AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You need to leave Johnny alone!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, voice shrill and furious. “He has done nothing wrong here! Absolutely nothing.”
I didn’t care anymore.
If I woke my father, then I woke him. If he kicked the shit out me, then I would heal.
I was beyond containing myself, and all of my concern was directed at the boy who had done nothing to deserve being dragged into the middle of my madness.
“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!”
Mam clutched her chest and shook her head. “Shannon.”
“Everything,” I bit out.
This time when I turned around, I didn’t turn back.
“Shannon, wait,” were the last words I heard before I closed the door on my problems.
Tilting my head up to the storm-ridden sky, I closed my eyes and absorbed the feel of raindrops pelting down on my skin. I stood right there in the middle of the torrential March downpour and prayed for divine intervention, or at the very least a little reprieve from the hell that was the family I’d been born into.
I never wanted to go back into that house.
Knowing that I had no choice and would have to go back was a special form of hell. For once in my life, I wanted a safe place to run to instead of from.
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.
The door opened behind me and every muscle in my body coiled tight with dreaded anticipation.
He was up and I was done for.
“Shannon.” My mother’s voice filled my ears, managing to dissipate some of the fear threatening to choke me. “You forgot to take your coat.”
Stiff as a poker, I turned to find Mam standing in the doorway with my coat in her hands.
“You need your coat,” she explained in a thick tone, gesturing a hand to the sky. “They’re forecasting another storm.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of it, Mam?” I asked, voice breaking. Blinking back my tears, I choked out, “Don’t you ever get sick to death of pretending?”
Her expression caved. “Shannon…”
She took a step toward me and I took three more back.
I couldn’t keep doing this. I couldn’t keep living like this. I laid my heart out to my mother. And she was worried about a coat.
“Fuck my coat,” I strangled out as I broke into a run toward the bus stop, desperate to put some much-needed distance between me and my family. “Fuck my life!”
21Closure
SHANNON
When I arrived at school, the anger hadn’t dissipated one inch. I was so furious I could practically taste it, and in a messed-up way, I welcomed the emotion. It was better than the usual desperation and fear that rattled through me. The anger made me brave and it gave me the Dutch courage I needed to do what had to be done. Regardless of how much my brain told me this was a bad idea, I knew I had to do it.
I would straighten a few things up with Johnny Kavanagh, and then I would walk away with my heart intact and a clear conscience because I could not, in good faith, ignore what my mother had said.
Fueled by the adrenaline still coursing through my veins from my earlier argument with my mother and the disaster that was last night, I inhaled a steadying breath and marched down the corridor toward the fifth-year locker area.
When I spotted Johnny leaning against the lockers at the end of the fifth-year hallway and talking to a couple of older-looking boys, I blew out a ragged breath. Invisibility was both a beautiful thing and a necessary survival tool sought out by people such as myself. Associating with a future Irish rugby star was like throwing a six-feet, three-inch spanner in the works. Calling on every ounce of bravery inside of my body, I walked right up to him, relying on the adrenaline pumping through my veins to push my feet toward him.
