piccadilly chips are delicious

Chapter 10: Piccadilly Chips are delicious

“Hilary, dinner is ready.” Sofi sticks her head in the door.

“I’m not hungry.” I say, not even bothering to pull my face out of my pillow.

“You haven’t eaten anything all day, you have to come down for dinner.” She tells me in her worried voice, the one that I normally can’t say no to. But I say no anyway because I am so sick of the stupidity of people that no amount of Sofi guilt is going to get me out to bed.

“I ate with Colbey on my way home,” I lie hoping she will give up.

“No you didn’t. I asked him. And you didn’t eat breakfast. That means you haven’t eaten all day. Come down stairs.” I hear her stomp her foot, which would have made me laugh if I weren’t so mad.

“No.” What the heck was Colbey thinking telling Sofi what I did or didn’t do. It was none of his business. And what was Sofi doing asking him in the first place? It was my business if I did, or didn’t, eat.

“Hilary, come down stairs or I will file the report.” She uses her ultimate threat and I am up storming past her in a second, hating that she still had that held over me.

When I first showed up at Sofi’s we had written up a report for the police about Paul. On the day we went to give it to them I freaked out. I didn’t want Tristan to be in any more trouble than he was already in and I knew Paul wouldn’t just go away. As soon as he heard about it he would know where I was and I was sure that both Tristan and I would be dead with in the next 3 hours.

I freaked out and told Sofi that I had been lying. I told her that Paul never hit me, that he was nice and I loved him. I told her that I ran away because Tristan and I had a fight and I didn’t want to see him. She of course didn’t believe me; she knew that I was lying. She tried to make me see reason, tried to tell me that he couldn’t hurt me any more and that it wasn’t fair to Tristan not to do anything. But she didn’t get it. I would rather let Paul hurt him than be responsible for him dying because this way it was Paul’s fault not mine.

She knew the truth but I refused to let her do anything about it. I told her that I would lie if she took it to court and she decided that she wouldn’t file the abuse. We went home and ever since she has had the file held over my head. And like any good cousin she has used it to get me to do what she wants plenty of times.

Chapter 11:

Dinner at Sofi’s was defiantly not normal, but then again most things at Sofi’s weren’t normal. When you get thirty girls, most of them afraid of their shadows, together you are bound to have drama. Then you throw in the fact that half of us have eating disorders, the large majority was up all night, and a couple of us hate the world in general, then make us all sit down to dinner together, you are bound to have a mass suicide. Yet somehow Sofi got us all together, acting civil towards each other, 2 or 3 times a week.

I am convinced it is because they all felt like I do about Sofi. She is a pain in the butt, but she was a heck of a lot better than any of our actual parents. And we all knew she only got so irritating because she genuinely cared about us. Because of that we all tried to help her out and that meant we showed up to dinner and went along with her system.

Sofi worked out her system for dinner when she first started ‘Sofi’s Home’. When she had five girls it was easier. They all ate dinner at a different time and she sat and talked to them while they ate. Then on group dinner days, Tuesday and Thursday, they all pretended to like each other and then talked to Sofi later. There were too many girls to do that any more and so she broke us into our groups. We ate dinner with them every day and then on group dinner days we had group hour.

I hated group hour. We went into one of our bedrooms and sat there talking for an hour. It often involved tears and was some how supposed to get us over what ever crap we had been through but it sucked because I didn’t like them and I wasn’t going to tell them my secrets. And to make it worse Sofi grouped us up with the most random people she could.

Becky was the resident cheer leader and she could have gone on and on for the entire hour if she would stop crying and trying to be motivational. She was a ditzy blonde who referred to herself as our ‘group mother’, what ever the heck that meant.

Janice was . . . Janice. You couldn’t really describe her quite right. It was like she was living in a science fiction movie, only it was a really messes up science fiction movie. She ran around in a ‘cape of invisibility’ and fought aliens in her spare time. And if you tried to tell her that it wasn’t real she would challenge you to a light saber dual.

If I had to pick a favorite of the group it would be Sarah. She was cute in the puppy dog way and was always happy, but not annoyingly so. The problem was that she was only Sarah sometimes. Other times she was Samantha and no one liked her. She was horrible, she wouldn’t talk to anyone she just sat there staring at you and making weird noises. And then of course there were the bad days where she was Abby and yelled at every one about everything.

And finally to complete our messed up group we had Baylee. Baylee was like me in the fact that she didn’t sleep at night but she slept through class and group hour, something I could never do. She was terrified of being alone and was constantly clinging to someone. Most of us were opposite and couldn’t get far enough away from people and so when she came and hung on your arm, resting her head on your shoulder, it was hard not to freak out at her.

Chapter 12:

Some how Sofi got it into her head that locking the five of us in a room together and telling us to talk to each other or do some stupid game would be a good idea and because we all owed her so much we went and tried our best not to kill one another.

“Okay you guys. Sofi gave us a game to play. Aren’t you so excited?” Becky yells at us even though every one but me is crammed together on her bed.

“Ya, what are the rules?” Sarah, who is herself today, asks.

“Okay so I am going to change something in the room and then we sit here for fifteen minutes then we can talk about how the change made us feel”

Really? That was going to be easy and relatively painless. They were going to be quiet for fifteen minutes at a time, and when we only had to be in here for an hour that left hardly any time for them to talk.

“Sound like fun. What is the first change?”

“I am going to make the room dark. Will you get the blinds Sarah, and then hang a blanket up over the window?”

As soon as she says dark I start bracing myself. I was not going to freak out in front of them. I could sit in the dark for fifteen minutes; it was silly that I was even worried about it. It was just a room. It was just the dark. It wasn’t any big deal. At least that is what I am trying to tell myself and for a minute I think I am listening. Then Becky flips the light switch and something snaps and I am back in that stupid room; back with Tristan, back with Paul.

“Did you know that I love you?” Tristan whispers as he opens the front door and leads me up stairs, not letting go of my hand like he normally does when we come inside.

“Yes,” I whisper back, “Did you know that every time we come inside you start whispering? He isn’t even home.”

“I know he isn’t. But I always worry that he’s going to be mad when I get back. And he normally is, as your noticing.” He is still whispering. That was true. In the last few weeks since I moved in with them I had defiantly realized that Paul was angry a lot. I had always known that he had a short temper, he was around enough to figure that out, but I didn’t know how bad it was until I was living with him.

Paul was always mad at Tristan for some reason or another and it was normally the worst right when we got home. Paul was really strict about us being on time but we normally weren’t and so of course he would get mad. For every minute we were late I spent an hour in the basement, going crazy in the dark, and when I got out Tristan had fallen down the stairs, or tripped, or something else that always ended up giving him a bruise for every minute we had been gone.

And after that Paul wouldn’t be mad any more, at least until we did something else stupid.