Hey Everyone, Welcome to another chapter :) Thanks everyone for the reviews. One comment which was made by a few people was regarding the length of the chapters, I made a creative choice to keep the chapters fairly short because of the dark subject matter, and therefore the ones where it's talking about Alex's feelings of depression will be shorter :)

Thanks to gypsy rosalie, Guest, momadance420, TheSourFish, dc, and skye for the reviews :)

Chapter 4

'Hey honey,' Claire popped her head around the door. Alex looked up from the book she had been reading on the bed. 'How is your homework going?'

'I'm just writing an essay on Einstein and how his discoveries have informed modern science.' Alex looked at her mum over her glasses, enjoying the struggle of her mum's facial features to try and not show her confusion.

'Oh that sounds fun,' Her mum finally said vaguely.

'Why are you really here mum?' Alex put a bookmark in her book and looked at her mum. It's not as if you came to talk science with me, you barely understand the basic principles.

'I just wanted to make sure you were going okay with school, you know, the SAT's are a big thing.' Claire said cautiously. Don't you mean you want to make sure I'm going to top the school so you can brag about me, that's all I'm good for after all, Alex rolled her eyes.

'I'm fine.' Alex said shortly. You've never cared enough to ask about me so why should you care now? As much as she wanted to believe otherwise she knew this was a ruse so that her mum could convince herself that she was still a good parent, that she wasn't neglecting one of her children.

'O-okay,' a funny expression crossed Claire's face. 'Well grandpa just called and we're all thinking of heading to the beach this weekend, would you like to join us this time?' This time? Was her mother seriously trying to make her feel guilty for not going on the last family trip because she had a huge exam to study for?! Alex's face contorted before she got it under control and wrestled it back into her everyday emotionless mask.

'I don't know, you'll just yell at me for trying to study or read when it's not like I have anything to talk to anyone about anyway,' Alex shrugged.

'Okay, well if you'd prefer to stay home, that's fine too, just let me know if you change your mind.' Alex nodded and turned back to her book. Her mum stood and hesitated for a moment, looking as though she wanted to say something else. After a moment she just shook her head and left the room, leaving Alex feeling even sadder than before; a part of her had wanted her mum to say something. She was constantly torn between wanting contact with her family and wanting them to just leave her alone. What is wrong with me? How did I get to be so broken? The thing that annoyed her most about her family was that they just went on with life as if everything was normal. How could the world keep spinning? How could people just go on with their business when she felt this way?! At times it was comforting, she felt that if everyone else could just go on with their life that maybe her problem wasn't so big in the scale of things, it helped her feel like her mask of normalcy was working, that she was fooling people. Most of the time, however it just angered her, what had those people done to deserve to be normal, while she was doomed forever to need to pretend. There were simply no words to express this frustration, this anger, when she thought of putting it into words, all that came to mind was a guttural, animalistic scream of anguish. While that would certainly release some of the emotions, it did nothing to communicate her feelings to others, to make them see why she was so sullen all the time, why she felt dead inside.

Most of all, she was scared. Her mind, the one thing which had set her apart all these years, the one thing she had thought she could always count on, was failing her. She was held a prisoner at the ransom of her sanity and time was running out. There was no one at the other end to pay off her captor; her parents didn't seem to notice what she was going through, they just left her alone, left her drowning in the quicksand of negativity, her head was about to go under and they were just going on like nothing had happened, oblivious to her screams. Her parents, the two people she had considered to be her heroes, to be there for her always. How could they just ignore her suffering? How could they not love her enough to help? Were they really that blind? Really that self involved? Did they love Luke and Hayley more? Well that was a no brainer; Alex had always felt like the black sheep of the family. Hayley and Luke had always needed more attention, more supervision to stop them from doing something stupid. Alex had sort of slipped through the cracks, as the self sufficient child she had been left to her own devices, put in a corner to read while her parents chased Luke around to try and wrestle him into pants, or cleaned the bathroom after Hayley had tried to experiment with their mother's makeup. She had been left alone, loved only when her parents remembered she was there, or remembered that they had yet again left her out. Tears welled in Alex's eyes as she remembered her childhood. Least loved, most forgotten, that was the theme of her life.

Hope you all enjoyed it, please review and I'll see you all next week :)