Page 2 of I Shouldn't Feel This Way

I am wisdom, cursed and blessed.

I am a name that will burn in your chest.

I am a journey, destination unknown.

I am a heart turned to stone.

I am forever alone …

… Forever alone.

One last tear drop smudged her diary before she closed it shut, and turned out the lamp.

CHAPTER ONE

When I tell people how old my parents are, they usually end up laughing, thinking that I’m joking or pulling their leg. And when I tell them I’m not, I get the following reaction: “Oh … okay …” and then an awkward silence. Everything feels uncomfortable afterward, like I have to explain how that happened.

My mom and dad were young when they had me—sixteen, to be exact. Most people would ask themselves, “What the hell were they thinking having sex at that age? What kind of households were they raised in?” Well, when you’re a horny, hormonal teenager and not practicing safe sex, pregnancy can happen no matter your upbringing.

Emily Rose Miller and Noah Mason Hunter welcomed their first-born child to the world on April 6, 1995: a healthy baby girl who had her father’s ocean eyes and a head full of dark brown hair. They named her Aria Sophia Hunter. And that little girl … was me.

For the first four years of my life, I lived with my maternal grandparents. My father came from a very wealthy family, and they were against the pregnancy from the moment they found out about it. They offered my mom’s parents a great deal of money to persuade my mother to get an abortion. But that didn’t happen because Grams and Granddad were strict, God-fearing Catholics. And although they were disappointed in their daughter, they weren’t going to let her abort me, regardless of the extra figures that were added on those personal checks.

The plan was to give me up for adoption after I was born, but as soon as my grandma held me in her arms, she fell in love. I was raised by my grandparents for a while and rarely ever saw my mom … never saw my dad either. Emily was too busy being a teenager instead of taking responsibility and caring for me. Gran always had to remind me that she wasn’t my “mommy,” because I had picked up the habit of thinking that she was.

When my father finally turned eighteen, he separated himself from his family and decided to step up to the plate and marry my mother. But she refused his proposal since she was already engaged to somebody else; my drunken, abusive stepdad, Robert Mitchell. Of course, I didn’t know all of this at the time. I was too young to even understand how the world works. Rob, Mom, and I ended up moving into a grungy old apartment in New York back in ’99. We made the big move from New Hampshire because Mom wanted to pursue her dreams as a designer in the fashion industry. Rob made her all these promises that he never managed to keep, and she wound up working in retail while my stepdad held down a job as a mechanic. His rundown garage was near the rough side of Manhattan.

Life was depressing to say the least. I grew up having to take care of my two half-siblings, and Mom and Rob constantly fought over money, his drinking, his failed promises, and his extreme forms of discipline. To be straightforward, I didn’t have a good relationship with my parents. My stepdad pretty much treated me as if I didn’t exist, and when I did get noticed by his radar, it was usually because he was pissed at me for not doing my chores properly. According to him, I was a constant fuck-up, and he made sure to drill that into my head on a daily basis.

I knew nothing of my biological father. All my life I was raised to believe that he didn’t want me. It wasn’t until the beginning of my senior year that I discovered the truth. My life drastically changed after that, and everything I ever knew about the rules of attraction went right out the window.

****

It was a cold and rainy autumn evening, and I was curled up in a blanket on the living-room sofa. The radiator was broken, so I was wearing two woolen sweaters and a pair of sheepskin Ugg boots. The apartment was freezing, which made it difficult to concentrate on my schoolwork. Terry and Tiffany were oddly quiet—probably because they were glued to the television, watching cartoons. My siblings were fraternal twins, seven years younger than me. I loved them to bits, but they definitely got on my nerves when they wanted to.

The math homework that was sitting on my lap wasn’t going to complete itself, so I blew on my hands and rubbed them together before I picked up my pencil to finish the equations. That’s when the telephone rang. I was expecting it to be my Grams because she usually called on Thursday evenings to check up on me. But it wasn’t her. An unfamiliar voice that belonged to a man was on the other end of the line. He was asking to speak with me. When I told him who I was, there was the longest pause before he answered, “Aria … I’m your father, Noah.”

Needless to say, I was in shock. Throughout all seventeen years of my life, I’d believed that my father had never loved me and had deliberately abandoned me and my mom. It didn’t help that my grandparents always trash-talked him and his family. I was in no way, shape, or form prepared to have a conversation with him. So I hung up.

Ten seconds later, the phone rang again. My heart was racing a mile a minute and my hands were shaking.

Mustering up all the courage that I could find, I braced myself for confrontation and picked up the phone.

“Stop calling me! I don’t want to talk to you! I don’t even know you!” There were tears in my eyes and I felt so stupid for getting emotional.

“Aria, wait! Don’t hang up, please hear me out, I—”

“No!” I wiped my angry tears and looked out the window. “You waited all this time to realize that I existed? You’re seventeen years too late!”

“I just …”

But I didn’t want to hear his excuses. I told him off before disconnecting again. How was this happening? Why was this happening? What did he want from me? The only information my mother had ever given me about my father was that he was her high school sweetheart, knocked her up at sixteen, and avoided taking responsibility like he should have done.

I couldn’t study anymore. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t do anything. I needed Mom to get home so that I could put phase one of Operation Truth Serum in action. She had all the answers to my questions, and I deserved honesty. Why was Noah Hunter suddenly looking me up out of the blue? I couldn’t figure it out on my own. I had to wait for Mom.

****

Well, I waited … and waited, constantly staring up at the ugly bird clock Rob had got my mother about ten Christmases earlier. I was sitting in a chair across our small dining table, attempting to finish my homework, when the front door unlocked. It was seven o’clock, which meant that Rob wouldn’t be home for another three hours.

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