Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 84072 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84072 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“Come with me.” I put her on my left-hand side with an arm around her shoulders, keeping her close to me. The vaulted archway leading into the living room is on my right. He doesn’t even notice us, just continues storming around the room, his shoes crunching broken glass. Whatever he was drinking is now splashed across one wall, dripping down the silk wallpaper Mom used to love.
I get Tia to the bottom of the stairs before letting her go, giving her a gentle push. “Go straight up to your room,” I tell her, “and lock the door. Don’t come out until I tell you to. Got it?” She gives me a wide-eyed nod before taking off at a run, her feet pounding the stairs while Dad screams out his frustration and his rage.
All I can do is sink onto the stairs, settling in with my arms folded over my knees while the storm rages on.
3
WREN
My eyelids are heavy on the morning of my second day as an Elite University student. I can barely pry them open—when I do, the mess around me is a reminder of the long night I had.
After all the noise last night, I’m surprised I was able to get any sleep at all. Not that Buck means to be a loud, drunken pain in the ass. That’s just how he is. It’s like the quieter he tries to be, the louder he is. All the drinking doesn’t help, but his heart’s in the right place.
I spent a lot of time sketching last night when the sounds of my roommate trying to navigate our little apartment were too much. Buck likes to complain about the walls being thin enough to hear a mouse fart in the next room, and he’s not wrong. A sketchpad falls off the bed when I sit up, and with it goes a couple of pencils and a piece of charcoal. There are still smudges on my fingers which ended up on my pillowcase and probably on my face, though I can’t see myself from where I’m sitting in the little bedroom. The room is as cheerful as I can make it with the little bit of money I have, but it’s home. And as difficult as Buck can be to deal with, he is still a mile and a half better than living with Mom.
The memory of sharing a home with her makes me shiver. It also makes me hurry through getting ready for class. I will do everything in my power to keep from being the same kind of person Mom turned out to be. Hopping from man to man, looking for something she either can’t or won’t bother giving to herself.
If I have to suffer through going to school with people who hate me and aren’t afraid to show it, I’m going to get something out of it. I’m breaking the cycle, which means finding a way to pay attention in class and pull good grades. Making it there on time is sort of the first step.
Sure enough, gazing in the bathroom mirror, there are smudges on my face which I wash off after tying my hair back. It can sort of be a pain sometimes, like if I accidentally roll over the wrong way in bed and yank my head back when I try to get up, but otherwise, I can’t imagine cutting it short. It’s part of who I am, I guess.
The rest of the apartment is still silent by the time I dart across the narrow hall from the bathroom back to my bedroom. It’s silent in here, anyway. I can’t say the same for the rest of the apartments around us. Somebody’s listening to a game show next-door—the TV is up so loud, I could play along with the contestants if I had the time to do it. There’s a baby crying somewhere downstairs. That’s another reason why I like to be quiet when I can. I don’t want to keep the baby awake. What a shame Buck is incapable of being quiet.
Buck, who is now asleep in the living room, sprawled out on the faded sofa. He took his shoes off, at least, and one foot is propped up on the arm so I can see a hole in the toe of his sock. That’s nowhere near his biggest problem, but it’s sort of a symbol of who he is. How he is. Clearly, he decided to continue drinking after he got home. A quick scan of the room shows me four empty beer cans on the coffee table and another two on the floor.
Make that three. My foot finds the last one and crunches it, and I freeze, wincing. The last thing I wanted was to wake him up. He’s not a bad-tempered person in general, but nobody’s in a good mood when they’re hung over.