The Boy in Black

Chapter 10

The next day went by like I knew it would, the same as yesterday. Walter smacked me around whenever I went down there for water but it was worth it. I was so fucking thirsty.

Oliver had texted dme, asking if I could hang out. My excuse this time was "sorry, I fell asleep. I'm not allowed to go out after 7:30 on school nights." He sent it at noon. I sent it at 8 at night. What a full of shit lie. For Walter and Jen to give me a curfew, it'd have to imply that they cared about me enough to interfere with my life. They don't. They only care about the house being clean and the check of Child Services.

I feel a bit bad, lying to Oliver like that when he's been nothing but kind to me. But I couldn't even imagine the shitshow that would go down if he found out about what actually goes on behind closed doors in my house. Not that he's known me long enough to care, but he's the type of person to want to help everybody. And then he'd get his mom involved, and then CPS would be called. And they'll either dismiss my case, and I'd get the absolute worst beat down of my entire life afterwards, or they'll send me back to Foster Care. And I could end up with someone worse. The thought made me shutter.

I slowly reached over to turn off my lamp, biting my lip to not scream at the pain in my ribs. I laid back down and stared up at my ceiling. The window didn't have blinds on it, so even though my lamp was out, I could still see things due to the glow of the moonlight. I stared up at my ceiling, wishing I was look at the sky with Oliver. When my eyes started to drift shut, I dreamt of a life far away from this hell. I dreamt that I was swimming in the moonlight, and I started sinking. The sinking didn't make me panic or yell or flail around, I just let it happen. And I sunk, and sunk, and sunk, and sunk... I was so far down that the only way I could tell which was up was from blueish white light emanating from the sky, blessing me in its calm. And I was at peace.

*******time skip*******

     I shot out of my peace, brought back to reality by banging on the door.

     "GET THE FUCK UP BITCH!" Walter screamed from the other side. I heard his heavy, miscalculated footsteps trudge down the stairs and probably back to the couch.

     I sighed and laid there for a second. When I finally worked up the courage to sit up, I jerked too fast, momentarily forgetting about my busted ribs in my post sleep haze.

     "Ughhh fuck me," I groaned in pain through gritted teeth. "Motherfucker..."

     I took a moment to catch my breath, and then (slowly) started to move to swing my legs over the side of my bed. I stood up on wobbly knees, and the whole time I was getting dressed, my hands were shaking. I can't tell if it's from lack of food, dehydration, or the remnants of pain at this point. I have a massive headache, too. I'm really not up for dealing with people's shit today.

     I pushed that thought down and started moving on autopilot to get my clothes on. It hurt, really bad. I tried to change out of a different hoodie, since I've been wearing this one since Friday, but lifting my arms hurt too bad. So I settled for only changing my pants. Instead of jeans, like I normally wear, I wore sweatpants. I went to put on deodorant because the last shower I had was over three days ago. And there was no way in fuck that I could bend over to tie my Converse, so I sat on my bed with my feet together and my knees bent, and slowly put socks on. It was sort of hard to do when my feet was sideways and I was shaking so much, but I did it. And then after that, I slipped on slides.

     I went into the bathroom and my hair was gross and greasy, and it wasn't completely straight anymore. Some of my waves had come back, very subtly. I looked fucking horrible. My skin was pasty white, my hair looked dead, and the purple bruise stood out like a sore thumb against my fair complexion. I smiled to see if that would do anything, but it just made me realize how yellow my teeth are, so I stopped.