I feel like I’m alone in the house, the TV on to disguise the lack of voices on the other side of the door, and yet I’m utterly helpless. Digging through the box the frat boy dumped beside the bed, I find a couple of sandwiches, bags of chips, crackers, fruit roll ups and bottled water. Pretty much everything a twelve-year-old boy on a camping trip would be excited to have. Not that I can think about eating, but I am thirsty. The seals on the caps are intact, so I crack a bottle open and take a drink, wondering if and how I will survive this.
What is this doing to my family?
My father and my sister sounded genuinely distressed on the phone, which gives me a bit of solace. After my mother died a little over ten years ago, all three of us handled her absence differently. Our father threw himself into his businesses, growing an already successful empire into a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. He never remarried, but I have seen many women slip out of his room in the morning. I never take time to introduce myself to any of them because I know they won’t be there for long.
My sister handled our mother’s death by not dealing with it. She hid herself from me and everyone, eventually landing opportunities to take her far away. She’s modeled and has been a brand spokesman, but now she has her own brands and a YouTube channel with over five million followers.
With no one to commiserate with, I was left alone. I couldn’t be like my sister. I couldn’t abandon my father, even though he abandoned both of us. So, I adapted the best I could, making sure I was there to take care of him to the best of my ability. When he offered to send me away to the best boarding school money to buy, I declined, choosing to go to a private school within driving distance of the house. While Epi traveled the world with private tutors, I threw myself into my schoolwork. I advanced in my classes to graduate a year early. I started college at seventeen, attending Loyola University in Chicago because, once again, it was within driving distance of the house.
I joined my mother’s sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, after I had turned eighteen years old my sophomore year. As the daughter of a third generation Kappa with a billionaire father and a three point nine grade point average, they offered me membership despite my lack of social skills or interest in living amongst them and doing all the traditional sorority/fraternity things.
I remember the morning I told my father I was now a Kappa Kappa Gamma like Mom. He never looked up from his paper, but I noticed how he flinched when I said “like Mom”. Then he smiled, congratulated me, and told me to let him know when he needed to send in a check. Then he left me alone to finish breakfast by myself.
Even after graduating with honors and joining Krushner Industries as a junior portfolio analyst, identifying holes in our funds and prepping presentations specifically for him, I can’t get more than a couple of minutes of my father’s attention. I’m not sure if it’s because I remind him of his dead wife, or if it’s because he resents us for being left behind when she died.
Maybe he never wanted to be a father?
Who knows?
He’s never been deliberately cruel; he just wasn’t there. The desperation in his voice, and the fury in my sister’s words—that’s what sticks with me as time ticks by and I’m left alone with no clue what awaits me on the other side of this door.
Actually, that’s BS. I know what awaits me because the scary guy told me.
He’s going to beat me, he’s going to rape me, and if he does all that, he will surely kill me. My lack of defense, coupled with the fear of what’s coming, is bound to drive me insane.