Beautiful Bedlam Read online

  “TIME? TIME? You need time?” her mother scoffed instantly.

  “You’re nothing but a waste of space loser! Go! Like we need you anyway!” Maria screamed spitefully with tears continuously streaming down her beautiful face. Sienna knew she didn’t mean that. Or maybe she did? She probably didn’t even know if she meant it. She had her white terrycloth robe on over her pajamas, had her long thick dark hair all down her back, with not a smidge of make up on yet she still managed to look better than most women half her age did with a full face made up in considerably better lighting. Her mother, especially when angered, which was almost every day now always resorted to cursing and swearing in rapid quick fire Spanish. Maria Rivers had come to this country when she was sixteen years old. Twenty-five years later and she had still not lost the bite of the Colombian accent.

  “Dad, stop! What are you doing?” Meredith asked frantically as she hovered outside the front door. In her parents’ twenty-year marriage, none of the girls had ever witnessed a single argument between their parents up until a month ago. Almost every night resulted in bickering, point scoring, nasty remarks then by the end of dinner (if her father bothered to show up) screaming, shouting, tears, smashing of random ornaments and glass objects. They had always sent the girls to their rooms by then. So, for them to witness the true volatility behind the relationship their parents once had was both telling and damaging to the girls who had not expected this. They had all hoped it was just a phase, a bump on the otherwise perfectly untarnished road. Maybe it was a midlife crisis? She was pretty sure old people got them a lot. And there was always menopause…that would explain a lot.

  “Girls, go back to bed.” Phil sighed as he saw the twins standing by the door, crying.

  “Where are you going?” Sienna asked abruptly. Her voice rang out in the long awkward silence immediately grabbing hold of everyone’s attention. Her father looked at her first with bewilderment as to what she was doing across the road in the middle of the night all by herself then his face faded to its former depressed setting except this time he had the decency to look slightly ashamed and guilty. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. He was already sweating profusely probably because he knew what he was doing was so wrong.

  “Sienna-“ he winced as he said her name and looked as though he was about to apologize. The apology never came not because he had changed his mind about leaving or because he was feeling indifferent, no. It was because her mother as always cut him off quickly.

  “What are you doing out here?” she snapped angrily and gave her a look that was enough to strike the fear of God in to the hearts of even the most unbelieving of men. The fury was manifest in those smoky dark eyes of hers. Sienna looked down to her feet and all around her only to find Smeags gone. Traitor.

  “I-“

  “You what? You what? You’re running away as well? Like your coward father? Why don’t you aaaaaall just run away?” she shouted loudly elongating all her vowels never ceasing to irritate her husband furthermore. God. He could not believe he had put up with that voice for so many years. He actually felt grateful he was starting to lose his hearing. There was nothing more bittersweet and often cynical than a good old silver lining.

  “Keep your voice down.” Phil hissed as he noticed some lights flickering on in the neighbors’ households. Maria just crossed her arms and was quite literally seething with anger.

  “Have you been sleepwalking again?” Phil asked softly, his tone gentle and kind. His father voice was remotely and was at polar ends to his recent husband voice.

  “Of course not. She hasn’t done that in years! Not that you would know.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean? I’m the one who even found out she used to sleepwalk! I’m the one who used to tuck her in at night. I’m the one who-“

  “Oh here we go! The big crybaby! It’s always about you! Eres un abuson! Do you see how selfish your father is?” Maria asked sardonically to Cora and Meredith waving her hand at him. They said nothing in response. Phil clearly took this as a sign to leave. He quickly got in to the driver’s seat and started up the engine.

  “What are you doing? Don’t be so dramatic.” Maria shouted incredulously. She stared at him with wide eyes as if she believed he was only baiting her this entire time. What did she expect? Ashton Kutcher and a bunch of crewmembers and a little red devil to pop out and tell her she’d been punk’d? Phil looked to his rearview mirror and began reversing out of the driveway.

  “Dad!” Cora yelled but for some reason stayed rooted to her spot as if she were unable to move. It was as if none of them were. They were all pretty much in shock.

  “Phillip! Phillip, wait. Wait!” Maria ran over to the moving vehicle and tried to pry open the doors which he conveniently locked.

  “Mama, stop. You’ll hurt yourself.” Sienna said worriedly and came to her side.

  “I’m sorry! Just let me explain!” Maria cried through quick and heavy sobs but he wasn’t having any of it. He didn’t even look at her as he reversed all the way back on to the street.

  “What did you do?” Meredith whispered echoing all of their thoughts but that was for later. Now, the situation at hand was trying to get dad not to run mom over as he leaves her. A situation she never thought she’d ever be in but fate’s a fickle bitch. The neighbors at this point were definitely very much awake and she could hear them rustling about and saw a couple of their porch lights turn on. “Is this really happening?” she heard Cora mumble tearfully before retreating back indoors as if she couldn’t bear to witness seeing her father drive away in to the distance presumably forever.

  “Dad, just stop the car.” Sienna shouted exasperatedly and ran her fingers through her dark locks. He didn’t seem to notice or even care. He just looked forward and shifted gears. “Dad, wait.” Sienna’s voice broke on the last syllable. Her father looked up at her. His eyes filled with a deep sadness Sienna was only just coming to know and shook his head slightly.

  “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t even keep up with the lies. Its too much.” He said aloud in his car, just loud enough for her to hear it.

  “Fine. Go! Go!” Maria screamed and broke down in to a fresh set of tears and punched the car twice before it swerved away from her and tore its way down the road and out of their lives. Sienna felt her heart shatter in to what felt like a million pieces. She wanted nothing more than to hide in bed like Annie, or retreat back in to the house like Cora, or even have the guts to be angry at her mom like Meredith yet somehow Sienna, the unstable one, the self-proclaimed black sheep of the bunch ended up trying to console their neurotic controlling theatrical mother. What only added salt to the wound was the sight of her mother running after the car. Sienna grabbed her arm and steadied her, which was surprisingly easy to do. Not so surprising when Sienna realized just how drunk she was.

  “Mom, stop. He’s gone. Okay. He’s gone. He’s gone!” Sienna hissed and shook her.

  “We have to go after him! Meredith, get your car.” Maria gasped suddenly remembering that her daughter was home for her college break and had her little Prius in tow. But Meredith didn’t even seem to be listening. Instead she had managed to master the same look of death her mother had donned just minutes before and was glaring at Maria.

  “What did you do?” she hissed in a low voice. Maria ignored her daughters and pushed her way out of Sienna’s hold and walked over to Meredith’s red Prius.

  “Fine, I’ll go after him.” she said determinedly as Meredith angrily stormed back inside unable to handle her mother a second longer.

  “Where are the keys? I need the keys!” she shouted as she realized it was locked.

  Maria looked around with a crazed look in her eyes. Sienna paused for a moment slightly frightened by her, mother’s sudden erratic behavior. Maria picked up a large garden gnome from the neighbor’s lawn and was just about to start pounding on her daughter’s car before Sienna grabbed her arm and struggled with her.

  “Mom, will yo
u just wait a second. Stop!” she yelled and tugged at her but her mother wasn’t hearing any of it. She was in a crazed fanatic frantic mood that Sienna just couldn’t snap her out of.

  “Stop! STOP!” Sienna yelled fervently over and over again before she felt the world of pain explode in her left eye as her mother’s elbow connected with her left eye socket, before it all faded to the blackness.

  2.

  “Is it that obvious?” Sienna dolefully asked as she tentatively touched her sore eyelid.

  “Oh, its obvious!” Annie scoffed with a smirk as she quickly scuttled past her sister in the passageway before Sienna could hit her with her backpack. The kid was surprisingly chipper for a girl who had just seen her father leave in the middle of the night from her bedroom window. No doubt, their mother must have gone and comforted her by feeding her a bunch of lies about how it was all going to be okay. This must have concurred somewhere between knocking daughter number three unconscious and finding time in consoling in her age old best friend alcohol.

  “Its fine. You can barely see it.” her mother lied so smoothly Sienna reckoned in another life Maria Rivers would have made one heck of a politician, either that or a pathological liar but that was practically the same thing nowadays.

  “And remember-“

  “Yes, yes, I know! I walked in to a wall.” Sienna said quickly as she walked towards the front door and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She knew how this game worked. It wasn’t exactly the first time Sienna had accidentally walked in to a wall or accidentally hit her self with a racket during a game of tennis.

  “No, you fell down the stairs and hit the bannister. Are you even listening to me?” Maria hissed angrily, still bitter from last night’s argument. She was still dressed exactly the same. The only difference was her new friend that seemed to be surgically attached to her hand, her wineglass despite the fact that the sun had just gone up.

  “Yes! No one will even care, I’ll just make up a lie and say it was an accident.”

  “It was an accident.” Maria corrected. Whatever. They both knew it wasn’t.

  Her mother didn’t even have the decency to apologize. For once Sienna was glad to wake up early and leave for school even with a black eye, anything was better than spending the day with her. Her cellphone buzzed to life in the back pocket of her skinny jeans saving her from what looked like the start of an argument Sienna knew she’d always lose given her past experiences.

  “Is it your father? Is he coming home?” Maria asked immediately her eyes instantly darting to her daughter’s small black cellphone. She was promptly met with unsolicited yet discernibly obvious disappointment when she saw it was Rose, Sienna’s best and perhaps only friend that she knew of any way.

  “I’ve got to go otherwise I’ll be late for school.” Sienna said airily as she walked out of the house and got on to her bicycle.

  “And remember!” Maria shouted from the doorway as her daughter began cycling away.

  “Yeah, I know I walked in to a tree!” Sienna shouted back over her shoulder. This time she did roll her eyes knowing that it was in no way in full display to her mother. When Sienna was at a considerable distance away from home. She called her friend back expecting a pleasant hello, or perhaps a good morning but was bombarded instead by a tirade of what can only be understood as the babblings of a neurotic overly hormonal teenaged girl.

  “Hey, Rose-“

  “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod! Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!”

  “What’s going on?” Sienna asked in a worried voice because well, reason number one being, Rose had just sworn off the worship of any and all omnipotent deities, but then again she was a Buddhist the week before and a catholic all her sixteen years before then so that probably didn’t account for much. The second reason being that well, Rose Matthews was purely and inexplicably the most neurotic and as crazy as you can get without being diagnosed with a mental disorder. Rose quite positively squealed as long as she could before gasping for breath before dropping her voice in a low whisper.

  “He’s back.”

  “Who? Lord Voldermort? Make sense woman.” Sienna said with a smirk and frowned slightly. Rose was just a tad bit weirder than usual.

  “He’s back.” she said gleefully. For some odd reason Sienna’s heart skipped a beat but she ignored that silly involuntary moment of hopefully wishful thinking before snuffing out that thought like the pessimist she had slowly become.

  “Rose, remember the part I said about making sense? Who’s back?” she asked.

  “Oh crap! I think one of my tires is flat. That damn cat!” Sienna hissed as she noticed the little cut Smeags must have made to the bike. She wondered how she hadn’t noticed it til now and how she had even made it that far.

  “Oh God! This day could not get worse!” she growled irritably just as her bicycle fell to the ground near the giant puddle of rainwater. Well, at least it didn’t fall in to the puddle. Perhaps her reign of bad luck had finally ended.

  Or perhaps not.

  Because just then the sound of AC/DC filled her ears over the roaring of an engine and the screeching sound of tires against the tarmac as a sleek cherry red 1969 Ford Mustang convertible turned the corner at a ridiculous speed and sped down the road splashing and completely drenching her in water as it whizzed past.

  “Asshole!” she yelled through chattering teeth.

  “Thanks a lot universe. You sure know how to kick a girl down when she’s on her knees.” She muttered and considered going back home and hiding in bed. She was at a crossroads here, either go to school completely wet with a black eye or go home, spend the entire day watching her mother fight with Meredith, get dragged in to the argument and somehow always end up bing the bad guy and the cause for blame. And on that note, Sienna begrudgingly lugged her bicycle back home and walked to school after realizing that her cellphone was completely soaked in water and was barely functioning and kept cracking up whenever she tried to call Rose for a lift. Oh the pinnacles of a young adolescent life! And she hadn’t even gotten to the high school yet.

  When Sienna did eventually get there, the familiar hallways, which she hadn’t seen for the summer, seemed both achingly familiar and foreign to her, foreign because the hallways were completely empty. Classes had already started and Sienna was half an hour late and forty-five minutes late after a visit to the girl’s bathroom drying her self off with a mountain of paper towels and a small hand-dryer. It didn’t matter how much concealer Sienna put on, nothing could mask or hide the purplish bruise that was her eye now. She was just glad the swelling had gone down. With a heavy heart and ultimately heavy feet, Sienna slowly but surely pulled herself together and knocked on the door to the chemistry lab. She shrugged her black jacket off and held it in her arms and arranged her long dark hair over her left shoulder so that it could cover at least some of the damage of her eye. She could hear the familiar hubbub and murmuring of students, kids she’d known her entire life talking in class and felt her heartbeat race suddenly.

  There was nothing worse than being late on the first day of class straight after the summer, that and Sienna hated walking in late and watching everyone else’s gaze fall upon her. She reached her hand out to knock again but the door was quickly pulled back to reveal hands down, one of the most hottest boys Sienna had ever seen. The first thing she noticed was the eyes. To say they were blue would be like saying Einstein was merely smart or Marilyn Monroe was just pretty. He had eyes like the ocean, deeper than the blue of the sky but darker than the violet gems of Liz Taylor’s; they were indigo like the night sky at dusk.

  He had tousled dark hair, a strong jaw, and he was in great shape even in the white lab coat. He was tall, like not crazy tall but just enough to tower over her, just enough that she, even with all her five feet and six inches would have to go on her tiptoes to kiss him. Kiss him? Why was she even thinking about that? She’d barely just met the guy. ‘Oh God, maybe Rose really is rubbing off on me,’ she thought frantically be
fore realizing Hottie Patootie also known as Mr. Future Sienna Rivers was still standing there with a gorgeous sweet Colgate smile that could have easily saved the entire crew and passengers of the titanic and robbed James Cameron of millions by melting that goddamn iceberg.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, his voice velvet smooth in a perfect British accent causing Sienna’s mind to go blank for a moment. Whoa. She had not expected that. British? His hotness just shot through the roof. She wondered what was wrong with her. She hadn’t been this flustered by anyone, not since…well not for a long time.

  “Erm, I, um, I’m sorry, I was looking for the junior chemistry class.” Sienna apologized nervously and was just about to save her self from further embarrassment by walking away thinking that she had mistakenly gotten the room wrong and found herself encountering upon one of the senior AP classes. She wondered if he was new because she’d definitely remember a face like that, or at least Rose would and would never let her forget it. Sienna pretended to be fidgeting with her hair just so that she could cover her black eye.

  “This is the junior year chemistry class. I’m Mr. Blake. I’m your new chemistry teacher.” He announced and opened the door a little wider so she could look in.

  “Oh. Oh!” she exclaimed as her eyes widened and her back straightened simultaneously whilst noticing all the familiar faces of her classmates of which included a particular blond-haired blue-eyed neurotic girl with a Cheshire cat smile as if to say ‘I know right’ whilst eyeing Mr. Blake like Sylvester to Tweety. Then her eyes widened as she took in Sienna’s black eye and pointed to her own mouthing ‘What the hell happened?’ from her seat at the front. Rose had never sat front row all her life yet here she was on the edge of her chair, her lab table only a couple of feet away from Mr. Blake’s.