I told you this was going to be different. This story does deal with some very sensitive issues, and I'm not going to sugarcoat them because I think it's important to talk about it. It's really hard for me to even write this story, but I'm so involved now that I don't think I can stop. I don't mean to offend anyone, and I in NO WAY condone any of the things that I have planned to happen in this story. But it is a drama story, and it will be full of drama. I hope you continue to read.

Two weeks later, he was still living in her house. She couldn't call it her home any longer, because it wasn't. It was just a place she was forced to sleep. She saw him every morning after she got up, every before after she went to sleep. Saw him as she was coming out of the shower and going into her bedroom, but she never spoke to him. He'd made casual attempts at conversation, the regular "It's hot out there, huh?" In reference to the weather, but she would never answer him. It was her way of telling Velma that it was not okay for her to bring a stranger into their home. It was a small stand, but one that worked effectively. Velma sighed loudly when Amber walked through the room without speaking, and Amber had come to live in the safe haven of her room.

She hated when rehearsals ended; that meant she had to go home. It meant she had to face Chip the oil tycoon again; she had to be in the same living quarters as him. She couldn't help that she hated him so much. He had taken the only place that had actually belonged to her; her home, and had transformed it into yet another situation where she had to pretend to be someone she wasn't. She had to be on guard at all times, couldn't relax for a moment. She hated the way he would smirk at her over the dinner table as he told stories that she couldn't care less about, and her mother would throw her head back and laugh hysterically. She hated the fact that he, or his money, had turned Velma into the kind of woman who waited on him hand and foot. Hated that she called him pet names like "papa bear" and always insisted on public displays of affection that made Amber's stomach churn.

She stood behind, and watched as the other council members filed onto the bus that took them home after every rehearsal. She felt herself shrinking into the corner.

"Aren't you coming?" Tammy asked, and Amber shook her head.

"No, I feel like walking today."

Tammy had never offered to walk home with her, and scurried to get onto the bus.

Amber had begun to walk home from the studio every day, because it took longer. She would stay backstage as long as she could, and once she saw it pull out, she knew she could begin the long trek to her house. She usually didn't get home until after dark, but she didn't care. She would have rather wondered the streets of Baltimore all night than spend a single second in the presence of that slime-ball her mother called a boyfriend.

She couldn't shake the feeling that there was something about him that she detested. Her mother, after all, had been the one to teach her to hate indiscriminately, and Amber did. She despised the way he looked at her, the way it looked like he was always preparing to say something, and then never did. It made her want to slap him, kick him, spit on him. She hated the way his thick, dirty fingers traced her mother's bony arms, hated the way he pretended that their home was his home. The way he would prop his feet on the table, belch loudly. It disgusted her.

She pushed through the cluttered house one evening after the show, and spotted him on the couch. She was hungry; starving, actually, but she refused to walk past him and into the kitchen. Instead, she scurried into her bedroom, closing the door behind her and throwing her schoolbooks onto the comforter of her bed. She slipped her feet out of her shoes and padded over to her vanity, taking a seat and beginning to loosen the cluster of bobby pins and hairspray from the base of her neck.

Her feet were sore and her back ached from dancing. Shelley had pushed her, yet again, and she was sure that she'd sprained her ankle, or at least twisted it. She glared down at the bulbous joint, running her fingers across the red, enflamed area slightly and wincing. She'd managed to make it through the rest of the show; thank God Corny hadn't sent her home. She'd managed to hobble around well enough to suit the rest of them, and though there was a hideous white-hot pain ripping through her, she had still walked home. She couldn't stand to be around him five minutes longer than she had to. It was the first time in her seventeen years that she had pushed herself to the limit, hadn't given into the pain just below her shins, and had made the near forty-five minute walk home.

She watched as her blonde ringlets fell around her face, and suddenly craved sleep. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in her soft bed, pull the covers over her head, sleep. But she couldn't. She was hot, and sweaty, and she knew she needed a shower. There was no avoiding it tonight.

She pushed her bedroom door open, her feet carrying her to the bathroom door, and slipping inside. Even before undressing, she turned the hot water on and let the steam encompass her. She let it fill her lungs slowly, let it swallow her up. She slipped out of her clothes and stepped into the shower, pulling the curtain shut around her. She let the hot water stream over her body, let it ravage her. She cried out softly when the temperature of the water left her swollen ankle stinging and red.

She spent a long time in the shower; it was the only other place besides her bedroom that she knew she was safe from Chip. When her skin began to wrinkle and turn the color of her rouge, she reluctantly turned the water off, and stepped onto the small bathmat beside the tub. She reached for her pink, soft robe and slipped it over her shoulders and tied the belt around her thin waist. She pulled it close to her as she opened the door, and held her breath as it creaked slightly. Her only goal, her mission, right now, was to get into her bedroom without running into the man she despised.

She turned to close the bathroom door soundlessly, and when she turned, she saw him. He was perched at the edge of the hallway, blocking the entrance to her room and grinning slyly at her.

"Have a good shower?" There was a sneer in his voice, and she felt her blood go cold. Something about the way his eyes traced down her body made her hug the robe closer, made her heart pound inside of her chest.

"M-Mother!" She called out for Velma, her toes curling in fear and rage.

"Oh, she's not here. I could probably help you with whatever problems you're having, though." His voice was cold, his eyes dark and dead. She pushed herself against the wall, squeezing her eyes shut as she felt him coming closer to her. Tears burned her retinas, she began to silently plead. Began to run through a litany of prayers in her head.

She stayed that way for minutes, pressed into a tiny bulge on the side of the wall, her eyes closed. When she finally opened her eyes moments later, he was gone. She felt her chest heaving as she rushed into her bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind her as an angry sob ripped through her chest.

She buried her face into her robe, trying her best to be silent. She didn't know, he could have been standing on the other side of the door, waiting to see if his intimidation had made an impression on her.

At that moment, she had convinced herself it was the most frightening thing that had ever happened to her in a usually charmed life. She began to lock her bedroom door religiously, each time she went to sleep at night.

However, she was young, and there were lots of things on her mind. She had been thinking about school, the show, Link, and she forgot to lock the door one night. That was the night he decided to destroy everything she was, and Amber had no idea what was coming.