(no subject)
Abigail McKinley
~1~
“I knew the day my mother killed herself that everything would be completely different. They don’t have to make me come to you. I already fully understand myself and don’t know what you could possibly have to offer me. If my father wasn’t so filthy rich I wouldn’t even be here, but he doesn’t want me to turn out like my brother, Richard. Big Bad Richie is a little partier, that boy. Used to come home puking all the time. Now it barely even affects him and I’m the one who comes home late. Learned from the best, you could say. Of course I’m Daddy’s little girl so I get everything I want. If I come sit in your office for a day, I get just as much as you’re getting paid to go on a shopping spree. So tell me that I am the way I am all you want because my mother died, I already know that. I was the cute little Old McDonald’s Farm-singing sweetheart that turned silent the day little Richie came home hand in hand from football with his sweet sister to find our supposedly perfect mother already dead. I can’t look at guns to this day. Freaks the heck out of me. Classic case of shock. I didn’t talk for a year and then one day I just felt okay. So I’m cold to people. Doesn’t mean anything’s wrong with me. I just figured out life is short. Why be nice? Its not like these people I’m around are going to last anyways. I’ll just leave high school and then miss them and life will suck all over again. People only talk to me cuz they think I’m pretty. God knows they tell me enough. At least that’s something my mother left me with, right? Maybe it will get me through life, if Daddy suddenly goes broke from the stock market or something or pulls a Martha Stewart. Now what was it you wanted to find out about me?”
Fourteen year old freshman Abigail McKinley crossed her slender nyloned legs one over the other slickly and stared back at the silent therapist as if she hadn’t even said a word at all. Two minutes later she was in the front seat of the car, never the back, with her driver thinking about filing her nails and the party at Hilary’s house that night. She checked her platinum and pink watch and sighed, “Just go right to the Haines’, Joe,” wishing that she’d put on some comfortable jeans instead.
They pulled up almost noiselessly to the curb and Joe tipped his hat. “Be good, little lady.”
Abigail would never have him open the door for her. She wasn’t a celebrity, just rich, and the only guy that was allowed to do that was any boyfriend she would have the remote chance of having in the future. Where Joe was concerned, she could open doors herself. However, she did like Joe, he listened to country music with her in the car and sometimes sang the songs about loving to fish, making her smile, which was of course, unbeknownst to him. It was just too bad that he was about a hundred years old. He might have been good-looking in high school.
Joe was about the only person Abigail ever said good-bye to, it took a good amount of time to earn her respect. Then she strode up the short driveway to their little ranch and almost rolled her eyes. She hated Hilary and Lacey both, but wasn’t about to stay in tonight. She didn’t hate them because they didn’t have money like her, but because Lacey was so much like herself and Hilary was bitterly sweet. Only they actually talked to people and most people openly hated Lacey, whereas no one ever actually mentioned disliking Abigail herself, assuming because she was so beautiful that everyone must actually like her. It was odd logic, she would be the first to say it, but that was the way it was at McKinley High. She hated that her grandfather had founded the school. Just because he’d had enough money, didn’t mean they had to name it after him. It was the first thing anyone said when they first met her. “Ohmygawd! McKinley! Like McKinley High School!” Um, yeah- duh. Or it went “McKinley…that’s, like, so familiar...” Like, totally. Or being called Abby. It unfortunately happened a lot, calling her ‘Abby’ was supposed to be strictly forbidden, in a world full of “eeee” ending names. All the girls she hated to admit she spent time with, Kelsey, Hilary, Lacey, and some guy she had just started to notice, too, Hadley. David Hadley. He was quiet, just like her, and had been showing up at the good parties lately. It was one of the only reasons to go to the Haines’ party, actually, and as she walked in the door, she paused in the dark to take off her nylons, surprisingly gracefully, and stuff them in her purse. Then as she reached for the doorknob she thought again and took her cardigan off, now wearing a clingy hot pink tank top, and finally walked into the house. It was surprisingly loud compared to the silence of the night outside, a good old classic party, chocked full of people. Well, it should have been. It was a small enough house, Abigail thought.
Fellow freshman Hilary squealed out of nowhere, “Abigail! How are you!” And they shared a cutesy-cute hug. Abigail tolerated it, it was better than the fake oh-you’re-such-a-good-friend-kiss on the cheek. Hilary grabbed her sweater and purse in an effort to keep things somewhat civilized, “I’ll put these on my parents bed, we’re keeping the door locked. Maaaake yourself at home!” And bounced off across the room. Abigail didn’t even get a word in, and that was the way she liked it, usually. That was what was good about Hilary Haines. Now Lacey Haines, that was another story. Lacey was the exact opposite of Hilary, and speak of the devil, was just slinking over.
“Hey Freshy, nice of you to show up. Why have you graced us with your presence?” Lacey’s floral mini skirt bounced dangerously high as she stopped menacingly close to Abigail.
“Just keeping an eye on Richie, he never calls the driver for a ride home anymore. Wouldn’t want him to get caught drunk driving and then sue you. That would just be a whole bundle of tragedies!” Any opportunity to mention their bittersweet wealth with the added treat of a mini-threat combined with sarcasm was always fun for Abigail and well worth her time even if David Hadley did not show up that night. And she walked right by her as nonchalantly as if she were not Lacey Haines at all, spotting the reason she was here, talking coolly with sophomore class clown, Benjamin Rain.
End Chapter 1