Page 16 of Neverland

Chapter 4

THEN

Glass shattered in a violent explosion against the front door. Stumbling back down the steps, I contemplated running. My father’s drunken rage exploded from every crack of the house, the neighbors closing their curtains and their hearts to the abuse occurring virtually on their doorstep.

“What do ya want from me?” he shouted. “Huh? What the fuck do you want?” His demands were following by sickening thuds and more glass breaking against walls.

“We need money!” my mother pleaded. She used to have a voice, but now she was a mere shell of herself, her conviction, weak and almost pathetic. “We have nothing.”

Standing with my back against the paint-peeled door, I listened to the scuffle that followed. I couldn’t see it, but I knew exactly what was happening. My mother would be doing her best to escape her drunken husband. She’d be pleading, both when he had his hand over mouth or circled around her neck. She’d be crazed and rattling off dazed mumbles after her head had been smashed into a wall. He’d be grunting his drunken slurs, calling her every filthy name he could recall, and looking for anything to smash across the face of the woman he’d married.

The street lamps flickered on, buzzing in an otherwise quiet neighborhood. I was never in a hurry to get home to the daily abuse. When I wasn’t with Romeo, I was studying in the school’s library until the librarians were virtually closing the doors on me.

I loved my mother. But she didn’t love me enough to leave the bastard. She didn’t love herself enough to care.

White-knuckled, my heart stopped when things fell silent. It meant one of two things if I could no longer hear my mother’s whimpering. She’d either given up and hidden herself away, or my father had knocked her out cold.

Dropping my school bag and armed with the courage no ninth grader should ever have to possess, I opened the front door a fraction to see if the hall was clear. I tiptoed in to see the living room in complete disarray, shards of glass lodging in my rubber soles. Crouching at the sofa, I searched underneath it, my hands desperately seeking the baseball bat I kept there for these very occasions. My mother and father never cleaned, so the likelihood of them finding it was slim to none.

However, this time, that wasn’t the case.

“Shit,” I murmured angrily, sinking lower in case it had rolled to the other side. Still nothing.

The crunch of glass under a heavy boot told me I should never have entered the house.

“Looking for this?”

I turned to the sound of the wooden bat slapping into his palm. My heart was thudding so hard it felt like it was going to burst from my chest. I scurried back creating some distance between us, shards of glass piercing my palms.

“I gotta tell ya, Lucy,” he slurred. “I thought you were just like your mother. All weak and shit.” His eyes fell to the bat then back to me. “But now I see you’re just like your old man.”

“What did you do to her?”

“Only what she deserved.” His stare took an even more sinister turn. “Now tell me what you deserve.” Although his threat was loaded with promise I had no doubt he’d deliver on, I did notice a slight sway in his stance.

“Why do you have to do this?” I asked while staggering to my feet. He lunged forward which caused me to stumble, the rug slipping under my feet.

“This is my fucking house,” he roared, contempt for both my mother and me. We were the cause of his drunken stupors. We were the reason he hadn’t made anything of himself. We were the reason he couldn’t hold down a steady job. “Why don’t you both leave me the fuck alone?” He swung the bat and instinctively, I raised my arm to stop it from hitting my face. It connected with a sickening blow to my forearm, excruciating pain radiating through my entire body. Although it didn’t feel like it, it could have been a lot worse. Combined with being drunk, my father’s shoe had caught the bunched-up rug when he advanced forward, throwing him off-balance and weakening the force behind the swing. He fell to the left in a big heap, his head striking the wooden coffee table.

Holding my arm, I rocked back and forth, hoping and praying the asshole was dead. Luck wasn’t on my side. Blood seeped from his temple as he tried to sit straight. He was dazed but not dazed enough that he’d call it a night.

“I’m gonna fucking kill you both.” He meant it. The monster inside of him would never rest until he did.

I couldn’t stay. If mom was knocked out, then good, he’d leave her alone. But as long as I was still conscious, he’d keep coming after me. The glass that was already lodged in my soles, stabbed through to my feet, but the pain was nothing compared to that of my arm. Staggering across the living room, I turned back to see my father trying to balance on his feet.

He smiled like I imagined a cold-blooded killer would moments before he’d strike, his fingers touching his temple wound. “You’ll pay for that, you little bitch. I’m gonna make you hurt.”

In that moment, I felt a passionate hate for a man who was supposed to love me. And fear. Fear that one day he’d see through his promise and end my mother and me once and for all.

So, I took off my ruined shoes and I ran.

Cutting through the overgrown grass, I put as much distance between us as possible. Running track at school had always given me the advantage when fleeing for my life, adrenaline my only ally. I sprinted until I found myself outside Romeo’s house on the other side of the block. When the adrenaline wore off, the pain in my arm returned and this time, with a vengeance. I doubled over, cradling my forearm and sobbing hard. Sitting in the gutter, just out of the glow of the street lamp, I closed my eyes and wished for a better place. A better life.

I needed that scholarship if I ever stood a chance of escaping this neighborhood and my father. The sad reality was, I didn’t know if I would live to see if I got accepted or not.

“Lucy?” Wiping my sodden face on my shirt, I turned to a concerned and confused Romeo. “Lucy, what’s happened?” He crouched in front of me, cupping my cheeks with both hands. “What did he do to you?”

I swallowed the hard lump. “I can’t go home, Romeo.”

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