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Aurnia
I hated Conor. I hated him, I hated him, I hated him. I hated him more than I hated Nick. I hated him more than I hated my father. I hated him more than I’d ever hated anyone else in the whole entire world.
I’d never had a home. I’d never had a place that was safe and warm, a place where I didn’t have to check around corners, a place where I didn’t have to worry about whether to lock the door.
And I was fine. I was totally and perfectly fine.
I was surviving. I knew how to handle the druggies that wandered into my bedroom during the middle of the night. I knew how to placate Nick, how to check my father’s tongue when he passed out, how to hide food in the kitchen so it wasn’t snatched by someone so high they couldn’t even read: Not yours, asshole! I had it all figured out. If I needed to get away, the public library was open till six, the McDonald’s till eleven, and if it still wasn’t safe to return to my father’s place, then there was a hotel just up the street that charged by the hour. The school opened their doors at 5 a.m. for the swim team and the guard never checked whether I was still enrolled, at least not when I gave him a toothy smile.
Life was rough, but I was strong. I knew I was strong.
But I wasn’t strong anymore and that was why I hated Conor most of all.
After I ran out of Dublin Ink, I huddled in the back of the bus I’d had to sneak onto. I couldn’t remember feeling so cold. One Christmas Eve, I’d wandered the streets of Dublin till dawn and hadn’t felt nearly as cold. It was only November. I wrapped my arms around myself more tightly, but the shivering only seemed to get worse. The lights on the bus were low, half of them burned out, and I feared every bundled-up mass that stirred near me.
Before, I would have been assured that I could outrun someone who tried to attack me. But my toes had gone numb a long time ago. If someone had cornered me before, I knew just which pocket my mace was in. But I couldn’t remember where I’d even last seen my mace. Was it at home? Was it at Dublin Ink? Had I lost it somewhere along the way and hadn’t even noticed the familiar weight was gone? Even as a last resort, there had always been the option of going on the attack myself: go for the dick, go for the eyes, go for the dick again. But that fire had dwindled inside me, snuffed out by Conor’s big, strong hands.
I didn’t want to have to fight. I wanted to be protected. I wanted to be safe. I wanted someone to finally have my back.
I was weak.
When the bus dropped me off at the corner just down the street from my father’s place, I stood there for a long time. I wanted to think there was another option, but there wasn’t. I’d thrown the last of the cash in Conor’s face. That had been the price of my pride.
The first time I’d snuck back inside Dublin Ink after leaving, I told myself it was just that once. And only because I knew Nick had been looking for me.
But then it happened again.
Dublin Ink was warm. It was quiet. No one would come for me. So of course it kept happening. And kept happening. I hadn’t been home all week. I was actually sleeping.
But it was only a matter of time before someone came for me, before someone found me out.
It was all my worst fears realised when Conor threw open the door with a bellowing voice, flipped on the lights, and attacked me before I had a chance to get away. It might have been a different location, but it was all the same. It was everything I’d ever feared.
I’d dared to think that I could have a home at Dublin Ink. That the boys, in some twisted way, could be a family for me. At last.
This was my punishment for daring. For hoping.
I’d tested fate and fate threw me right back on my ass. The only problem this time was I’d lost the ability to get back up.
I forced my steps toward the house. I considered the neighbour’s yard for a moment; there was a shed, half collapsed and fully stuffed with rusted tools, but probably dry enough, should it rain.
But there were the dogs and their gnashing teeth at the chain-link fence. Whatever evils lurked in the shadowy corners of my father’s house couldn’t be worse than that, could they? Nick couldn’t be worse than that, could he?
As I neared the house it was a relief to see that at least a small part of the survivor in me remained after Dublin Ink, after the toxic allure of Conor Mac Haol: I remembered at the last moment not to go to the front door.
The front door meant shoving aside someone passed out against it. The front door meant tiptoeing over tripping strangers in rags. The front door meant noise and visibility and being outnumbered. Most of all, it meant a long, dangerous path to my bedroom.
Better to go through my bedroom window.
You would think that having a perpetually broken window that anyone at all wandering the trash-lined streets at night could get through would lead to sleepless nights. That would be the case if the thing you feared the most wasn’t already inside the house. If he didn’t already have a perfectly functioning key.
It was easy enough climbing up to the window. There were more than enough empty beer bottle crates to craft tidy little steps. Sure, that made it easier for an intruder, too, but more importantly, if I needed to escape in the middle of the night, I didn’t have to worry about a broken ankle slowing me down when I ran. Priorities, am I right?
The latch on the window had never worked as long as I could remember. Lifting the window normally wasn’t any difficulty. But that night my muscles seemed to fail me. I was more aware than ever that I was a small, young girl. Before Dublin Ink hung the seductive mirage of safety before my eyes, I could see something more than the frail little thing in the mirror each morning. I saw the clever eyes instead of the prominence of my collarbones. I saw the deftness of my fingers instead of the thinness of my wrists. I saw a heart that wanted more, that was going to get more, instead of a chest that flinched at every noise down the hallway.
Reality faced me like a mirror in the dirty pane of glass. I struggled with gritted teeth to get my arms above my head.
As I raised the window, I heard noise from inside the house. There was the steady drone of thudding music from the basement. Sometimes it shook my bed at night; sometimes it was low enough that I thought it was just me who was shivering. There were voices from the living room, too. Loud and laughing: not a good sign. It was better when my father’s “guests” were too out of it to do more than slump over and drool on themselves. They were dangerous when they thought they were capable of making conscious decisions.
