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The house was silent when I forced myself to my feet finally, the need to check on Cesca more powerful than the agony flooding my body. Everything ached as I crept through the house, ignoring the shot of pain with every step I took.
I leaned my weight into the door to our bedroom, resting my forehead against the wood and tapping it repeatedly in the pattern for the day. The sounds of her scrambling to answer it from inside came from the gap under the door, and then the light from the nightlight I’d stolen for her filled the open doorway as she pulled it open and I fell inside.
She stumbled back to avoid the weight of my fall, leaving me to catch myself on the door frame. Her tiny, too thin body slammed into mine when she wrapped her arms around my waist, and I ignored the pain in my bruised ribs long enough to wrap her in my embrace.
“I’m going to clean up the living room. You stay here and I’ll take you to shower when I get back,” I murmured into her hair, wishing she smelled clean like the girls in my class at school. Little girls should get to feel pretty, or at the very least not be stained with the filth of their family.
She deserved better. She deserved the world—my sister who wouldn’t even kill the spiders that crawled along our ceiling.
She nodded, stepping back and wiping the back of her hand over her face. She crawled back on top of our bed, pulling my sweatshirt over her lap and using it as a blanket to keep out the chill. Even in early summer, the nights were far from warm this year.
Instead of creeping out to the living room, I closed the door behind me and twisted the lock, moving to sit on the mattress with her and letting my body relax for just a few minutes. I promised myself I’d get up soon to do the things I needed before morning. They wouldn’t be happy to wake up covered in their own filth, or to find the wrappers from their dinner laid out on the coffee table and covered in flies.
They wouldn’t want to be reminded of what kind of scum they were, expecting me to erase all the signs of it while they slept so they could wake up in the morning and pretend to be functioning human beings. Until the need to get high again consumed them.
As if it ever really left.
I fell asleep despite my promise to Cesca, dreaming of blue skies and an open field where Cesca could run with green butterflies to her heart’s content. Of her in school, where someone far smarter than me could teach her to read and all about the animals she loved so dearly.
The sun was just rising over the horizon when I woke up with a jolt. Cesca’s head rested against my shoulder as she curled into me for warmth. Despite my urgency, I gently set her to the side and laid her flat on the mattress, hurrying to the door and pulling it open.
I locked it from the inside as I pulled it closed behind me, letting it shut quietly and twisting the knob to double check. Satisfied, I tiptoed on bare feet through the hall to the living room, heaving a sigh of relief when I found my parents asleep in the same position they’d been when I peeled myself off the floor where Brad had left me.
He was nowhere to be found, probably going back to his patrol the moment he finished getting high and going about his day like he hadn’t ruined me.
Like he hadn’t destroyed every piece of my innocence when I’d been too young to understand what it meant the first time my parents called me out to that living room. I’d seen his badge and thought everything would be okay.
Nothing would ever be okay again.
I grabbed the garbage can from the kitchen, tucking it under my arm and moving to pick up all the trash. I stayed away from the drugs, having made the mistake of tossing out a ‘perfectly good syringe’ once and suffering the consequences of being wasteful when my father belted me for it.
My thigh twitched when I stepped wrong, the muscle tightening and a sharp ache shooting straight through my leg. The garbage can fell, dropping to the floor with a loud bang that made my heart stop.
Even with the sun rising, it was far too early for my parents to wake up. I usually had Cesca set up for the day and was safely on my way to school before they opened their eyes.
I froze.
I didn’t even breathe, waiting for the moment that my father’s angry voice would shake the walls. Ricardo De Luca had the voice of a bear, the bass of it when he yelled deep enough to scare the bravest of men.
But it was the moments when he went quiet that I knew true fear. The silent fury was far more dangerous than the signs of rage he showed for minor infractions.
Waking him up would mean no school. It would mean I wouldn’t be able to sit for a week, when the ability to do that was already questionable after the night before. It would mean staying home so my teachers didn’t see the bruises, and so less food for both Cesca and I.
It would mean more time with Brad and the others like him.
The roar of anger never came, leaving my heart in my throat as I spun to look at my parents. They hadn’t moved, their bodies still despite the noise I’d made. I took a step closer, studying their faces in confusion.
Their skin was paler than normal, my father’s olive skin looking just plain green like in the moments just before he got sick after drinking too much. My mother’s face was hidden behind the curtain of her hair, sure to tickle her in her sleep. And yet she didn’t so much as twitch, her legs spread slightly and her mini-skirt hiked up her thighs as if she’d fallen asleep immediately after he’d had his way with her the night before.
But she’d been aware enough to fix her clothes, to brush her hair back out of her face before she snorted one last line of coke with her high-pitched laughter echoing through the room. She hadn’t gone to sleep then, but surveyed her living room like the palace she seemed to think it was and not the run-down house she actually lived in.
I pushed her hair back from her face, wincing while I waited for her to hit me for daring to touch her. For having the nerve to put my filthy hands on her.
But it never came.
Her skin was cold when I stared down into her blank, lifeless eyes, recognizing the scent of urine and feces coming off her body once I wasn’t so trapped in my fear of repercussions. I stumbled backward, looking toward my father’s too-still body with a new understanding.
They wouldn’t wake up and beat me.
Because they wouldn’t wake up at all.
I shook my father’s shoulder, sucking back lungfuls of air. His eyes were closed, as if he’d just...fallen asleep and never woken up. He looked peaceful, despite the unnatural color of his skin and stiffness of his body.
My mother looked terrified, her body disheveled and abused. With her hair out of the way, the bruises along her throat shone a bright purple. I stumbled back from their bodies, realizing that at least one of them hadn’t overdosed like I’d automatically assumed. With only thoughts of Cesca on my mind, I turned back to our bedroom just as the front door burst open.
Brad filled the doorway, his enormous frame eclipsing any light that tried to filter in around him. He didn’t bother to glance at the bodies of my dead parents.
As if he already knew exactly what he’d find.
I raced toward the bedroom, my feet sliding across the floor before I slammed into the door. I knocked hurriedly, calling out to Cesca with all pretense of our secret knock forgotten. “Cesca!” I called, listening to her scramble on the other side. Brad was too out of shape to run, not willing to try, but even so, his footsteps echoed down the hall.
Like the slow rattle of my bones with every step that shook the house, I felt it in my soul. He got closer, close enough that my heart leapt into my throat when he was almost within grabbing distance.
Cesca threw the door open, and I stepped inside and threw all my weight against the door to force it closed. His hands slammed against the other side, fighting me as Cesca threw her tiny body into the door to help, and I turned the lock when we finally closed it against all reason.
“Out the window,” I whispered, grabbing her hand and guiding her to the window that led to the backyard. Brad’s fat fists beat against the door, rattling the knob as he shouted at me to open the fucking door. I knew without a doubt it was only a matter of time before he got it open.
Before he had his hands on me again, and this time there would be nothing to stop him from using Cesca the way he did me.
“I’m scared,” she whimpered, looking at the window as I pushed it open and climbed onto the ledge. Even on the first floor, the jump would be too much for her, so I lowered myself to the ground outside.
“I’ve got you. Come on,” I said, looking behind her in urgency. She hesitated, backing away from the window in fear and glancing toward the door. “Now, Cesca!” I ordered, taking a tone that I couldn’t ever recall using with her. Her eyes widened, but she finally listened. Climbing up onto the windowsill, she dropped into my arms just as the bedroom door caved in and Brad appeared.
His face was mottled with red, his forehead slick with sweat as I turned with Cesca in my arms and ran.
I ran until I couldn’t run anymore.
* * *
