Page 48 of Pretty Broken Things

Or, maybe I am awake, and this moment is so surreal I can’t seem to reconcile it with my waking life. I am no stranger to trauma. Virtually my entire life has been marked by abuse from the man who is standing over me now with a look of pure hatred in his eyes.

“You’ve been a pain in my ass from the moment you were born. Always taking your mom’s attention away from me. If it weren’t for you she’d be here with me now. She never did like the fact I didn’t take to you. I wasn’t meant to be tied down with a brat, and she resented me for it.”

“Are you going to do the whole monologue thing?” I manage to wheeze out.

He pulls his foot back and kicks me over and over in the same spot. I hear my bones crack, and the flash of pain makes my vision waver and turn black. Experience has taught me that laying here passively will only result in getting my ass beat worse. You’d think he’d accept my submission and lose steam from his anger, but it doesn’t.

It’s like I’m holding up a mirror to him and all the hits he’s taken over his life. Only by fighting back does he back down. When I was little I couldn’t do it, but I’m not a child anymore. It takes enormous effort to struggle to my feet. I can feel the ligaments in my chest pulling against fractured ribs, and there’s a wet rattling sound every time I try to breathe.

Lloyd comes at me, and with the last bit of strength I have, I swing. My first one goes wild, and he manages to land a punch right at my temple. My mind and body disconnect. This time I know if I don’t stop him, I’m not leaving this room. I send a hook with my left arm, my uninjured side, and while I can hear my fist make contact with something hard, I don’t feel anything.

Moving so much takes the last of my breath away. I try to suck in air, but it gets harder and harder. I’m forced to bend at the waist to try and catch my breath, but the movement makes my ribs scream in agony. My legs buckle, and I sink to the floor. I try and reach for my phone, because I know if someone doesn’t come help me I’m done.

The harder I try, the more I start to wonder why. What exactly am I fighting for? This is how I’ve always pictured my life ending, a bloody heap, broken on the floor by the man who was supposed to protect me.

It’s one more betrayal in a day full of them. I don’t know what surprises me about any of this. I never expect anything less from other people than for them to let me down. My fingers stop reaching for my phone, and I gently roll over onto my back. Some battles were lost before they began. I guess I will end up a victim of the Park.

ChapterTwenty-Two

Tessa

Six Months Later

I’ve heardthat rain has the ability to make the world new again. I wonder if tears do that for people, wash away the pain, and leave someone different behind when they dry. It’s a beautiful thought, and one I hope is true. If not, leaving home in the middle of the night six months ago will do nothing except put space between me and my demons.

Sitting here at the lookout in my mom’s posh neighborhood of Queen Anne’s Hill in Seattle, I don’t care that the spring rain is coming down in sheets. The April wind is chilly blowing over the sound, and bringing with it all the moisture the Emerald City is famous for. None of it phases me right now. My hair is plastered to my face in limp, soaked strings. My clothes probably weigh five pounds more now than when I put them on with all the water they’ve soaked up. Yet, here I sit, staring out at the hazy skyline. Some might call this kind of weather gloomy, but it calls to me.

When it rains, which is most days now that spring has arrived, I find myself here, watching the world be renewed, and hoping the rain will do the same for me. So far it hasn’t, and I’m left sitting here thinking about that horrible night. The night I lost and gained the most important relationships of my life. I can’t help replaying it over and over. Maybe one of these days I’ll reconcile what happened enough to let it go.

* * *

My phone ringsin the hours just before dawn. Any call you get after two am is always bad news. Good news can wait, no matter how exciting, but bad news—that holds for no one.

“Tessa, get down to the hospital, now,” Shane yells the second I answer the phone.

He doesn’t have to elaborate for me to know something happened to Ford, because that’s the only reason he’d reach out to me at all. And, despite the chaos earlier I feel the need to share the information with his mom. I have zero doubt that Shane won’t extend her the same courtesy. In their world, and well I guess mine too, parents are irrelevant. They aren’t the people who shape us, but the ones we survive to shape ourselves.

I envy those with overprotective parents. No one has ever cared if I made it home by curfew, what my grades were like, or what latest news there was in my life. Despite the socioeconomic differences between my new friends and me, we have shitty home lives tying us together. Still, Ford’s mom seems to care about him, and maybe it’s because I’m hoping for a second chance that I think to extend one to her.

I bang on my father’s bedroom door for a few seconds before barging in. There are things even at eighteen I don’t need to see. They’re both waking up as I walk in. My father reaches for his glasses while Camille throws a robe over her shoulders.

“Tessa? Is something wrong?” she asks. There might not be a determination on whether or not she’s a shitty mom, but she still has motherly instincts. “Is it my son?”

I nod, because not only do I not have any information to tell her, but I don’t think I could get the words out if I did. I have to clear my throat twice before I can tell her, “Shane said he’s at the hospital.”

I don’t wait for her before I turn to leave the room, but before I make it out I see my keys sitting on my father’s dresser. Grabbing them I rush out the door. Both of them call after me, my father throws threats, but Camille begs me to wait for her.

She does manage to catch up to me on the stairs, out of breath, and pulling a hoodie over her head. I can see what my father sees in her. She’s very beautiful. Definitely the kind of woman I’d picture as Ford’s mother.

We don’t talk on the way to the hospital. For me the shame about how everything went down weighs too heavy. I thought I was protecting him by not telling him what my dad threatened, but in the end my dad still threw him out. Under these circumstances I don’t know how I honestly believed Ford could have been held responsible for what happened to his mom. Would she really have sold out her own son for a fancy new lifestyle?

I’m hit hard with a wave of deja vu when I step inside the emergency room. Getting called there by Ford when he found his mother was what started this entire shitshow in the first place. Now he’s the one laying beaten and broken on a hospital bed. At least that’s my presumption. Given his size and strength it must be something horrible to land him in here.

Shane paces out in front of the waiting room, and rushes over to me when I get close. He barely glances at Camille, and otherwise ignores her. Taking my elbow, he drags me down the hall. “C’mon before the nurse comes back. We’re not really supposed to go back here.”

I’m not about to argue with him. I want to see Ford more than anything. The moment I do, I swear to myself that I’ll tell him what’s going on, and trust him to see it through with me. No more going it alone.

Shane doesn’t prepare me for what I’m about to see when he drags me into the room Ford is in. He’s shirtless, bloody, and covered in darkening bruises. There’s a bandage wrapped around his chest, and a tube sticking between his ribs. I gasp before I can stop myself, and draw his attention to me.

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