Living Pain (contest_entry)

I rand into my room, slammed the door, put my headphones on and blasted them. I searched my iPod for my mood. It had been a horrible day, so that meant rock, but nothing happy, Linkin' Park? No, that wasn't right. Seether, that was about right for right now. Fake It, appropriate. I lay there blasting it until my ears hurt.
"Just fake it if you're out of direction/ Fake it if you don't belong here/ Fake it if you feel like infection/ Whoa, you're such a fuckin' hypocrite"
Perfect that was my life in a nutshell. My parents thought I was a demon child, my friends were now non-existent, and now I find out that I'm getting a parole officer because I was 15 minutes later than normal from school because I asked a teacher a question after school. This was rediculous, and on top of that I had homework. Time to fake my homework, let my parents scold me for being a horrible child, then find out that they're out every night getting drunk, arrested, or just cheating on one another. And I'm the one that needs a parole officer? I shoved my face in my pillow and screamed. Maybe I should just run away, maybe I should just disappear, see how they like me then.
I had contemplated this so many times, I even packed a bag, just in case things got out of control. My mom banged on my door before entering anyway. Her lips moved but I couldn't hear her. She grabbed my headphones and put them on the other side of my bed.
"Karah, are you even listening?" she asked.
"Nope."
"You know, you have such a great life-"
"Life is pain, and anyone who says different is selling something," I informed her.
"Well, yours didn't have to be, you could have had everything and then you just threw it out the door. I mean, if I had had your life I would have-"
"What, not married an alcoholic, become a prostitute and gotten arrested for DUI's so many times that you have over 100,000 dollars in fines?" I asked.
She answered with a sharp slap as her hand collided with my face, "Now you take that back!" she screamed at me. I knew it, she had been covering with the I'm-a-good-mother-who-listens crap.
"Oh, so now it's ok to lie?"
"Grrr Fred!" she yelled. Shit, I'd forgotten dad was home. He stormed into my room with heavy steps.
"What?" he asked her.
"She just called you an alcoholic and me a prostitute, now punish her!" she said.
He grabbed my arm and yanked me off the bed and into a wall, shaking the whole house. I fell to the floor. It felt like every bone in my body had ricocheted off the wall and out of my skin. My head felt like my brain had been disconnected from the rest of me, filling my head with a loud ringing. He came to grab me again, I pulled myself up and focused enough to land a good kick between his legs immediately followed by him crumbling to the floor and me becoming sickly dizzy. My mom rushed to care for Fred as I grabbed my bag out of the closet and my iPod off the bed and ran out of the house, stumbling over my feet out the door.
I got to the street before I heard my mom yelling "Karah, get your ass back in here!"
I cut through a neighbors yard and circled back to behind my yard. They wouldn't look here. I rested my head against the wooden picket fence and tried to make the dizziness leave. I curled up, shaking from pain, I had a concussion. I knew I had to get help but a hospital was out of the question, I had two choices, neither was very appealing. One was to stay outside and risk getting caught and injuring my head more, or go to Ashton's house. Ashton wasn't really a friend but he was nice, and he had his own apartment. Ashton was 18 but had lived on his own since he was 15. It had taken him two years to get a steady enough job to get an apartment. We had been really good friends once, but after my parents found out I was hanging out with a boy and I came to school with a black eye because of it he avoided me completely. I understood but didn't want to. I had recently gone out of my way to find him and try to find out how it was living on his own because I couldn't take my parents anymore. We were both seniors at the high school but he always avoided being in my classes. Anytime I got close enough to ask a question he wouldn't answer, he ran.
I knew where he lived, it was in the sketchy part of town, but close enough to the high school that walking wasn't to long.
I heaved myself up slowly, trying not to aggravate my head and walked slowly in his buildings general direction. I could feel myself spacing out as I reached the sidewalk. The gray and brown buildings rose and crumbled around me. I stumbled down to Ford and Center Street and crossed down a side street. The graphity on the either side of me started to look familiar, I was only two blocks away. I stumbled as quickly as I could, by now my eyes were out of focus and my vision was covered in black spots.
I saw the forest green chipped door on my right and pushed it open. Now I was in trouble, Ashton was on the third floor and I was about to black out. I pulled myself up the steps, trying to focus on my feet and the steps. I started spacing out and found myself in front of Ashton's door on my knees, hand posed to knock. The noise of my knuckles against the wooden door rattled my head. The door opened and two feet appeared in front of me followed by the word "Karah, what have you done?"