POV: Vanessa
I was upstairs in my room, with the door locked. It was Thursday afternoon. The boys were out, Margo was out, Claire was out, Molly was babysitting and my parents had a meeting. For once I had the whole house to myself. It was 4 o clock. I decided I would make dinner for myself and hoped to god no one would be home for awhile, especially Adam. I knew I needed to go to the hospital. I was going to go with Reba later tonight; she and I had discussed this earlier. Not only did Adam rape me, he also drank. And did drugs. And hit me. No one else though. And I didn't know if anyone else in the family knew about it. I hoped it wouldn't happen to Claire, or Margo. Or even Molly or Mom. Brian also drank. Nicky and Jordan did drugs and frequently came home stoned, or drunk. There had been so many arguments in my house in the past year with Mom, dad and Molly about this. But it never seemed to stop and neither did they.
My mom was a good mom. She cared about everyone, even people who weren't her children. She was worried about Margo's eating problem and wanted to help but wasn't quite sure how. She made people feel comfortable, warm and often had a plate of brownies, cookies, cupcakes or muffins on the table for us. She let us be independent and make our own decisions. My dad was a pretty good dad too I guess although I never saw much of him. Sometimes he'd sleep at the office.
Even though Adam was my brother, it was hard to think of him that way, especially after what he did to me and what he'd been doing. I had escaped to my world of magic, candles and incense and read poetry by Maya Angelou and listened to music by artists such as Tori Amos and Cyndi Lauper, among others. I admired those women because they'd all been through the situations I was going through right now and had turned it into art.