Hello and welcome to this story. This is a companion story to "For the last time", but you don't have to have read it to make sense of this one. Somehow you have managed to stumble across it, so do your best to read along and stuff. And don't forget to review!

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So now that I'm seeing a guidance counselor and all, she wants me to keep a journal. Apparently somehow this will help me on my "road to happy recovery" or something like that. When she talks I can't always listen; I mean, with Paige on my back I can't really think of anything but wonder what I'll come home to.

OK, so I guess I should start this out with stuff about me, right? Well, I'm 15 years old, blonde, popular, and I'm a cheerleader. My boyfriend is the lead football player. My biggest problem is if my nails don't match my outfit, or if they break.

See? Did you believe me there for a second? Yeah, I thought you might. My problems go way deeper than that. But for the whole thing, I think we have to start at the beginning. Way at the beginning. Like, 10 years ago, when I was 5.

I was a happy kid. My mom would braid my (bright red) hair and say that it was beautiful, and tell me that I had the cutest freckles. I was a daddy's girl at heart though; we would spend hours out in the park playing catch. He taught me how to play baseball, guitar, how to catch a fish, not to be afraid of spiders… so much.

When I was about 6, my parents went to a party and left me with a babysitter. I was still up waiting for them at 2 in the morning, and when they came in to say good night, I could smell the alcohol on their breath. That was only the beginning of what I call the Hell of my life.

After that, my parents would spend days just drinking. I was often told to go to a friend's house.

I had a best friend. Her name was Carly. In grade 2, we sat together and made friendship bracelets together at lunch-time. We always switched lunches; she wanted my lunchables and I wanted her homemade sandwiches with peanut butter and jam. Her mom started to baby-sit me after school when my mom had to work late; she was a secretary. My mom, I mean, not Carly's mom. She [Carly's mom] stayed at home to take care of Carly and her baby brother Andrew.

After one particularly long night when my mom didn't pick me up, Carly's mom came over. She was yelling, and I hid in my room. I heard something about lazy, cheap ass parents who didn't take care of their kid, drunks, get help… I was worried.

Shortly after that we moved. Daddy stopped drinking, but mom didn't. Daddy got a job as a pilot and was away a lot, and when he was gone, she would make me do all the chores. Fun, fun, fun.

We never had that close mother-daughter relationship. Never will, either…

I want to scream. Marco, I love him to death, but he's all happy I'm-in-love-with-Dylan, and he either hangs out with Dylan or is talking about him. And Ash sits and wonders what she did wrong with Craig. It's like she has nothing bigger to worry about than a boy.

Well, my lunch period is almost over, and I want to end this soon. Is this a letter? A journal entry? Let's call this a letter and I'll sign it and be done with it.

Yours truly,

Ellie Nash