Ren dumped her books on the floor of the closet where all the jackets and shoes were, reminding herself to make sure to pick them up before her dad came home. Ignoring her growling stomach, she walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. Her mother was already in there, fixing herself a martini. "Hi, Renny, how was school?"

"Fine, thank you," she murmured, knowing that that one martini was the first of many tonight.

"Where's your brother?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?" she asked. "Don't you walk home together anymore?"

"Not today, I left without him."

"Why?"

"Because he did something that made me mad."

"Well, that's awfully immature of you, wouldn't you say, Ren?"

"If you say so," she said, and climbed the stairs to her room.

Ren knew fully that there were so many people out there who had it worse than she did. But she couldn't help escaping to her room every night and hating her life. She didn't usually cry when she was alone because she was never taught how to, but somehow that made it worse. Not knowing how to show her feelings made her feel like less of a person. It made her alone, like she was drowning. All these unspoken emotions were strangling her and no one knew enough to help her.

Her family was one of the most screwed up groups of people she could think of. Her youthful looking mother was an alcoholic, and if she wasn't drunk she was even more useless. She cried a lot. Everyone knew she had thrown away her life when she got married at seventeen, especially her. Ren's father had yet to show that he cared about his family. He made Mrs. Rasmussen thirsty for the liquor she'd come to need by hitting her around. While he never used violence with his children, he knew what hurt them the most. Ryder was insecure because of how disappointed his dad made it clear he was of him. The youngest of the family at fifteen, Rindy sought the attention of boys to compensate for the attention she never received from her father, in turn lowering her self-concept because everyone thought that she was a slut.

Lastly, Ren figured that no one gave a shit about her, and she was right. Her mother was a child herself when Ren and Ryder had been born, and she was still in that same child-like mind-set. She still put herself first. Daniel Rasmussen had never shown any interest in anything she'd ever done, so she felt like a failure to him. She wasn't smart enough or athletic enough for him, just like she wasn't pretty enough or perfect enough for her friends.

So Ren didn't have anyone to turn to in her world at all, because she felt like no one genuinely cared about her or knew her.

After a while, she would stop feeling sorry for herself, but a lot of her time was spent rehashing her poor-little-me's up in her room.

Around eight, she got up, and left her room, heading in whatever direction she felt like going in.

Chris sat on his bed, trembling a little. He was trying to wrap his wrist up as well as he could with one hand, but he was experiencing some technical difficulties.

Usually he didn't cry when he was alone in his room after his dad had just kicked the crap out of him for no reason, but right now he couldn't help it. He wasn't sure what to do because the back of his head wouldn't stop bleeding from when his father had shattered a beer bottle over it. And he felt so bad for his little sister when his dad pushed her down in the kitchen and she had hit her head on the counter. But his mom had swept her up and was rocking her across the hall in her room, so at least she was getting some comfort.

But there wasn't anyone here to comfort Chris. There never was. Most of the time he could get by, but there were sometimes when he'd just had the worst day ever, and all he could do was just sit there and wish there was someone there who he could beg to make it all stop. Today was one of those days.

He was scared and lonely. Scared that maybe he was seriously hurt, and lonely because there wasn't anyone to stop him from getting hurt.

Around eight, his bleeding stopped, so he got up and decided to go find Gordie.