Chapter Two (Part 3): Troubled Teen Years
Her love for Dirk notwithstanding, nothing seemed to be going right in Lilith's life. Her grades had hit an all-time low and school administrators were threatening to hold her back a year in school. While most of her professors ignored the vast differences between her and her sister, one of Lilith's assistant principals made a call to child welfare to check in on the Pleasant household.
Faced with pending investigations that might hurt their respective careers, Daniel and Mary-Sue implored their favorite daughter to show pity on the other one and tutor her to keep her from failing.
Angela agreed and she forced Lilith to listen to her "lessons" on everything from math to physics. Lilith, knowing the only reason Angela had decided to tutor her was to have something brilliant to put on her college applications, took little joy from the sessions and spent much of the time half asleep and dreaming about Dirk.
Spending time with Dirk Dreamer was like a dream and for the first time in her life, Lilith felt at peace amidst the turmoil in her house. After Angela had stolen Dustin from her, Lilith had missed the simple act of having someone with whom she could talk well into the midnight hours and know would be there for her whenever she felt low. Nothing else bothered her anymore; not Angela's put downs during their arduous tutoring sessions, not insults from Mary-Sue or even her father's growing affair with the help. A calm had settled over her life through a benign Eros love and she relished it throwing aside all other cares.
Her days spent with uncaring teachers and antipathic peers, Lilith spent her nights with Dirk. They would sneak out together, sometimes to vent their frustrations on bare Pleasantview windows while other times they simply held hands and watched nature peacefully play across the bordering lakes of the town. Every night when he brought her home, Lilith would leap into Dirk's arms and they would whisper a quick "I love you" before parting ways for another night.
Daniel, having grown accustomed to hearing his other daughter either spending her time locked in her bedroom crying or being brought home by Officer Briggs, grew concerned over Lilith's newfound glow and despite Mary-Sue's apathy over the situation, began spying on Lilith. He researched everything he could on Dirk and his father Darren and upon learning about the former's quite lengthy juvenile record, rounded on Lilith after she crept home one night.
"I don't want you seeing that boy!" he said. "He's a criminal! Worse than you! Think of what the neighbors might say."
Eyes brimming with angry tears, Lilith shook her head at him. "The only reason you even give a care is because you think people will at Angela differently because I'm with him. You don't care about me at all! You just don't want me to be happy!"
"You're not much use to this family, but you can do better than him!" Daniel shouted.
"I don't want anyone else!" Lilith screamed in return. "I love him! We're going to get married someday and we're going to live a beautiful life together far away from you!"
"Over my dead body!" Daniel yelled. "If you're going to live in my house, you're going to obey my rules and I say that you're going to stay away from that boy!"
"That boy's name is Dirk Dreamer. I love him and he cares for me far more than you ever will."
Daniel ran a frustrated hand through his thinning hair. "You're too young to know what love is."
"I'm old enough to know that you never cared about me and I'm old enough to know that what you and Mary-Sue have isn't love. It's just something to keep the two of you from feeling like you're going to die alone."
"You will not speak to me like that," Daniel said.
"I'll speak to you any way I want, you adulterous monster!"
With those words, Lilith tore from the house and they did not see her again for three days.
"Maybe it's for the best," Mary-Sue said one night over dinner. "I mean, I certainly don't want her running around the house as we're getting so close to election time again."
Yet Daniel, felt a primordial fatherly concern for the daughter he had told himself he could not handle. The thought of his child running around the streets with a boy he knew would land her into even more trouble than juvenile detention was an incommodious blotch on his normally peaceful demeanor and he could not Lilith's last words out of his head.
When he had first married Mary-Sue, they were still young and happy to simply be together, but time had pushed them apart and he, Daniel, into the welcoming arms of another woman.
"I saw her, Daddy," Angela said, breaking his reverie. "They were running out of the convenience store on Main Street. They'd just stolen a box of Twinkies. To be honest, I'm surprised the two of them haven't come in here to hold us all at gunpoint, yet."
The front door opened quietly and Lilith stepped into the hallway, listening to her family.
"You know what?" she yelled as Mary-Sue began a second tirade about how wonderful life was without her. "If Officer Briggs hadn't forced me, I would never come back here to ruin your perfect family!"
Hearing the tell-tale crashes of a tantrum coming from Lilith's room, Daniel went upstairs and tried to appease his daughter.
"Just get out!" she yelled. "I hate having any of you near me!"
He started to leave when he heard the doorbell ring and when he opened the door a moment later, Daniel watched Dirk Dreamer step nonchalantly into his house.
"Is Lilith home?" Dirk said. "Normally wouldn't have dropped by like this, but I knew she got caught by Briggs and I needed to make sure she made it home all right."
Daniel drew himself to his full height and stared down the teenager. "Listen you...I want you to stay away from my daughter."
"Why?" Dirk said. "She can hang out with whoever she wants."
"Anyone, but you!" Daniel yelled. "I won't have you corrupting my children."
"Your children?" Dirk shouted. "You said you never wanted to have her! Remember? Lilith told me everything."
"I don't care what Lilith told you!" Daniel said. "I don't want to see you around her ever again! You're a bad influence!"
Lilith, having heard the argument from the stairs stepped forward and glared at her father. "Don't you dare yell at him! He's no more a bad influence than you are when you're sleeping with the maid in Mom's bed!"
Lilith took Dirk by the hand and spent the rest of the night just talking by the poolside allowing the reflecting lights to dance across them as they spoke about what life would be like when they were old enough to get married and always be together.
A gross tension seeped through the walls of Pleasant house over the next few days and Lilith's veritable words were at the root of the disquiet. Mary-Sue had long wondered why Daniel had seemed so fond of their maid who sometimes left the beds unmade, dishes lying in the sink and the toilets cleaned only half of the time, and her suspicions had reached an event horizon as Lilith's accusations echoed throughout the house.
Daniel and Mary-Sue's bickering became a constant soundtrack for the once calm household and while Angela seemed almost sick over the idea of her parents fighting, Lilith was not the least bit interested.
"It's what they deserve," Lilith said during one of their long-winded and useless tutoring sessions.
"No one deserves to be cheated on," Angela continued. "And no one deserves to have what that woman is trying to do to Dad. And, why did you have to say that when you knew Mom would hear it?"
Lilith slapped her History of the Western Sim World shut and glared at Angela. "I said it because it should have been said a long time ago. If Mary-Sue hadn't been so hell bent on getting on the city council, she would've seen it long before we did."
"But, you care," Angela said. "I know you do. Remember what we found about Kaylynn? You cared then. What's changed?"
Lilith shook her head as she rose to leave the living room. "You're so deluded, you know? How can I care at all when they don't care about me?"
"Well," Angela said, "if you weren't such a degenerate, maybe Mom and Dad would care about you a little more."
Lilith threw the history book at Angela and left her twin to listen to the harrowing echoes of their parents fighting in the next room for another night.
"For the last time, I'm not having an affair with Kaylynn."
"Don't lie to me, Daniel. I see the way she looks at you."
"Darling, I'm being honest," he lied. "I would never even look at another woman. I only have eyes for you."
"I don't believe you!"
Daniel opened his mouth to defend himself again when he heard a squeak from the corner of the room.
"Why are you fighting like this?" a tearful Angela asked.
He crossed the room and hugged his daughter. "We're not fighting," Daniel lied again. "Your mother and I were only talking, that's all."
"It doesn't sound like you're just talking," Angela said. "Why don't you just get rid of that Langerak woman if she's the one causing all this trouble?"
Daniel sighed. "Kaylynn needs this job and she does good work. I don't see a reason to get rid of her just because there have been some misunderstandings."
"Misunderstanding is right!" Mary-Sue yelled. "Tell me: am I misunderstanding the way she flips that little skirt of hers anytime she passes by you?"
"Now, don't start on that again!" Daniel shouted.
As the argument flared, Angela ran upstairs to cry on the phone with Dustin, when she noticed the light on in Lilith's bedroom.
"They argue all the time now!" she said, nearly pleading with her twin, hoping for some sense of solace. "They're going to break up, I just know it."
Lilith scoffed as she flipped a black nail polish brush off the edge of her fingernail.
Angela stormed across the room and slapped her, spilling the small bottle across the rug. "What is the matter with you! They're your parents too! Why don't you care about anyone but yourself!"
Lilith stood quickly and pushed Angela away from her. "I don't care about them because they never once gave a damn' about me and when I'm eighteen, I'll be so far from this place, it'll blow your mind."
Angela shook her head as she turned to leave the room. "When you turn eighteen, you'll be lying on the couch wishing you'd done something with you life. I can see it now: I'll be having the time of my life with Dustin at college, and after that Dirk boy sees you for who you are and drops you, you'll be here with Mom and Dad, alone and feeling sorry for yourself."
Lilith picked up the nail polish bottle and threw it at Angela just as she slammed the door shut.
The next day, after she kissed Dirk goodbye, Lilith gave him an extra long hug. Angela's cruel words resounded in her head and while she did not want to think it possible, she still worried what might happen if the boy she loved so much left her all alone.
Chapter Two - Part 4
