As a step kid myself, I can tell you that kid is playing you like a violin. I was just 13 when my mother died and 16 when dad remarried. Suddenly after 3 years of more or less answering to no one other than my dad, here was this strange woman in my face trying to make me answer to her. If she had ever bothered to talk to me instead of ordering me around and being in my face, well, things would have been different, probably. Throw in her two daughters, and, well, things were explosive for a long long time. Oddly now, we are friends to some extent.

There's the ever poplular: I don't have to listen to you, you are not my mother tantrum.

And the Dad said I could do this or that line. (Or in my case, I just told them I was doing something because I had not had to ask permission before my step mom came on the scene and I wasn't about to start now.)

Throw in an assortment of kin on both sides all with opinions on what YOU should do, and you pretty much are sitting on a powder keg with the fuse lit anyway you look at it.

Anyway, talking to her couldn't hurt and may help lots.