LJ Idol - Week 10: Take a hike!
This is an entry for the 
therealljidol. If you'd like to read any of the other entries added during this Week and vote for any of them, you can do so here!
Disclaimer: This is fiction! Thank you for the well wishes and sympathies, but this is fiction.
When my father first introduced me to Paulina, all those months ago, I had an immediate sense of dislike. It wasn't that strong, but it was there, like the after-taste of something bitter on my tongue, and the more I got to know her the more the dislike grew, until that unpleasant tang was a permanent feature in her presence.
My father, of course, was charmed, because Paulina was young and Nordic and pretty and blonde, pretty much the opposite of what my plain, mousy, British mother had stood for.
I had long ago abandoned hope of my parents ever getting back together - divorce is truly the best thing that has ever happened to them - but I still didn't like it.
I did wonder for a while if I disliked her so much because she was the first woman he had introduced me to since the divorce - which could have been possible, because he's my father and I do get a little bit possessive, especially when the women have nails long and pointy enough to stab you - but I had been the one to encourage him to go out and make “friends”, so I don't think that's the reason.
I think it was just her.
She made my skin crawl and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I feel a bit silly comparing myself to a dog, but if you've ever seen them raise their hackles and bare their teeth - that's how I felt. Except I had enough manners to smile instead of growl.
It was a violent physical reaction.
My father adored her.
I didn't want to upset him, so I said nothing. I thought it would be a casual fling until she saw that he wasn't a rich man and left to go and dig for gold somewhere else.
And then she moved in.
In the middle of my exam week, no less.
But I smiled and helped, I carried suitcases in and gave up biscuits and brownies because - quote - “processed sugar makes everyone fat”.
I could tell that she and I were not going to get along very well.
She was so obnoxious, asking Dad to do every little thing she could think of and making him take her out to fancy restaurants every week. She made him change cleaning lady, though Gloria had been with us since I was tiny, because - and here is another ridiculous quote - her skin colour clashed with the walls and it disturbed her delicate sensibilities.
I mean really. Really?
Sunday nights pre-Paulina used to be family time for me and Dad, where we would share the highlights of our week and watch a DVD together and eat popcorn (before she banned popcorn for being too salted), but one Sunday she kicked me out of the living room because she was going to introduce him to her best friend through Skype and seeing me would make her friend think the worst.
My dislike grew to hate, and my hackles could be raised just by hearing her move around the house.
It got so bad that I couldn't be in the same room as her. I tended to hide in my bedroom.
On the plus side, I had never got better marks in my life.
Dad decided one day, that mealtimes should be spent together, and I quickly ran out of excuses to not be present. He made me sit down with them then pushed and pushed, and when I eventually gave in and told him that I simply didn't like her, he told me I was just being rude, young lady, and I should apologise immediately. That upset me.
I had lived in that house my entire life, I was his daughter for crying out loud, but no. He took Paulina's side over mine. Beautiful, fake, unpleasant Paulina. And that stung.
It also made me bitter, which meant that I was even ruder.
Good going Dad, with the upsetting a teenage girl.
I called Mum and stayed on the phone with her for hours. I didn't want to leave Dad, but if he kept on with Paulina I was sure that I was eventually going to be kicked out.
Mum told me I was welcome to go to her, but that the reason I stayed with Dad were her out-of-control hours. She's a surgeon and she gets called in at every time of day and night. So Dad was considered the stable option. It was true, life with him had been more traditional, in that sense.
I only see Mum on her weekends off, but that is actually ok. I know she does it to save lives.
One day, while I was in my room studying, she called me down. It was odd, because Dad wasn't home yet and she didn't do any cooking, so it couldn't be time for dinner. Hell, the woman never even put the kettle on.
It was suspicious to say the least.
But I went downstairs because I had not yet reached the point where manners evaded me.
She was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed, looking infuriatingly like a model, the shiny heels of her dizzyingly high shoes gleaming in the hall light as she tapped her foot impatiently.
“Yes?”
She blew up at me. It was really quite intense for coming from such a thin woman. I hadn't thought she had enough room to fit all that anger in.
“You stole my Chanel handbag, you little creature!”
I hadn't stolen anything in my life, let alone her damned designer handbag. I told her so.
“It was in my room this morning and it isn't there now! You stole it!”
“I didn't! Why would I steal your stupid handbag? I don't even use them!”
Her manicured fingers dug into my chest as she poked me to punctuate her sentence.
“Yes you did, it is this season's must have and you stole it!”
I pushed her hand away.
Things got heated. She called me a stealing bitch, I called her a gold digging whore.
To be fair, I only spoke the truth.
She then accused me of deliberately making the food I cooked more fattening (which I had) and trying to make my father fall out of love with her (which I had) because I was jealous of the attention he was giving her, because she was beautiful and sexy and after that I stopped listening.
I told her she was a lying bitch who only wanted whatever money my father had saved over the years, I told her she was a bottle-blonde, skinny, delusional slut.
I wanted to wring her neck, harm her in some way, any way, but she got there first.
She slapped me. Hard.
In retrospect, I should have expected it.
But at the time it shocked me. She was so skinny, but she packed a mean punch.
Dad, naturally, with his excellent sense of timing, walked in just as I pounced on her to wreak my revenge.
I got sent upstairs without a chance to explain myself.
He took her side first again. So I did what every angry teenage girl does. I slammed my door shut, locked it, turned on some loud angry music and danced around my room until I collapsed, exhausted, onto my bed.
Anger is tiring.
When he eventually came upstairs to “talk to me about the situation with Paulina”, I showed him the bright read, five-fingered mark that had blossomed on my cheek like a lawyer exposing the damning evidence before a jury.
He couldn't believe. I could understand the reluctance to believe your girlfriend hit your child, but he ranted for a few minutes.
Thankfully for him, if he wanted me to stay in his life, he stopped just short of accusing me of lying.
He apologised and left.
He tried to hug me before he walked out, but I didn't let him. She was his mistake and he would have to deal with it.
The next morning, I got up long before her Royal Heinous-ness woke up and went to school early.
I told my best friend what had happened and enjoyed a long day of bemoaning the step-girlfriend. The slap on my face had left a faint pink mark - not enough to be a bruise, but enough for people to notice it.
That was another reason I had got up early. If Dad had seen it, he would have tried to make me stay home for the very British reasons of “keeping up appearances” and “not airing our dirty laundry in public”. But I did. Because it was laundry he had thrown out the window.
When I got back from school, Dad was in the kitchen.
He was making scones.
Dad only made scones when he was apologising for something.
When Mum and Dad got divorced, he baked for a week and a half. The most delicious week and a half of my life.
But he was apologising for something he had not yet done, because I could also see the Thai take-away menu next to the phone, which only appeared when he was trying to cheer me up.
“Paulina is waiting for you in the sitting room.”
I dropped my school bag onto the floor.
“What are you doing - giving her permission to go a second round? Because if she hits me again, there won't be much left of that bitch.”
Dad frowned, “Language!”
“Dad, she is a bitch. A whore. A slut. I am not going to tone my language down for her.”
“And for me?”
I shrugged, “I suppose.”
I got the fruit-juice out the fridge and poured myself a glass of it, trying to calm myself down enough that I would be able to walk into the sitting room without trying to kill her.
“Just try. Please. For me.”
I didn't want to. But he's my Dad, so I finished my juice and went into the sitting room.
She didn't know he was in the kitchen, clearly, because she turned the television off - she was watching some inane MTV show - and called up the stairs, “She's here.”
Dad didn't reply.
Paulina smiled her fake, too-wide, too-white smile at me and told me she was sorry she slapped me.
She didn't apologise for calling me a thief, though, or a liar.
She then shooed me upstairs and turned the television back on, telling me that there would be a surprise at dinner.
I was already dreading it.
I went to my room. I heard Dad go into the sitting room and talk to her, but his voice was too low and her tone was cheery and high-pitched for me to hear what they were talking about.
When I came back down for dinner at seven thirty, she was lovely. I could see how she charmed Dad, but it wasn't going to work with me.
Whenever she simpered in my direction, my cheek hurt.
There was Thai take-away for supper, as I had predicted, and she had bought my favourite fizzy drink - the closest she ever got to making food, I think - and even let me have ice-cream for dessert.
After the meal, we went into the sitting room and she let me choose the program.
She sat next to me on the sofa as Dad sat on the armchair on her other side.
When my program was finished, she turned to me and told me she wanted to bury the hatchet, because “as the girls of the family, we had to stick together.”
The sweetness left in my mouth from the ice-cream turned into acid. She was not family. She never would be.
She wanted to build bridges. Wanted water to run underneath.
This was a river I was never going to be willing to cross. She could take a hike in the opposite direction, fall in the river and paddle her way to hell.
I told her as much.
She slapped me again.
Snap, I thought, as her feeble attempt at a bridge shattered into pieces. You brought this onto yourself.
Snap, I thought, when Dad told her that he couldn't be with a woman who abused his daughter. See you never.
Snap, I thought, as she moved out the next day. You can take a fucking hike.
Snap, snap, snap, as all the things that could have reminded Dad of her were removed, as Gloria came back to us, as we went back to our routine.
I could tell he missed having someone around, but I was sure he wasn't going to fall into a trap like Paulina's again.
We were both stronger now.
therealljidol. If you'd like to read any of the other entries added during this Week and vote for any of them, you can do so here!
Disclaimer: This is fiction! Thank you for the well wishes and sympathies, but this is fiction.
When my father first introduced me to Paulina, all those months ago, I had an immediate sense of dislike. It wasn't that strong, but it was there, like the after-taste of something bitter on my tongue, and the more I got to know her the more the dislike grew, until that unpleasant tang was a permanent feature in her presence.
My father, of course, was charmed, because Paulina was young and Nordic and pretty and blonde, pretty much the opposite of what my plain, mousy, British mother had stood for.
I had long ago abandoned hope of my parents ever getting back together - divorce is truly the best thing that has ever happened to them - but I still didn't like it.
I did wonder for a while if I disliked her so much because she was the first woman he had introduced me to since the divorce - which could have been possible, because he's my father and I do get a little bit possessive, especially when the women have nails long and pointy enough to stab you - but I had been the one to encourage him to go out and make “friends”, so I don't think that's the reason.
I think it was just her.
She made my skin crawl and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I feel a bit silly comparing myself to a dog, but if you've ever seen them raise their hackles and bare their teeth - that's how I felt. Except I had enough manners to smile instead of growl.
It was a violent physical reaction.
My father adored her.
I didn't want to upset him, so I said nothing. I thought it would be a casual fling until she saw that he wasn't a rich man and left to go and dig for gold somewhere else.
And then she moved in.
In the middle of my exam week, no less.
But I smiled and helped, I carried suitcases in and gave up biscuits and brownies because - quote - “processed sugar makes everyone fat”.
I could tell that she and I were not going to get along very well.
She was so obnoxious, asking Dad to do every little thing she could think of and making him take her out to fancy restaurants every week. She made him change cleaning lady, though Gloria had been with us since I was tiny, because - and here is another ridiculous quote - her skin colour clashed with the walls and it disturbed her delicate sensibilities.
I mean really. Really?
Sunday nights pre-Paulina used to be family time for me and Dad, where we would share the highlights of our week and watch a DVD together and eat popcorn (before she banned popcorn for being too salted), but one Sunday she kicked me out of the living room because she was going to introduce him to her best friend through Skype and seeing me would make her friend think the worst.
My dislike grew to hate, and my hackles could be raised just by hearing her move around the house.
It got so bad that I couldn't be in the same room as her. I tended to hide in my bedroom.
On the plus side, I had never got better marks in my life.
Dad decided one day, that mealtimes should be spent together, and I quickly ran out of excuses to not be present. He made me sit down with them then pushed and pushed, and when I eventually gave in and told him that I simply didn't like her, he told me I was just being rude, young lady, and I should apologise immediately. That upset me.
I had lived in that house my entire life, I was his daughter for crying out loud, but no. He took Paulina's side over mine. Beautiful, fake, unpleasant Paulina. And that stung.
It also made me bitter, which meant that I was even ruder.
Good going Dad, with the upsetting a teenage girl.
I called Mum and stayed on the phone with her for hours. I didn't want to leave Dad, but if he kept on with Paulina I was sure that I was eventually going to be kicked out.
Mum told me I was welcome to go to her, but that the reason I stayed with Dad were her out-of-control hours. She's a surgeon and she gets called in at every time of day and night. So Dad was considered the stable option. It was true, life with him had been more traditional, in that sense.
I only see Mum on her weekends off, but that is actually ok. I know she does it to save lives.
One day, while I was in my room studying, she called me down. It was odd, because Dad wasn't home yet and she didn't do any cooking, so it couldn't be time for dinner. Hell, the woman never even put the kettle on.
It was suspicious to say the least.
But I went downstairs because I had not yet reached the point where manners evaded me.
She was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed, looking infuriatingly like a model, the shiny heels of her dizzyingly high shoes gleaming in the hall light as she tapped her foot impatiently.
“Yes?”
She blew up at me. It was really quite intense for coming from such a thin woman. I hadn't thought she had enough room to fit all that anger in.
“You stole my Chanel handbag, you little creature!”
I hadn't stolen anything in my life, let alone her damned designer handbag. I told her so.
“It was in my room this morning and it isn't there now! You stole it!”
“I didn't! Why would I steal your stupid handbag? I don't even use them!”
Her manicured fingers dug into my chest as she poked me to punctuate her sentence.
“Yes you did, it is this season's must have and you stole it!”
I pushed her hand away.
Things got heated. She called me a stealing bitch, I called her a gold digging whore.
To be fair, I only spoke the truth.
She then accused me of deliberately making the food I cooked more fattening (which I had) and trying to make my father fall out of love with her (which I had) because I was jealous of the attention he was giving her, because she was beautiful and sexy and after that I stopped listening.
I told her she was a lying bitch who only wanted whatever money my father had saved over the years, I told her she was a bottle-blonde, skinny, delusional slut.
I wanted to wring her neck, harm her in some way, any way, but she got there first.
She slapped me. Hard.
In retrospect, I should have expected it.
But at the time it shocked me. She was so skinny, but she packed a mean punch.
Dad, naturally, with his excellent sense of timing, walked in just as I pounced on her to wreak my revenge.
I got sent upstairs without a chance to explain myself.
He took her side first again. So I did what every angry teenage girl does. I slammed my door shut, locked it, turned on some loud angry music and danced around my room until I collapsed, exhausted, onto my bed.
Anger is tiring.
When he eventually came upstairs to “talk to me about the situation with Paulina”, I showed him the bright read, five-fingered mark that had blossomed on my cheek like a lawyer exposing the damning evidence before a jury.
He couldn't believe. I could understand the reluctance to believe your girlfriend hit your child, but he ranted for a few minutes.
Thankfully for him, if he wanted me to stay in his life, he stopped just short of accusing me of lying.
He apologised and left.
He tried to hug me before he walked out, but I didn't let him. She was his mistake and he would have to deal with it.
The next morning, I got up long before her Royal Heinous-ness woke up and went to school early.
I told my best friend what had happened and enjoyed a long day of bemoaning the step-girlfriend. The slap on my face had left a faint pink mark - not enough to be a bruise, but enough for people to notice it.
That was another reason I had got up early. If Dad had seen it, he would have tried to make me stay home for the very British reasons of “keeping up appearances” and “not airing our dirty laundry in public”. But I did. Because it was laundry he had thrown out the window.
When I got back from school, Dad was in the kitchen.
He was making scones.
Dad only made scones when he was apologising for something.
When Mum and Dad got divorced, he baked for a week and a half. The most delicious week and a half of my life.
But he was apologising for something he had not yet done, because I could also see the Thai take-away menu next to the phone, which only appeared when he was trying to cheer me up.
“Paulina is waiting for you in the sitting room.”
I dropped my school bag onto the floor.
“What are you doing - giving her permission to go a second round? Because if she hits me again, there won't be much left of that bitch.”
Dad frowned, “Language!”
“Dad, she is a bitch. A whore. A slut. I am not going to tone my language down for her.”
“And for me?”
I shrugged, “I suppose.”
I got the fruit-juice out the fridge and poured myself a glass of it, trying to calm myself down enough that I would be able to walk into the sitting room without trying to kill her.
“Just try. Please. For me.”
I didn't want to. But he's my Dad, so I finished my juice and went into the sitting room.
She didn't know he was in the kitchen, clearly, because she turned the television off - she was watching some inane MTV show - and called up the stairs, “She's here.”
Dad didn't reply.
Paulina smiled her fake, too-wide, too-white smile at me and told me she was sorry she slapped me.
She didn't apologise for calling me a thief, though, or a liar.
She then shooed me upstairs and turned the television back on, telling me that there would be a surprise at dinner.
I was already dreading it.
I went to my room. I heard Dad go into the sitting room and talk to her, but his voice was too low and her tone was cheery and high-pitched for me to hear what they were talking about.
When I came back down for dinner at seven thirty, she was lovely. I could see how she charmed Dad, but it wasn't going to work with me.
Whenever she simpered in my direction, my cheek hurt.
There was Thai take-away for supper, as I had predicted, and she had bought my favourite fizzy drink - the closest she ever got to making food, I think - and even let me have ice-cream for dessert.
After the meal, we went into the sitting room and she let me choose the program.
She sat next to me on the sofa as Dad sat on the armchair on her other side.
When my program was finished, she turned to me and told me she wanted to bury the hatchet, because “as the girls of the family, we had to stick together.”
The sweetness left in my mouth from the ice-cream turned into acid. She was not family. She never would be.
She wanted to build bridges. Wanted water to run underneath.
This was a river I was never going to be willing to cross. She could take a hike in the opposite direction, fall in the river and paddle her way to hell.
I told her as much.
She slapped me again.
Snap, I thought, as her feeble attempt at a bridge shattered into pieces. You brought this onto yourself.
Snap, I thought, when Dad told her that he couldn't be with a woman who abused his daughter. See you never.
Snap, I thought, as she moved out the next day. You can take a fucking hike.
Snap, snap, snap, as all the things that could have reminded Dad of her were removed, as Gloria came back to us, as we went back to our routine.
I could tell he missed having someone around, but I was sure he wasn't going to fall into a trap like Paulina's again.
We were both stronger now.