"But Mom!" Matt challenged, throwing down his hands in fustration. His face was beginning to line with beads of sweat, his mouth lowered in a tight frown, "I've been working so hard! Why can't I miss Friday's practice to go to Sara's Sweet 16?!"

"Now Honey," Lynn Ballinger started soothingly, throwing down her gold-rimmed glasses on a mountain of bills lounging on the dinning room table like relatives who would never got the hint to leave. It seemed to aggrandize every moment her eyes weren't glued on it, making her eyes red and drawn toward the floor with fagtigue. She blanketed her itchy eyes with her hands as if to rub the sedatives out of them. "You know you can't miss a practice for a party."

"But she's my best friend!" Matt retorted aggravatively, blood boiling under his light eyebrows, misconstruing them with Frankie's percision. "I promised her I'd go!"

"Well maybe you shouldn't make promises you can't keep," his mother curtly repiled, her eyes unwillingly boring over the many bills layed out in front of her, laughing at her, scolding her. Her pencil began to scratch against paper, the sound seemingly boisterious against her small ears as Matt retreated to the hallway, his hands crossed around his stomach in defeat and sorrow. He leaned against the cherry-wood door frame, his eyes flaming and mouth run dry.

"I'll tell her you said Hi," Matt heard David, his brother, yell from the den, David's fingers gliding across the famiy's Playstation's control like grease lightning. Matt shuffled to the den, David utterly engrossed in MarioKart, his cool blue eyes as wide as the TV screen.

"Why don't you tell her I can't have a life anymore, too?" Matt suggested brashly, his arms raised right under his armpits, his temper reaching its heated zenith inside his composed body.

"Matthew!" Lynn shouted, tossing a reprehensible glare his way.

"What?!" Matt defended himself, thrusting his arms to his jeans' belt loops, hooking his thumbs tightly around them and turning toward his mother. "It's true. I'm barely surprise I have tme to breathe."

"Well, if you have no time for anything," Lynn started, tapping the eraser of her pencil to her cheek to count the beats of an invisable jackhammer pulsating in her head relentlessly, commonly known as a headache. She didn't approve of the way he's been speaking to her or his tone lately, like she's some flea-bitten mongrel, foaming at the mouth with a plain nasty attitude. She assumed she didn't know what it was like to be a teenager anymore; those years are far behind her, tucked securely in a shaky part of her memory. "I guess you don't have to time for dinner."

Matt's mouth inched open until only an empty hole stood in its place. He couldn't take this anymore, the pressure, the treatment, the sacrafices. It was a lot for a 16 year old to handle, let alone the normal, usual burdens of teenage life. His mother had to be the mot insenstive mother this side of Westchester.

He needed to get out of there, out of the rope that was coiling and coiling, faster and faster, tighter and tighter around his neck; soon it could choke him, kill him. Besides, he didn't like acting like this, so defensive and crude. He really did feel bad about acting that way, especially when he sees his mother's hardworking face downcasted as a result of his artilery of harsh words. It's very overwhelming; sometimes he felt he could trip over and become seriously injured because of his problems and tears, tears stored deep in the wells of his eyes.

Matt grabbed his leather jacket and yanked it off the coat rack next to the den. He couldn't afford a screaming match tonight; his voice was raw and grainy from the strenuous practices he had been enduring, even the touch of gentle water acidic. Plowing on an unstoppable trek for the back door, he heard the faint yell of "Where are you going?" The slamming of the back door rippled through the house like a rumbling tidal wave, shaking the insides of his mother and David with iron shavings of anger and pain, a slight shutter tweeking their hearts if his temper ever grew too furious; it would be unable to control.......

"Mother?" Alana asked politely, standing straight in front of her mother's oversized cherry-wood work desk, her golden spirals cascading down her buttoned periwinkle blouse, hands clasped in front of her grey pleeted skirt. She waited anxiously for her reply, casually scanning the white walls and scant decore of her mother's new office, already being worn in without all her mother's preferred decorating items.

"Yes, dear?" her mother, Marie, replied as calmly as she could, multiple tasks eating a her brain all at once, her blue eyes squinting to read some royal documents.

"May Thomas take me to town for ice cream?" Alana enquired, her bluish-green eyes pleading silently as her mother continued with her work as if Alana wasn't there.

Something struck Marie as odd; she peered up at her daughter, suspision glazing her blue eyes and her eyebrows closed together, a hairy "v" shielding her eyes. "Do you have a riding lesson now?"

Alana looked down to the blue and red carpet sheepishly, hesitant to answer. "Alana Grace Anastacia Princey," Marie scolded, leaning back in the leather chair for a legitamit response.

"But Mother," Alana began with a shrug and averted eyes before she was cut off with the speed of light.

"Alana, you know better than skip lessons, lessons that are very costly for your father and I," Marie informed her, shaking her head, her chin-lenght blonde air flairing out like cowlicks. She sighed heavily, rested her head on the palm of her petite hand, "Why will you not do what you're told?"

Alana's confidence ran out of her body like color runs from her face. Feeling the breath of defeat creeping toward her neck, she exited the majestic room into the red carpeted hallway, the smells of Chicken Franchese tentalizing her taste buds, her mother calling to her, "I did not dismiss you, young lady!"

She unhastily climbed a seemingly never ending white set of stairs at the left to her room, a room that was strange, different to her. She opened the towering double doors with both hands, gazing into the unknown.

She grappled along the wall for the light switch, flickering it up brought a chilling illlumination to all that wasn't home; her brass queen size bed to the right, trimmed with half a dozen fluffy, frilly pillows and incountable layers of blue lace floral sheets and comforters, her cherry-wood bookcase straight ahead, holding many publishings of what she wouldn't study or enjoy, to the left, her large cherry-wood dresser full of clothes she'd never wear, her 30 inch TV that broadcasted shows that she'd never watch. The only glimmer of remembrance from her home was her bay window, opening her eyes to the thickest woods and most beautiful sunrises like a portrait of her home far across the sea.

She dropped her hand from the light switched and trudged toward the window, the sun sneaking from her view behind the tall trees jutting from the earth's surface. She sat at the window, her eyes lined with a fresh batch of tears, collecting against her will at her long lashes. She was thinking how beautiful a sketch of this sunset would be, but she didn't dare go to the walk-in closet for her drawing pad and pencils. She was almost ashamed that drawing was the only talent she posessed; even more ashamed that her parents didn't approve of drawing the day away. She wished she could tell them that she loved drawing, sketching, painting, that she didn't like, didn't excel at horseback riding or ballroom dancing or etiquite classes or any other activities proper for a royal princess; but she couldn't. Simply, she was scared. Scared to be herself. Scared to be a dissapointment.

Her eyes bobbled to her precious Precious Moments display; her most prized possesion. In a securely locked glass case, 4 rows of about 40 beautifully crafted stauettes looked at her sightlessly, untouched by the wrinkles and brittling of age, about 12 years of collecting and viewing, never being touched or handled like a child should enjoy things like these, another painful reminder of who she was.

She shifted her hands over the satin nightgown Thomas, her butler, gratefully left for her to change into. He's probably the closest thing I have to a father, Alana thought sadly, slipping out of her proper schoolwear and into the pricey sleepwear. The darkening sky welcomed another frightening sensation to Alana's heart; lonliness. She felt so lonely, so sad thousands of miles from the comfort of her palace bedroom and her father's strong voice speaking in their native tounge. Her conscience barked at her that it was mainly because of her that she was in America, stuck in this cage of "freedom", many hours away from friends and Liechtenstein. Her father, Hans, always wanted and gave the best for his baby girl, his only child, the finest things in life; maybe Alana just wanted a simple thing, love.

She couldn't take it in this large, luxurious prison where her only interaction was the inadquate hours of school. Surprising to most, she enjoyed being at school, enjoyed learning with other people her age. Besides, she was 16, she could drive in America, hold a job, be whoever and whatever she wanted in this "epitome" of liberty; her mother better started treating her like it; not some troublesome toddler.

She unclasped the window and threw it open, the dusk breeze begging her to come down. She ran to her closet at the left, scrambling for her rope and light blue cloud slippers. The slippers were easy to find in plain view next to her unnessecary mound of dozens of shoes jumbled together like a junkyard pile. She quested for the rope eagerly, checking every nook and cranny of the dim-lighted closet. Her face lit up when she felt its coarseness, even thought it scraped against her skin, leaving white scratches of weakness and determination embedded in her palms. She hurried to the window, tying the loose end to the leg of her ponderous bed. With a rock climber's proclivity, she scaled down the white mansion's walls, her eyes intensely fixed on the security camera perched high on the right corner of the establishment, its unocular red light signafying that it was turned off; it waking back up at midnight after Thomas checked some kinks in the "reliable" computer system. Quickly, she reached the bottom and scurried off into the woods, heading for her secret spot of serenity.