Excerpt from "Too Bootilicious" by Tigra-Luna LeMar

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Prologue

Like many other mornings of Lisa Townsend' twenty five years on the planet, she woke up and she was depressed to be alive. Everyone else woke up and thanked God for breathing, but every second Lisa was awake she was tortured. Not because she did anything wrong, but because every one else around thought she had no right to be alive. Life since the death of her father had been one giant disappointment after another and if she should remain where she was, the rest of her life would be one big mess. She frowned and snuggled into her pillow trying to go back to sleep but the scent of the pillow was annoying her. She had managed to ignore it the night before but it was harder to sniff past the stench in the morning. One or both of her siblings had done something to the pillow and she could have tossed it off the bed but she needed a pillow or else she would have neck problems all the next day.

Rolling over to her left side she glanced at the bedside clock. It was still too early to be up on a lazy, Saturday morning. She moved onto her back and stared at the ceiling wondering how she was going to go about her day being invisible to everyone around the large ranch house until they were ready to make her life miserable. She wondered why she even stuck around and put up with their bull. The thought that they would have outgrown their childish antics flashed through her mind and her brain began laughing at her.

That was a dumb ass excuse!

“Shut up brain,” she muttered with growing irritation. What a fool she'd been.

This is your punishment. This is what you have to live with for being so damn stupid.

She moaned and rubbed a hand over her forehead before taking a deep breath and instantly regretted it. Sitting up, she hurled the pillow to the ground, bunched her comforter up and stuck that beneath her neck.

Why hadn't I thought of that?

The problem was Lisa's half siblings; her brother Michael and sister Gabi. The two thought they were better than she was because they were from different parents. The problem was as soon their mother couldn't seem to keep her legs closed. One day that loose behaviour caught up with her; the father of her kids found out that she was pregnant and with twins, he took off and never looked back. Lisa's father, being the kind of man he was, stuck around but was killed in a boating accident on the lake when she was ten. Life was hell after that. Lisa's mother had stayed with her father even though he came with baggage - Michael and Gabi. Soon after they met, she got pregnant with Lisa. Soon after her father's death, however, the woman showed her true colours. She couldn't stand Michael and Gabi and Lisa was her mistake. To her credit, she stuck around a whole month after her husband's death.

The woman, Lisa's mother, walked out on them and the only way Social services let them stay in the house was because the twins were eighteen years old. They were considered legal adults and because Michael and Gabi thought the government would give them money, they agreed to be Gabi's legal guardian. Lisa didn't know about the money part until she was eighteen and accidentally found the check stubs in one of Michael's pants pockets. She didn't ask about the money because frankly they wouldn't have answered and just start another round to her torture.

But the living arrangement was getting on Lisa's nerves because she thought that Michael and Gabi should leave her in her father's house. They told her that it would be a cold day in hell before that happened. She felt a connection with her father in that house. She felt safe and loved in that house. Even though she couldn't read their minds, she was positive that the only reason why Michael and Gabi stuck around was to torture her because they knew that Lisa had been happy once in that house. Lisa had begun ignoring them and their taunts lately. She had gotten too old to rise to their baits. Sometimes she wondered if she would really get the death penalty if one day she just snapped and take an axe to Michael and Gabi.

Every morning Lisa woke up and went off to her job in a local bookstore. She was the quiet nerd that stayed out of everyone's way but everyone seemed to go out of their way to make her life hell. The customers at work kept bringing up her father. Her boss was a slob of a woman that treated every one well - except Lisa. This woman always paid Lisa late; she was always on Lisa's case, blaming Lisa for things that had nothing whatsoever to do with Lisa. But Lisa was mature enough to know that this was the job she would have no, without a college education and it paid the bills.

With a heavy sigh, she stuck her feet out of bed because she knew that no matter how long and hard she tried, she'd never fall asleep again. That annoyed her immensely. Each time she opened her eyes, thoughts flooded her head and she could never fall back asleep no matter how tired she was. Scratching her thigh and yawning, Lisa hurried into the shower.

She took a long shower. A thought told her to leave some water for her siblings but she shrugged. Later on she would feel guilty that they had no hot water but she would handle the guilt later with a piece of the chocolate cake that she had stashed in her mini fridge in her room. Lifting her face, she allowed the water to beat her neck, before her face to get rid of the race wash that she had lathered on before her shower. It left her face feeling refreshingly cool and she smiled. When the warm water began running cold, she grinned, stepped from the shower and wrapped a towel around her body. She then turned, rinse the tub clean before walking from the bathroom.

Lisa had just gotten dressed and was sipping from a cup of steaming hot coffee in the kitchen when it all started for the millionth time. She didn't move nor made any sign that she even heard Gabi screaming her name down the stairs. That had served to rile the older girl up as she charged into the kitchen.

“Lisa! Did you borrow my red tank with the angel on the front?” Gabi ordered. Still, Lisa sat there, sipping from her cup. She had built up a somewhat hard outer shell.

“Did you hear me?” Gabi demanded. That was when Lisa turned to look at her sister. Gabi was standing there with her hands on a cocked hip.

“Why the hell would I do that?” Lisa allowed.

“Oh wait. I forgot,” Gabi taunted with a smirk. “That's right. Your fat ass can't fit in it.”

That was the absolute last straw for Lisa.

There was only so much a person could take and Lisa had taken more than her fair share of bullshit. Biting down on her lips she took one more sip from her cup and swallowed. Silently, as though Gabi hadn't even said anything at all, Lisa placed her coffee cup onto the table and climbed the stairs. Locking her door behind her, she rummaged beneath her bed and pulled out an old duffel bag that once belonged to her father when he was a Marines. Putting it on her bed she began to put her clothes in - what little she owned. She hadn't stopped to fold anything that wasn't folded before. Lisa had just stuffed them in.

With the packing finished, she gave herself one last look in the mirror, grabbed a framed picture of her father and lifted the bedding. She found a whole stash of money that she had been saving for years, secretly.

Stuffing the money into a plastic bag, she stuffed it into her duffel with her clothes and started down the stairs again. She past through the dining room with her head held proudly as she moved for the door for she would not give them the satisfaction of letting them see her cry .

“Where're you going, Bubble Butt?” that was Michael as he tossed some cold cereal at her. The cereal hit her with a loud splat against the side of the face and Gabi burst out laughing. Without so much as a word, Lisa moved over to the table and picked up Michael's hot coffee. She could see the steam dancing sensually from the liquid and vanishing in the air. The strong scent of the black coffee caused Lisa's mouth to water for she hadn't finished her coffee but she had other plans for the contents in the Santa Baby cup. Staring into Michael's eyes, Lisa dumped the contents into his lap. He screamed in pain but she didn't care. She smiled triumphantly and walked out the door with Michael screaming every expletive from his limited vocabulary at her. Some of them she'd never heard before and swore he had made up just for that occasion. She walked off the Double Dagger Ranch without even a glance over her shoulders. What a name to give to the place where there were double daggers in her heart for the last few years. How sickeningly appropriate?

Without even a second thought, she left Golden Springs.