Juilliard or Else (5 page)

The next morning, I woke before my alarm went off at seven. I laid there fumbling with my new necklace from my dad, sliding the heart back and forth along the chain. It was such a thoughtful gift. You wouldn't catch my mother doing anything nice like that for me. When I was little, I overheard one of the servants saying she didn't have a heart and that it was blackened. I asked my dad what that meant, but he just chuckled and then said I would understand one day – but I never saw that servant again.

I lay there for far too long, and when I checked the clock again, it read seven thirty-five. I knew my mother would be annoyed at me for wasting the day away in bed. Right then, my bedroom door burst open and in walked Mrs. Queen Bee herself.

"Abigail! What are you…get up." She clapped her hands. She walked over and threw open the drapes that I had closed to block out the sun.
It's too early
, I wanted to shout at her, but couldn't find the courage. I never found the nerve to do so; I'm such a wimp.

Squinting my eyes at the devil sun, I tossed my arm over my face, shielding myself from the dangerous light.

"Abigail," my mother snapped at me.

I sat up, rubbing my tired eyes and glanced at my perfectly put together mother. Not a hair was out of place, her nails were perfectly manicured, and her penciled skirt and blouse didn't have any wrinkles in it. This woman was nothing but perfection on heels, covered in pearls. I climbed out of bed and padded over to my bathroom to brush out my morning breath. My mother followed me and scrunched up her nose in disgust as she entered my bathroom.

"Has Isabelle come in here to clean lately?" she asked. I continued to brush my teeth, knowing that if I answered her with a mouth full of paste, another notch would be on my belt for the morning.

I spit out and rinsed. "I don't know, mother," I stated, rolling my eyes in secret so she wouldn't see.

"Unbelievable!" she shouted and I jumped. My mother threw her hands up in the air with a
"
displeased with Isabelle
"
look on her face, which I'd seen many times before.

Watching her pace in my mirror, I started stripping for my shower. My mother then walked over to the door and screamed "Isabelle" at the top of her lungs. I covered my ears as her voice echoed off the bathroom tiled walls and not even twenty seconds later, Isabelle was at the door with a frantic look on her face. She was looking around my room to find her mistake before my mother told her what she did wrong.

"Follow me," my mother commanded through her gritted teeth. I knew when my mother talked through her teeth, you should turn around and run the other way as if hell itself was trying to swallow you whole. That was never a good sign. Her temper would only rise higher.

When they both appeared in my bathroom, I was only in my white cotton bra and panties, but continued to strip and climb in the shower as if they weren't even there. I didn't even wait until the water was warm. I stepped into the freezing line of water to put my head underneath and ignore what was going to come, making me focus on the cold water, but unfortunately, I still heard her.

"Isabelle," she started to say cuttingly, "why does it smell as if something has died in this bathroom?" She commanded an answer from Isabelle. I could hear her high heel just tapping away on the tile, waiting impatiently – something she always did.

I was thankful for the spray of the now warm water to cover my face, so my mother couldn't see the guilt that was smothered all over it. I tried to ignore the conversation for Isabelle's sake, but couldn't help myself. I was actually afraid of my mother's shrieking voice, and before Isabelle could even started to explain, my mother interrupted her.

"I do not want any excuses, Isabelle. Clean the bathroom and I want it to sparkle." She emphasized the last words through her teeth, making me shutter. I felt Isabelle's pain; I knew exactly what she was going through at that moment.

I could see my mother's figure through the shower door, waving her hands about in front of Isabelle's face. I picked up the shampoo and started scrubbing my hair, letting the menthol suds soak into my scalp.

"You're on very thin ice, Isabelle!" I heard my mother yell.

When I was done, I padded back into my room with a towel wrapped around my body. I found that my mother had already selected an outfit for me to wear along with black leather boots that killed my feet every time I wore them. My ballet feet were made for flats or something without heels. Some girls could do it, but my feet were always too sore. Besides, I hated wearing heels, because being five feet six inches, they just made me even taller.

When I was dressed in my mother's choice of outfit, I stuffed my necklace underneath the sweater for my sake, so mother wouldn't bring up how unfashionable it was – plus she would just call it tacky and tell me to take it off.

When I walked back into my new, sparkling clean bathroom, it no longer smelled as if something
"had died
" as my mother put it. But trying not to ruin the cleaning job that Isabelle had just done, I still found my way back to the gleaming white porcelain to complete my morning ritual.

Eventually, I finished making myself feel dirty and pulled my blond hair back in my usual ballerina bun. Then I put on a light amount of mascara and lip gloss to complete my simple look. I was never one to wear makeup; I was lucky to know how to put mascara on.

On one hand, I was happy to get out of this house and leave my mother, but on the other, I felt sad to leave my father behind to deal with her every day.

Brushing away the confusing feelings that were eating away at my conscience, and my heart, I turned around, leaving my childhood buried in my past. Finally ready to be on my own and become my own person, I was no longer the person who my mother saw; I was me.

I found my father in his very spacious office, surrounded by stacks of paperwork. The walls were lined with an array of books, but most of them pertained to law. My father owned his own law firm and was the top Criminal Justice attorney in New York…plus he had the best team around. He's even had celebrities hire him to handle some of their cases. He was sweet and loving at home, but in the courtroom, he was ruthless, cruel, and emotionless; he could eat you alive for breakfast and make you feel like you were nothing your whole life.

I couldn't believe my eyes and ears when I observed him one day in court. I was terrified of him and he saw that. Later that day, he pulled me onto his lap to have one of our talks. I ended up confessing how mean he sounded. He kissed my cheek with an apology and explained to me that it's his job to win and to be cruel no matter what. It became a lot clearer the older I got. He's had thousands of cases but has only lost three in his eighteen years of being a lawyer.

Ruthless.

He always buried himself away in his work, but in a way, he had to become a workalcoholic in order to keep my mother's shopping habit up to her standards. We had to have the finest things that topped New York living. Not only did my parents have a prime house on
5th Avenue,
but everyone knew who we were. I could understand why my mother was so worried I would drag her name through the mud about attending Juilliard. She was the Queen Bee of New York high society. Every woman wanted to be her. She was cold and heartless, just like my father when he was in the courtroom, but she has always been that way; he has not.

I watched my dad highlight some paragraphs in a law book before he noticed me standing there, watching him. He looked up over his glasses and set the highlighter down before he spoke.

"Yes, Angel?" My father sat back in his chair, stretching out his legs beneath the desk and folding his arms over his chest.

"I just wanted to say 'see ya later' before I left," I answered. I reached in my sweater and pulled out my new necklace, sliding the little heart back and forth across the chain.

When I met his dark brown eyes, they clouded over with sadness, and I wanted nothing more than to comfort him. Walking around his desk until I was standing in front of him, he grabbed my hand to pull me into his lap, coddling me one last time. He kissed my head and I pulled back to look at him. He reached out to take hold of my stunning new necklace, which I already cherished.

"This is perfect, just like you." He smiled as it slipped from his grasp and landed back on my chest, the perfect brilliant silver shining against my black top.

"Thank you, Daddy. I love it." I smiled at him.
"Let's take a pic." Pulling out my iPhone, I opened the camera, making sure to turn on the front facing camera feature so we could see our faces on the little screen.

"Smile," I said quite cheesily. My dad chose that moment to dig his fingers in my side. Making me giggle and squirm, I almost fell backwards off his knee. I heard the camera click as I laughed and tried to move out of his reach. He started to chuckle and held me up in his strong arms. Once we settled down from our excitement, I reached down to pick up the phone which I had dropped in the process of our enjoyment. It landed on the Persian rug below our feet.

When I looked at the screen, I was in awe with the results.
It was really a picture-perfect moment of me and my dad together. He was looking up at me with a big grin, his dimples showing the wrinkles on the corners of his eyes. I, on the other hand, looked like I was in complete disarray. My head was thrown back in happiness and I looked like I was about to fall backwards. I smiled and saved it as my wallpaper so I could see it every time I looked at my phone. Kissing his cheek, I left his office with a new memory of us.

Entering the empty kitchen, I went to the fridge for some orange juice and something small to eat. Digging around, I finally found some cut strawberries and blueberries.
Perfect.
Making my way over to the granite countertop to set the bowl of fruit down, I started to eat the delicious, juicy fruit. The fresh strawberries mixed with blueberries were so refreshing; I was enjoying every single bite. After eating only a couple of bites of my food, I heard the footsteps of Queen Bee's heels on the tile floor entering the kitchen.

I took a deep breath and groaned. I was never prepared for whatever was coming my way. I felt like I had a checklist whenever she walked into a room; back straight, feet and legs together, elbows off the counter.

"Abigail. There you are," she huffed. "We need to get going. Andrew already put your belongings in the truck and I want to leave before the traffic hits," she explained to me while moving about in the kitchen, not really doing anything – just moving around, making me dizzy watching her.

After taking a refreshing drink of my orange juice, I set my cup down. "Mother, it's New York; there's always traffic." I shrugged my shoulders like it wasn't a big deal. Anyways, it was New York. It was one of the many reasons why this city was so famous: the traffic.

After taking another bite of strawberry, I set my fork down in my now empty bowl and glanced up at my mother. Her blue eyes turned angry as they were staring daggers at me, making me want to run into a corner and hide. That's when I immediately regretted my choice of words. Shockingly, my mother didn't point out my wrongness, but the look she had in her eyes was terrifying; her expression alone was threatening.

Oh crap, not good
.

Everything was screaming at me to run for my life, to turn away as she silently stalked towards me. But I couldn't – my feet were plastered to the floor. Her high heels didn't make any sound on the tile floor. Her eyes never parted from mine as she got closer and closer to me. This moment, I didn't see coming; it was one of those moments a child always feared.

It was then I felt the sting hit my cheek. The loud smack echoed through the kitchen. My head snapped sideways as the heat bloomed across my pale cheek, and my eyes watered at the corners as tears slowly dripped down my face. My mother had never hit me, but then again, she had never hugged me either. My hand went up and cupped my inflamed cheek, and my mother chose that moment to get right up in my face.

"You
never
speak to me like that again," she hissed, her blue eyes, fierce and angry.

Footsteps then rushed up behind me, and a pair of warm hands covered the tops of my shoulders.

"Carol, enough!" my father barked. I saw my mother's eyes fume with rage as they met my dad's. She didn't look back at me when she turned and left the room.

My dad turned me in his arms and gathered me into his chest. Breathing in his fatherly scent, I let my tears fall onto his white shirt, soaking it through. I still cupped my cheek.
She hit me
. So many emotions were running through me all at once. I pitied my mother at the moment. I didn't want to see her, to be around her. I wanted so bad to just tell her off to her face for touching me like that.

She hit me.

But do I have the courage to do so?

I pulled away from my father's embrace and staggered backwards, just recognizing that I was trembling…and so badly that I could barely hold myself up.

"Abigail," my father said, reaching out to enfold me back into his warm, safe embrace, but I ran out of the kitchen before he could catch me. "Abigail."

She hit me.

I stumbled up the stairs as I made my way down the hall and slammed the door to my room. I barely made it to my bathroom before I vigorously shoved two fingers down my throat, causing myself to gag hard into the toilet bowl. Today, I did this out of anger; normally, I only did it because I was sad.