Free RAGE by Kimberly A. Bettes Page B

get it now. I don’t want you back in here tonight. And make me something to eat too. Earn your fucking keep.” I watched him walk back to the couch and plop down. As he counted and rolled the change, change that my mother worked herself to death for, I bit my tongue to keep from telling him to earn his keep.
    I made us both an egg sandwich. We didn’t have anything else. I would’ve thought that as much as my mother worked, we’d have been able to afford more food, among other things. And we would’ve been able to if not for Travis’ drinking problem. He had been nothing but a burden on our family since day one. I wished my mother would see it.
    “Hurry up, asshole. They’ll be here soon,” Travis barked.
    With no forethought and no idea what compelled me to do so, I lifted up the top piece of bread on his egg sandwich and spit on it quietly, looking into the living room to make sure he didn’t see me. It wasn’t much, but it made me feel better.
    I carried his spit and egg sandwich to him and stood an arm’s length away, waiting for him to take the sandwich from me.  Half a minute passed before he looked up.
    “Sit it on the table, moron. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
    Quickly, I put the sandwich on the coffee table beside the piles of change, and retreated to my room with my sandwich. I nibbled away the fried egg and stale bread with no idea how I was going to spend the evening. With any luck, I would just spend it bored out of my mind. But I had a feeling that with his friends coming over, the night was going to be anything except boring.

Chapter 14
     
    After I ate, I picked up my notebook and began doodling. Then, I remembered Mrs. Madison trying to talk me into entering the art show. She was right. I should. I didn’t want to be cocky, but I was good at drawing and painting. It didn’t even bother me anymore to think of other people looking at my work. I had already decided that no one would laugh. Why would they? My drawings weren’t funny.
    So I stopped doodling and began to sketch some pictures I wanted other people to see. I had a few ideas bouncing around in my head so I decided to use them for the art show.
    The first one was a picture of Carly, and was named so. She had her head back, laughing. A wisp of hair spiraled down and hung in front of her right eye. It was entirely made of shades of grey, and would remain so later when I drew this picture again, only bigger. Except for her eyes. I would color them blue. They would pop out of the drawing and draw attention to them, just as I thought they did in real life. They were mesmerizing, those eyes, and I only hoped I could capture that in a charcoal sketch.
    When I was finished, I held it up and looked at it from arm’s length. It was good. When I could get to school and do it in charcoal, it would be even better.
    The second was a picture of a girl’s hands. In her left hand was a daisy, with only one petal remaining. Her right hand was curled, and between her thumb and forefinger was a petal. Blurry, in the background, you could see all the other petals piled on the ground between her feet. I called this one ‘He Loves Me Not’. If you looked at it, you could see that she had one more petal to pull off the flower, and it would end with ‘he loves me’. I doubted anyone would get it. But that’s okay. No one ever got art except the artist.
    As I flipped the page to get started on my third sketch, I heard a crash come from the living room. It startled me and I jumped, dropping my pencil to the floor. I strained to hear over the sound of Travis’ music. I heard laughing and loud talking, but it was too muffled for me to make out anything being said. One of them had no doubt broken something. Something of my mother’s that she had worked so hard to get.
    It made me angry that they had so little respect, but there was nothing I could do about it.
    Feeling angry and helpless, I picked up my pencil and sketched more pictures, excited now to