SHE (Book #1)

2

I haven't heard my real name since I was nine. I learned that my grandfather was the one who named me, Evangeline. My mother had it changed to Tempest, I guess to get rid of any ties with her family.

My mother wanted to name me, Tempest, because I was born during a storm and she always loved the rain. However, my grandfather convinced the doctors to write Evangeline as my name despite her request. She quickly realized the life that awaits me. She was only eighteen, completely clueless about life.

It was a mistake of two teenagers.

But she knew better to keep me under the roof of my grandfather, knowing the dangers that will come my way.

So, she ran away with my father to the U.S. I lived there with them for the first nine years of my life.

Then we moved back to London.

After this, things between my parents went downhill. My father was a drug user, a really heavy drug user at that. He was using all of our money on drugs and alcohol, constantly coming home drunk out of his mind. They argued about the unpaid bills, the lack of water, the broken pipes. Arguing turned into violence.

Yelling turned to strangling and black eyes and a bloody nose.

My mother put up with him for seven years, just because she didn't want to come crawling back to her father to tell him she needed help. Just to protect her only child from the more of two evils.

I would hide in my closet and hold my ears to block out his yelling and her screams and begging and cries to stop. I still have no idea how I went to school the next day knowing my mother could have died at the hands of the man she loves.

Forgive me if my perception of love is twisted. This is what I grew up with.

I saw red and purple so much, they became my favorite colors.

I waited for the day to see red spilling out of my own father. Some nights, I contemplated killing him in his sleep.

The night my grandfather found me on the porch flashes into my mind.

That night...

The first time I stepped up to my father and protected my mother from his hit. My lip was busted as I ran out of the house and sat on the curb, hoping for someone to save me.

Then-

"It's such a pleasure to see you again, my child," I snap out of my head and smile. I shake his hand and take a seat on his right side, "My goodness, you have grown up since the last time we have seen each other, Evangeline,"

"Tempest, Gramps, my name is Tempest," I correct him.

He rolls his eyes, "I never understood why your mother would name you such a thing, but if you must... Tempest,"

"Thank you. I want to keep something from her, and my name is a big part of who I am like she is," I try to keep my voice as smooth as possible, not trying to show any emotion.

"Yes, I know how much of an attachment you have to her. You clearly proved you were willing to do anything for her. Such a shame she had to pass away so soon," he says it so nonchalantly as if his daughter... his own flesh and blood did not just die.

But I don't blame him.

It's been eighteen years since he had last seen or heard from her. She was dead to him the minute she ran off with a man she barely knew. I don't blame him for a second for being so coldhearted.

We begin to enjoy the food that was placed in front of us. He asks me about school and how I have already graduated, even though school is in session. I am a grade ahead of people my age, so I graduated in May at the age of seventeen; I just recently turned eighteen in October... He seems saddened at how little he knows about me, but he continues to ask many more questions and I answer them to the best of my abilities.