I’m going to college in August. The great university of unknown Arkansas. I’m going to study English to become a high school teacher.

This is a step everyone makes in life, I know. Leaving after graduation, moving toward that impossible future that always seemed so far away. Senior year whizzed by and the summer is going to rush past too, I know, because it always does, especially when you don’t want it to.

There’s a lot that I’m going to miss. My AP Lit teacher, who gave me the confidence to write in the first place. My other teachers, the ones I’ve had for years, the ones I haven’t. I’m going to miss my dog. He can’t answer the phone like my family can. And my bed. My bedroom is my favorite place in the world, the secluded area of my individuality. It’s where I discovered my love for writing. It’s where I developed the core of my personality. It’s where I worked through my issues and mulled over ideas.

What I’m most afraid of leaving behind is my little sister. She’s fifteen, turning sixteen in January, and she’s one of the meanest people I know. She’s a hypocrite of enormous proportions, and I love her with all my heart. That’s why I’m afraid to leave her. She’s mean, and so is my father.

I love my dad. I know it’s every teenager’s sovereign duty to find the flaws in their parents, and believe me, I have. But I can also recognize that some of his flaws are more glaring than others. He’s angry and he’s a hypocrite. He gets drunk every night and argues with my step-mom or texts people when he shouldn’t, half of it mean and the other half adulterous. He used to yell at us whenever we spilled something. He kicked my diabetic sister out after snooping around her room not because of the vape he found, but the empty bag of chips he tore out of her trash can. He never hit me, but he came close, once, when I was crying after he yelled at me and couldn’t stop. He raised his hand and everything, face pinched in anger, but he didn’t do it because my older sister walked in before he could.

I think about her anger and his, and I know where she gets it from. I’m scared she’s going to turn out like him sometimes. I know she isn’t like him now. I know she’s scared to apologize and regrets the things she says when it counts. I know she would never actually hurt anyone. But I also know that she’d young and impressionable, and that living alone with him might be the worst thing that could happen to her.

I’m leaving my sister behind in August. She has three years of high school left, and then she’s free. I’m leaving my sister with an angry man, and I’m praying that she doesn’t wind up like him. I’m praying that I’m wrong about him, and that I’ve made up every cruel aspect of his behavior by means of teenage angst. I look toward my future with hope, and I’m terrified that I’ll look back and find not my sister, but a monster, some creature of the night, twisted and disfigured and not at all the little girl that I love with my whole being.

I think she’ll be okay. I’m leaving either way.