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And if he’s worried about money, then maybe he should stop gambling and drinking the children’s allowance money!”
“Stop defending him,”
“Just stop, Mam! Nothing you ever say helps. It just keeps happening over and over again. So just stop apologizing and trying to explain his behavior away. We’re tired of hearing it.”
“I was scared of being late. I was scared of coming home late to him. I took the spin because I was desperate! Because I knew what he’d do if I waited for the next bus.” “Shannon,” Mam whispered, pausing mid-dial. “You don’t have to feel scared to come home.” “Don’t I?”
“You are so concerned with fighting the bullies at school, Mam,” I sobbed, tears streaming down my cheeks, “when the biggest bully of them all lives under this roof.”
“I mean it, Mam,” I warned, voice warbling. “Call the school making trouble for Johnny, and I’ll tell them everything you don’t want them to know!”
I felt like I was slowly dying in that house. In my home. Where I was supposed to lay my head. Where I was supposed to feel safe.
Invisibility was both a beautiful thing and a necessary survival tool sought out by people such as myself.
“What happened?” he demanded, glaring down at me. “Who the fuck made you cry?”
“Give me a name,” Johnny growled, dropping his hands to his hips. “And I’ll take care of it.”
“Now, tell me who made you cry and I’ll fix it.”
“But I understand fear, which makes it easier for me to understand why you would feel the need to play through the pain.”
I knew a storm had been brewing. My gut was always right.
resulted in my father beating the living shit out of me,
That wasn’t the first time he had been told to go. And it wasn’t the first time he had beaten me to a pulp. Sooner or later, he would be back, promising heaven and delivering hell.
“You must be fucking amazing in bed,” Gibsie mused. “If she’s hunting you down like this.”
My face was killing me. Every inch of my body was in agony. I was black and blue from head to toe.
But I did. I felt incredibly guilty. There was something about me that caused all this pain. If I wasn’t in this house, I was fairly sure my family wouldn’t have half the problems they did. Mam took a beating from my father because of me. Because he hated me. I was the problem.
“No, it’s not right or fair on us,” Joey snapped. “But Shannon and I have been down that road before, and there’s no fucking way we’re going back there.”
revealing our biggest fear, the one that kept us silent for most of our lives. “When we were small. Before the boys were born—when it was just Darren, Shannon, and myself—the three of us were put into care for six months.”
“Darren was eleven at the time and wasn’t so lucky.”
“Joe, please don’t,” I begged. “He was sent to a care home where things happened to him,” Joey choked out. “Things that aren’t supposed to happen to children.”
“Darren was never the same again, and neither was our father.”
“He actually wasn’t too bad a guy before that. But after it all came out about Darren, the old man lost his fucking mind. He couldn’t get over it and turned to the drink. Got this ridiculous fucking notion into his head that what happened to Darren had somehow turned him.”
knowing that with my parents gone, I would sleep better tonight than I had in months. That’s how messed up my life was.
I just wanted her.
making it clear that anyone who fucked with her fucked with me.
The worst part was knowing that if my mother hadn’t shown up when she had, there was a very big chance I would’ve kissed her. I wanted to. Badly. And that was beyond terrifying.
If she was here, then she was here with me. She was mine and I didn’t want to share.
