• Chapter 1 - Freedom

    I pressed my palms flat up against the pale blue comforter, staring up as the fan blew my curly brown hair back. In the room below mine I could hear my father yelling. "Bad call! Bad call! What are you thinking?!"

    I groaned, listening to his insane rants. "... And they let this monster take custody of me..." I sighed, remembering that my mother was dead, and no one else seemed to want to take responsibility for me. I would just have to grin and bear it for three more years until college.

    Grandpas got a wad of cash in the bank for my college. A smile flitted across my face as I thought of that. My mom and dad were never married, and my mom had been filthy rich. Grandpa and Grandma were still alive-I spent ever winter with them-and they had accumulated their cash through a business that they had started together. They owned the Wratt Hotels, very nice and high end hotels only in the most beautiful of places. Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; Denver, Colorado; Paris, France...

    My train of though was interrupted by another string of obscene words. "Someone really ought to take that TV away from him." I murmured quietly to myself, sitting up in my bed.

    As my stomach started to groan I pressed my fingers to my temples. Maybe I can make it through to the kitchen. I thought hopefully to myself. It would be risky, but I didn't want to starve myself.

    With my middle finger, I tapped my forehead, my chest, and across my shoulders quickly in a quiet prayer. She grabbed onto the cold metal of the doorknob and pulled the door open slowly. The TV blared downstairs, and my dad was hitting his beer bottle on something as though it were a chant.

    Barely even daring myself to breath, I fled downstairs, making the noise equivalent to a flying owl. I tiptoed across the wood floor into the kitchen. The TV was even louder than before, and I was only one room away from him...

    Snap out of it! I yelled at myself silently as I grabbed the Master Lock on the fridge door and started to put in the code. I struggled to remember the latest one. Forty one oh five that's the number I derive. I thought to myself. It was a stupid little jingle that I had thought of to help me remember it. 4... 1...

    "I see you came for a little snack." A menacing voice whispered in my ear. My heart stopped in my throat as I smelled his beer-saturated breath down the back of my neck.

    "Of course I wasn't-" I stammered, my sweat ice cold.

    "Liar!"

    A sharp pain went through my shoulder as my dad slammed his beer bottle against it. The bottle broke, the glass fragments searing into my skin. I let out a yelp of pain and crumpled to the floor in the fetal position. Short, heavy blows rained down on my back. C'mon Dani, it'll be over soon. It'll be over soon. I cooed to myself, trying to ignore the pain in my body.

    "Little b***h, think you can go through my food. You should be grateful I even feed you!" He screamed. He grabbed a large shard of the broken beer bottle and started to 'test' it on my back, sliding it down the side slowly.

    Just then, and I don't know what kind of luck I had, the football game started again. As if he were a dog being called by his master, my abuser dropped the piece of glass and retreated to his den. I laid there, in a pool of my own blood, for minutes, absolutely horrified.

    Get up and eat, quick. He'll come back! A little voice screamed in the back of my head. Without any hesitation I stood up and filled in the rest of the code on the lock. I opened the fridge door quickly to prevent squeaking. There was an entire shelf completely dedicated to various kinds of beer and other alcohol.

    "Booze... Booze... Jack Dans..." I droned on, looking for something that wouldn't have me hanging over the toilet and wake up with the need for pain killer. I grabbed a few apples from the fridge that was stocked less than ten kinds of items: Pizza, apples, alcohol, chips, salsa, and sausages.

    I bolted upstairs, the pain shooting through my every step as broken pieces of glass drove father into my skin. I skittered into my room, locking the door behind me. I dropped the food on my bed and walked slowly into my bathroom. I grabbed a glass up and filled it up with water and put it next to the sink, then stripped my bloody clothes off.

    "I actually liked these clothes..." I muttered to myself as I dumped the useless fabric in the bathtub. I sat down on the toilet and began to slip the pieces of glass out of my arm and sides, dropping them in the cup of water.

    Thoroughly getting down into every tiny little cut to retrieve the glass, I realized that this entire time I hadn't shed a tear. I smiled, knowing how much that bothered him on the inside. I drained the cup full of bloody glass and threw the shards into the trash.

    I opened the mirror up, exposing a cabinet full of medicine. Pain reliever, Band-Aids, amoxicillin, you name it. I grabbed a needle and a thread and just stared at it for a long while. With a heavy sigh, I put the string through the eye of the needle and began to stitch my side back up.

    ***

    I stared at my naked body in the mirror, admiring my work. I did damn good. I thought to myself happily. My body was covered with various Band-Aids, and my stitches were concealed with Ace bandage. Even through the rough night, I couldn't help myself but to smile.

    I won.

    I won against that b*****d.

    My body filled with excitement, knowing that I could overpower him, knowing I wasn't the weak link in the family.

    He'll kill you.

    Those three, all too realistic words crushed my hope. Girls my age should worry about their hair, what clothes they should wear tomorrow, what boy was winking at them in Chemistry. Absolutely not whether their alcoholic father would kill them the next day or not. "Ridiculous... Utterly ridiculous..." I mutter to myself, still, not shedding the tears that a normal girl would've cried long ago.

    With a firm look on my face, I walked out of the bathroom and opened up my closet, flicking on the dying light. My father never went into my bedroom, thank god, and my grandparents enjoyed spoiling me through the mail. I was lucky to have them in my life.

    I reached up on my tiptoes for a black backpack on the top shelf. It was a nice black Wratt Hotel bag with multiple pockets and holders on the side for water bottles. I went through my closet and tried to grab clothes that I would use for when my grandparents took me on camping trips. I neatly laid out clothes that I would need on my trip. Shorts, underwear, sports bras, toilet paper, a notebook, matches, shirts...

    I had planned this all out in my head before. Running away. But before this I was never so intent on doing it. I knew that I would be leaving people behind, but if I stayed I would be doing that anyways.

    Before long, the bag was full, and I had everything that I needed in there--including food, empty water bottles that I had filled with water from my bathroom sink, and one-hundred twenty four dollars of cash I had saved up over the course of my teenage years.

    I lifted up my backpack, testing it from hand to hand. It was a little bit heavy, but I would just have to learn to deal with it. I grabbed the last apple from my bed-the rest packed away in my bag-and slipped it into the side of my bag. Slipping my arms through my dark green jacket, I hastily laced on my hiking boots. I exhaled, feeling stronger than ever. I tightened my bag against my shoulders, pulling the shoulder straps so they would fit more comfortably.

    I opened the window, letting the breeze brush against my face before I slipped through the window and climbed down the ivy lattice wall to the concrete below.
    I was free.