Page 105 of My Fault
You stole everything from me and now you’ll face the consequences.
P.A.P.A.
The letter fell out of my hand. And the memories returned.
The school bus had just dropped me off in front of my door. I was only eight. I had a drawing in my hand. I’d won a prize. My first prize. I wanted to tell my parents. I was running with a smile on my face, and then I saw.
My mother was on the floor surrounded by broken glass. He’d broken the table in the living room again. Blood was pouring out of her left cheek, her lip was split, and she had a black eye. But she got up as best she could when she saw me.
“Hey, honey!” she said in tears.
“Were you bad again, Mom?” I asked, stepping nervously toward her.
She nodded, and then a big strong man walked through the door.
“Go get washed up. I’ll take care of her,” my father said. My mother looked at us for a moment and then vanished behind her bedroom door.
I turned to him, still holding my picture.
“What did my precious little girl do?”
I was hyperventilating as the memories flooded in. I sat by the bed and hugged my knees. This couldn’t be happening.
I was helping Mom cook, but she was anxious. Things weren’t going well that day. She’d burned the bread; the pasta had gotten stuck to the pot. She knew what was going to happen, she knew, and she could feel the fear in her body. I was just a kid, but I understood that if you messed up the way my mom was messing up, you’d get in trouble.
“What the hell is this shit?” he said and got up, overturning the table brusquely. The plates and glasses crashed to the floor. I took off running and covered my ears with my hands and hummed a song, the same way I always did when that happened. That was what Mom told me I should do, and I didn’t want to disobey her.
But even then, I could still hear the screams and the kicks and punches.
I felt the tears stream down my face. I had gone so long without remembering.
Papa smelled bad. That day was going to be an awful one. Whenever Papa smelled bad like that, it was always a bad sign. The shouting started soon afterward, and I heard something break. I ran to my room and locked the door. I got under the blankets and turned off the light. The darkness would protect me. The darkness was my friend…
Suddenly I came back to reality. This couldn’t be happening again. I felt a sudden urge to vomit, ran to the bathroom, and expelled everything I’d eaten that day. I leaned against the sink and tucked my hands between my knees. I had to regain my composure somehow. My father was in jail. My father was in jail… He couldn’t hurt me, he was locked up, in another country, thousands of miles away. But if so, who could be doing this?
No one knew my past, absolutely no one, just my mother, the social worker, and the court that had put my father away. I needed a distraction. One, at least.
I picked up the phone.
“Jenna?” I said a second later. “I need your help.”
36
Nick
Something was going on. Noah was acting different, strange. Since we’d returned from her school, she hadn’t come down from her room. I knew she wasn’t well, and I wanted to see her. Since I’d seen that scar, alarms had started going off. Something had happened to her a long time ago, and something was happening now to make her act like this. Getting drunk until she passed out… That wasn’t Noah, not the Noah I knew, not the one I’d fallen in love with.
She hardly spoke to me. I’d hurt her, and I deserved to be pushed away, but I couldn’t let anything bad happen to her. I needed to protect her from that son of a bitch Ronnie, even if that meant following her around or watching her in secret.
My phone rang. I picked up and talked to my sister. I couldn’t be there for her first day of school, and that broke my heart, but I also couldn’t leave Noah alone. I felt guilty, but something told me I needed to be there with her. I told my sister I would visit as soon as I could and wished her a great day at school. I imagined her in her little uniform and herCarsbackpack, and I was filled with remorse.
The days passed, and on Thursday, something knocked me back: I went up to my room after an exhausting day at college and heard laughter and noise coming from Noah’s room. I threw the door open and found her with two guys and three girls. The room was smoky, and the dense odor was unmistakably marijuana. Jenna was there with that dumbass friend of hers Noah had kissed when they’d played spin the bottle. Sophie was there, too, in her uniform skirt and a red bra.
“What the hell is going on here?” I shouted when I saw the spectacle. At least Noah was fully dressed, but she had a little white joint smoking right between her fingers.
“Nicholas, get out!” she shouted, standing up.
I wanted to shake her and kick every single one of them out of there, but instead, I just stepped forward and took the joint out of her hand.
