing something fun. Phoebe's idea of fun was egging someone's car, or tp-ing someone's house.

That's how I became isolated in my own family. I had no one to talk to, neither here, nor at school. I wasn't like them, any of them. I didn't fit in anywhere, not with my family, and not at school. I was just…Piper. None of the categories or labels that people made for themselves seemed to fit me. Weirdo seemed to sum up what I was. Not only different, but weird.

Lunch at school and dinner at home were the worst. I hated my school cafeteria. It was just so hard for me to find a place within the cafeteria walls. The tables full of my chattering fellow students did nothing but intimidate me. I would stand with my tray for what seemed like hours, not sure where I would dare to sit. That was, of course, before someone would trip me, or something equally as embarrassing. I usually ended up at the edge of a table of fellow outcast, not even daring to look at anyone.

Dinner at my house was almost as bad. I wasn't sure which was worse, the uncomfortable silence, or the forced conversation. Grams, my sisters, and I, weren't what you'd call a normal family. We were 4 very different people forced to share the same house, and the same dinner table. There was nothing really that we could talk about without yelling. Grams and my sisters had forceful personalities, so most of the time, by staying quiet, I stayed invisible.

I thought that nothing would ever change. I'd be the odd one out at home, never knowing where I fit in. That's where I tried to be invisible. I wanted my family to ignore me, but it would never work. At school, no one would ever know that I was there. I was invisible, it was impossible to notice me. I sat in the back of class. I was always tuned out to what the teacher was saying. Instead of listen, I would draw on my pants, or on my binders.

I kind of liked that things would never change. My life wasn't exactly good, scratch that, it sucked. Still, I had settled into a routine. I felt comforted since knowing that things would never change, nothing could get any worse. Perhaps I was a little frightened by change. Still, for as long as I could remember, things had been just like this. I was always the odd one out. My life may suck, but it has always sucked.

Everything changed a rainy Tuesday that started like any other day. Prue rushed out the door early, after grabbing a bagel. Grams was trying to force Phoebe to eat. My youngest sister, as always, was refusing. I was staring at my glass of orange juice, trying to pretend I wasn't there. Finally, after Grams made Phoebe finish her toast, and I had given up trying to be invisible, it was time for me to go to school.

Actually, it was a little past the time I had to go to school. I was always a little late so it didn't matter. No one would notice anyways. I watched for a moment, as Grams and Phoebe argued. This was a regular occurrence. Neither of them noticed me leaving. They never noticed me ever, so it was stupid for me to expect anything to change. I walked out the door looking down at my shoes. I didn't expect today to be any different.

I walked out into the rain, ignoring as the water seeped through my clothes. I didn't usually mind being wet. It gave me something to think about other than my situation. It was a good twenty minutes until I arrived at school. There was nothing to do in the silence that the rain had created except think. I thought about the horrible monotonous routine my life had become. I wondered if anyone would even care that I was taking my time out in the rain…if anyone would worry that I might catch cold.

I didn't know it, but that was the day that everything changed, and nothing was ever the same again. That was the day we met Paige.