Don't Touch Me. [ON HOLD]

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴛᴡᴏ - ᴘʟᴀɴᴇ

I STARED AT the plane in front of me.

Don't people usually board planes differently? Like, with other people? Why does this feel so weird?

I stepped out of the social worker's car and continued staring at the plane suspiciously, even while putting on my backpack. The sky was gray with clouds, too. I began to feel a bit nervous about meeting my brothers in the next couple of hours. Did I break any mirrors recently? Or spill salt? Not to mention it's seriously chilly. I exhaled, and despite my worries, smiled a bit when I could see my breath.

It reminded me of before Mom met him. Before he invaded our house. Our home.

Mom's ex-husband, my step-father, the bane of my existence. All the same person. If I could kill him, I would.

At first, he was kind; a smiling face that could provide for us. He had a good job and a college degree, unlike my Mom, who had to work several jobs at once just to pay bills. She could finally breathe when she married him. But, as I've come to know, normal-looking people are always the least normal.

After the first time he hit her, it just became an everyday occurrence. Something we just pretended didn't happen. And then, whenever she decided she wanted to leave him, he would say things like,

"If you leave me, what will happen to Ana?"

"You can't leave, otherwise you'll be back to what you had before. What, do you want that?"

And then, after around a year he had been with us, he began touching me. I don't want to get into it. It still makes me sick.

He left when I was 11. No warnings, nothing. Just got up and left. Good riddance, I thought, but my Mom was never the same. It was like those two years with him made her forget the other nine with me.

Before he came, when it got cold in those winter nights, so cold that my Mom and I could see our breath, we would sleep together. Our heat often got shut off because my Mom couldn't afford it, so we would cuddle in blankets, talking until we fell asleep. My Mom always worked then so the only time I could really be with her was during times like this. But after he fucked it all up, after Mom saw and let all those things happen to me, after she blamed me for everything, and after her fear of him became greater than her love for me, I ended up alone.

"Sweetie, you can board the plane, you know." The social worker chuckled faintly as she guided me away from the car, a hand on my back. I looked up at her, confused and uncomfortable as hell. But more uncomfortable.

"Ma'am, I've never been on a plane before, but where are the other passengers?" I asked, trying to play off the awkwardness that came as I stepped away from her grasp. She didn't say anything for a moment but kept smiling.

"Well, this is a jet your family owns." The lady kept smiling brightly, as if she didn't just tell me something crazy.

"What?" I looked at her, bewildered for a moment, before looking away and regaining my composure. My family must be loaded. Wow, I can almost feel all of my problems going away. I was going to move in with some rich-ass millionaires or something. That foreboding feeling earlier was totally wrong. I was going to move in with some millionaires. Rich. Ass. Millionaires. Now I really don't need to be family with them. I'll already have everything else I want.

"Alright, well, this is goodbye. You're going to fly for around 3 hours. Anything you need you can ask your brothers." She turned and reached out to pat my shoulder, but paused and drew it back. Instead, she crouched down a bit, so that she could look me in the eye.