Page 34 of Niccolo

I skipped class the next day, packed my laptop, and took all the clothes I could carry in a single suitcase.

Before I left, I left a note on my bed for my parents saying I was going ‘no contact’ with them and not to bother trying.

Then I blocked them on my phone and created a filter in my email to make sure I didn’t see their messages.

I also wrote two more emails:

One to the registrar’s office formally withdrawing from the university…

And another to the university letting them know that my father was having an affair with a student, that he’d had many such affairs over the last 18 years, and that they might want to look into it.

I sent the first email straightaway.

I hesitated on the second one.

I wanted to send it… I really did.

But I wondered if it would make me an awful person to do that to my own father.

I could have rationalized it by saying,My father’s a predator. I’m just saving a bunch of poor girls in the future.

And while that was true…

That wouldn’t be therealreason I sent the email.

I had to be honest with myself.

The fact was, I wanted to get even with my father.

I wanted revenge.

For all the years of belittling me and cutting me down, which onlynowdid I see clearly as emotional abuse…

And for throwing me out because I tried to tell my mother she was married to a piece of shit.

But if I sent the email, he’d probably get fired…

Lose the vast majority of his income…

And maybe have to move out of the apartment we’d lived in for my entire life.

If it was just Papa who suffered, I could probably deal with that.

But it wouldn’t just screwhimover, would it?

Mama would suffer, too.

Even though she hadn’t been much of a mother, I couldn’t see myself destroying her life because of one conversation where she’d been nasty to me.

Her life was punishment enough – living in an alcoholic haze and married to a cheater, unable or unwilling to set herself free. I didn’t see any reason to make things worse.

So, in the end, I clicked ‘Delete’ rather than ‘Send.’

I wondered for a few minutes if I’d made the right decision…

But once I walked out of the apartment building, I felt something I hadn’t ever felt before in my life:

Free.

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