xXx To Heather ,

Thank you for being my beautiful Goth Twinsie! xXx

It was a bright and sunny morning as I reclined on the front porch of my immense white farmhouse. I had a copy of Dracula in my lap and I was quite into it. It was summer; school had been out for about a week now, and all my classmates were busy wandering around in their summertime glory. All of the females I attended school with would be at the beach, wearing small bikinis, bearing their bodies to pretty-lifeguard-boy Stanley Porter- only the best looking guy in school. And while all the girls were busy trying to make it into the heaven that hear is Stanley Porter's bed, all of the boys were either skating down in the skate park or off joyriding in their crappy cars, considering that half of the boys in my class had all gotten their drivers licenses in the past school year. Anyway, my town was amuck with wild, crazy, weed-smoking, horny soon-to-be- seniors.

And then there's me.

I definitely wouldn't call myself a normal teenager. I was the type of teenager girl that had more interest in Edgar Allen Poe than in any of the boys in school. At least he had a way with words. I attend a school in which only the males have concern about their bodies, their cars, and which girl they'll be taking to bed. Yep, I lived in a town of complete ignoramus'.

Speaking of ignoramus'…..

As I read on, my mother's ugly bright pink jaguar pulled into the driveway. My mother was a complete and utter floosy. She had just returned from the local hairdressers, making sure that her fake blond hair appeared as natural as possible, and that not one strand of her actually-brown hair was conspicuous. She strode up the driveway, Coach Purse dangling from her arm, her high-heels making an annoying clicking noise.

She paused before me as I was lost half-way down the page. I could feel her eyes on me before I actually noticed her.

"Minnette, must you always be reading?" she whined. "Why don't you go down to the beach with your friends?" Her hand touched my extremely pale face. "You could use some sun."

I cleared my throat, turning my eyes back to Dracula. "And what friends would that be?" I retorted. It was true; I really didn't have anyone to chum around with. There were a few other outcast girls that found me interesting enough to tolerate my uniqueness enough to make me their lab partner. Otherwise, we never saw each other outside of school, not on purpose, anyway. There had been a few times that I had run into some of them at the local grocery store or at the ice cream shop.

My mother made one of those pesky I'm-disappointed-in-you clicks with her tongue. "What about that nice redhead from downtown?"

I quirked a brow. "You mean Helena?" I sighed. My mother was too dumb to realize that I've told her this a thousand times before. "Her parents don't like me," I said calmly. "They said I'm too weird."

Mother scoffed. "Well, you are."

My family was much too unaccepting of many things. I knew that the lot of them disliked my lifestyle. I am what I called a "Victorian Goth." I enjoyed Victorian clothes, shoes, accessories and even décor. The only catch was that everything I wore was black, only I allowed my outfits to be accented with white, purple, silver or red.

Like my mother, my father and my big sister were social life junkies. On the weekends the three of them found some party to attend, it wasn't hard since they knew everyone in the neighborhood. I was left behind with my world of books, everlasting pile of CD's, my camera, and, of course, my sketchpad. Besides reading, drawing, music and photography were my main vices in life.

But, just like any "normal" teenager, I hated school.

"Daddy, Claire and I are going to the Jones' for a party," she sang. "I'll leave some money on the table so you can order out." And with that, she popped into the house.

True to her word, my mother, father and sister, Claire was readying to leave. I just so happened as to be in the bathroom just a little too long because Claire began to pound her fist into the door.

"Open up! I need my lipstick!"

When I was finished, I grabbed Claire's lipstick rom the shelf, opened the door, and threw it at her aggressively as I strode past her.

My sister Claire was possibly the bitchiest older sister in history. Everything she ever said to me ended with some kind of an insult. As I grew older, and I began to blossom into myself, my sister was always finding ways to torture me. Once in middle school, I had not wanted to attend a school dance. She had dressed me up in pink, stuck my beautiful raven-black hair into a nasty blond wig and plastered whorish makeup on my face.

"You bitch!" she yelled when the lipstick hit her in the boobs. I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a mug. She followed me. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Making green tea with ginseng," I replied coolly. I began to mix the ingredients in the mug. I stirred it with a spoon.

"You're such a freak!" she hissed.

I made no attempt to argue with her.

My mother came out of her bedroom wearing the most disgusting dress ever. It was rub red- I did like the color- and it was nastily short and low cut around the breast area. She looked like a whore. My father looked no different, only his shorts were to his knees. He wore a muscle shirt and a pair of ten dollar sunglasses he tried to pass off as those fancy two-hundred dollar pairs you could buy in Hollywood. Claire was wearing a low-cut V-neck and a short skirt. What disgusted me so much was that I was skinnier than all of them, and I never bore my body like that.

"We'll be home late," my mother said loudly. "Don't wait up for us."

Claire and she headed out the door, followed by my father, who said: "Don't burn the house down while were gone!"

I picked up my hot tea and sipped it. "Don't plan on it."