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The house was dark. We were the only ones home. Again. That seemed to be happening more and more often lately. Ever since Dad had met Eva, anyway. I was sitting on the couch watching TV, flipping from channel to channel trying to find something interesting. After a few minutes, my little brother yelled at me.

“Damn, Marcie, can’t you just pick something, already?”

“Shut up, Kyle,” I said.

I flipped around even faster just to annoy him. It worked. He jumped off the floor and tried to wrestle the remote out of my hand.

Just before we came to blows, we heard the front door open, followed by whispering and giggling.

We stopped fighting and prepared to face the common enemy we had in our father’s girlfriend. Kyle sat next to me and I immediately switched the channel to MTV and raised the volume.

Moments later, Dad and Eva walked in. Dad’s shirt was untucked and his hair was mussed. I glared at my father and he at least had the decency to look embarrassed.

“Hi, guys. I didn’t think you’d still be up,” he said, a little too quickly.

I’ll bet, I thought. “Well, we are,” I snapped.

“Now, Marcie,” Eva said, “that’s no way to talk to your father.”

As if she had any right to tell me how to act.

“You’re not my mother,” I muttered. Unfortunately, my dad heard me. His ears turned bright red and his eyes got very wide, the left one twitching. All sure signs he was pissed. At me. Again. So what else was new?

“Marcella Cherise Woodland! You apologize this instant!” he yelled.

“Fine. Sorry, Eva.”

He turned back to a slight pink color. “That’s better.”

Sorry she wouldn’t just go away, like my real mother did, was more like it.

Dad reached over and tousled Kyle’s hair, something he despised.

“Dad!” he protested, but our father was too busy staring at Eva to care. She was touching her neck suggestively and he was practically drooling.

“I’m awfully tired, Byron,” she said to him. “And since I had a few drinks with dinner, I don’t really feel comfortable driving home. Do you think I could just crash here on the couch?”

It was the same game they played every time. Now Dad would lick his lips and “send the kids off to bed”. I’d go to my room, which, lucky me, was sandwiched between Kyle’s and my father’s. Kyle would strap on his headphones and fall asleep to loud music, and I’d be forced to wait out the inevitable thirty minutes until the two adults, if you could call them that, would retire to my father’s room and have very loud and longwinded sex. God could that woman scream.

Finally, they would fall asleep and I could, too. I’d wake up in the morning and go downstairs to see Eva on the couch, looking very rumpled and used. I honestly didn’t know why they didn’t just admit their affair and get it over with.

Dad cleared his throat. “Listen kids, it is pretty late. I think you should be heading up to bed now.” Kyle rolled his eyes at me and turned off the television.

We stood and walked out, Dad calling, “Goodnight, kids,” after us.

“Night, Dad,” we said in unison.

We went up the stairs and stopped in front of Kyle’s door, still united against her and what she was doing to our house.

He grinned. “Sleep tight, sis. Enjoy the entertainment later. Rated ‘X’, I hear.”

I slugged him and he yelped. He glared at me and slammed the door in my face.

“Enjoy your music, traitor,” I called.

“Screw you!” he yelled.

I sighed and went into my room. I shut and locked the door behind me and changed into my nightgown, the one my mother had sent me for my last birthday. Happy sweet sixteen.

I looked at my reflection in the vanity mirror. My shoulder length brown hair showed off the dimple in my right cheek and my brown eyes. I was pretty, I knew, because I looked like my mother and she’d even done some modeling in college. Kyle looked more like our father. They were both tall and skinny with jet-black hair and bright blue eyes.

I scowled at my reflection and pulled my hair back into a loose ponytail. I climbed into my unmade bed and turned off the lights. I willed myself to sleep before Eva and my father came up, but the more I tried, the more awake I felt.

Too late. I heard her giggling as they walked up the stairs. My father tried to shush her between kisses. His bedroom door clicked shut and the lock slid home. I started the sixty-second countdown in my head before the moaning started. I pulled my pillow over my ears and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to pretend I was an orphan.