MARELLA REDEK CURSED herself inside her head. She shouldn't have done that. She should have just left that kid alone in the middle of the hallway. It wasn't worth it. She shouldn't risk ruining her reputation and become scorned by absolutely everybody, just like she had been once before. 

But she had too. She couldn't explain why, but when she saw that jerk of a boy Octavian bullying Dex on the ground, she just had too. Now, she could only hope that he was still scared of her enough to not add tattletale to his list of personality traits and rat her out to Stina. 

She went through the rest of theater class in a haze, pretending to listen as Sophie attempted to read the part of the Fairy Queen to practice for auditions coming up. 

"I think it went okay, didn't it?" Sophie asked her, tugging her backpack over her shoulders as Marella waited for in the doorway for her, per student buddy instructions. 

They set off down the hallways, towards the dismissal area, where Marella had to drop Sophie off at the bus station before she walked home alone. 

"Yeah you were fantastic." 

Marella tried to keep the sarcastic slur of her voice from the statement, but old habits died hard and she could hear it in every word she spoke. Thankfully, Sophie didn't seem to realize, and beamed happily.  

They eventually reached the bus stop, and Marella left Sophie to wander about the area. She quickly left before anybody saw her. Unfortunately, it seemed her luck with the previous hallway incident had run out. 

She felt a tap on her shoulder and fought the urge to grunt in frustration and turned around, expecting Stina, or maybe even Maruca, but was shocked when she saw Biana. Then, she noticed Fitz and Keefe walking towards them, and she her mood was suddenly much improved. 

"Hey! Marella right?" Biana asked her. Marella fought the urge to scoff at her. They had been going to the same school for over a year, sitting at the same table for lunch, and even shared a Literature Class, and she STILL wasn't sure of her name? Jeez, popular, rich girls. 

"Uh, yeah. Why?" 

"Just wondering. You're student buddies with the new girl right? Sophie?" 

Marella nodded and started walking down the sidewalk, and to her surprise, Biana, Fitz and Keefe followed suit. 

"Why are you following me?" Marella asked bluntly. "We aren't even friends." 

Biana rubbed her arm awkwardly and looked down at the ground. Keefe started to hum awkwardly and looked up at the sky, and Fitz suddenly became very interested in kicking a small rock across the ground. 

"Well," Biana said finally. "Um, Mrs. Dizznee called us to the office and umm..." 

"Asked us to hang out with you because she thought you needed some people in your life that weren't absolute jerks because you seem really lonely," Keefe blurted out really quickly. 

Marella's eyebrows creased and she stared at the three of them in both fustration and anger. "DOES EVERYBODY THINK THAT I'M A DYSFUNCTIONAL, SOCIALLY INCAPABLE, BALL OF FUCKING FIRE? I CAN HANDLE MYSELF! I'M PERFECTLY FINE! SO, WHY DON'T YOU GUYS JUST LEAVE AND STOP WASTING YOUR TIME OVER SOMEBODY YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T WANT TO HANG OUT WITH?!" 

She stormed off down the sidewalk, leaving the shocked trio behind her. 

Marella felt her heart pounding, and she was panting with anger as she walked the mile difference between her house and her school. Her feet ached and blistered from the stupid heels she had decided to wear, and when she finally got home and turned the key in the back door, she felt a dull sense of relief when she finally kicked them off. The feeling however, was quickly overwhelmed by the sense of fury that came over her. 

She entered her house, which was actually quite big, even though it was only her father that worked. It was a two story home, made from solid brick, with a smoking chimney and a small white wrap-around porch.

Marella carefully put down her backpack and walked slowly over to her mother, trying to calm her anger into a small bomb inside of her. Her mother was already very fragile, seeing her daughter nothing but a ball of joy would completely push her over the edge. 

"Hey...Mom!" Marella said happily, and ran over to hug her, smiling as genuinely as she could. 

Caprise Redek was sitting primly on the sofa, staring at the TV screen, which had been playing the same thing for the entire day. She was staring at the TV blankly, her eyes glazing over, and her hands folded in her lap. She didn't even seem to acknowledge her daughters presence. 

Marella sighed silently, and left her mother to the TV commercial, and headed up the stairs with her school bag. She knew she couldn't blame her Mom for her extensive brain damage, but it was hard, having a Dad that was never present, and having a Mom who couldn't even form proper words and didn't understand anything. 

Caprise Redek sustained extensive brain damage when she fell off the roof one day, while she was repairing it. It was a miracle she had survived, and Marella knew she should be grateful, but she couldn't help but curse the entire world at her terrible misfortune. 

Thinking about her Dad on the other hand, just made Marella plain angry. Whenever he came back home from his "job", it was already nighttime, and pitch black outside. He always thought Marella was asleep whenever he started to yell at her Mom, but she was never. She stayed awake every night, and heard his screaming, and her mother's silence. 

Marella had always tried to stifile out the yells with a pillow, but even they couldn't stop the screams from echoing in her mind and showing up in her nightmares. 

And then, when she thought it couldn't get any worse, then came the alcohol. 

It started with a little, and then it came more and more often, in gallons. She remembered heading downstairs one night for a midnight study snack to find her Mother curled up in a ball on the couch, arms wraped frimly around her body and shaking her head, muttering nonsense along with a few 'no's under her breath. Marella then remembered turning around and seeing her father passed out on the kitchen chair, a foaming, almost finished gallon of beer besides him. 

And then she thought about Stina, and how she was basically like a slave to a master to her, doing her every bidding because she was too afraid to not. Because she saw desperately wanted somebody, anybody in her life that would listen, or at least try to listen. It didn't even matter if they treated her like crap, as long as she had somebody to hang onto, to keep her from falling into the terrible darkness that was her life, it would be fine. 

She had gotten used to it by now, but today, thinking of those stupid  Vackers and Keefe, and then thinking about her stupid consuler who thought she had to be sent fake friends in order to help her. She was fine on her own! And besides, who did they think they were, those stupid, popular, rich kids who had nothing to hide and nothing bad happen in their life except getting a fancy outfit dirty?! It. Just. Made. Her. So. MAD! 

Before she could stop herself, she punched the wall as hard as she could with her fist and screamed at the top of her lungs. 

And as she felt the blood run down her knuckles, all the things piling up on her made Marella do something that she hadn't done in a long time. 

Marella Redek sat on the bed in her room, buried her head in her arms, and started to cry.