Each Other's

Chapter 8

For the second time that month, I woke up in physical pain.

My stomach, where dad had hit me, hurt more than any injury that my body had ever experienced--more, even, than that horrific punch in the chest I'd received a few weeks ago.

I slowly rose from my bed, trying not to make any sharp or sudden movements which could potentially worsen the pain.

I glanced at Melanie's bed as I stood up to make sure that she was still asleep. She was; Her chubby little face was completely at peace as she slept.

As soon as I was on my feet, a wave of sickness threatened to engulf me. Less than a second later, I felt bile rising up my throat, and a sour taste filled my mouth.

I walked to the bathroom with one hand covering my mouth, quietly closed the door and knelt down to throw up in the toilet.

I felt a little better after that.

I lifted my shirt to look down at the new bruise I had, with the fleeting thought that this might just become a weekly routine for me. It was large and dark, and pretty gruesome. The bruise on my chest had almost completely faded, though.

I sighed at the thought of going to school and trying to get through all my lessons with this horrible stomach ache.

All of a sudden, I remembered that there were pain killers in the cabinet in dad's bathroom.

As I left my bathroom, I glanced at the clock in my bedroom. It was 6 am--dad had usually left by this time.

I silently made my way to his empty bedroom, and then the bathroom. I had to stand on my toes to open the cheap white medicine cabinet--it was nailed onto the wall, right above the sink, with peeling paint and a rusted handle.

To my surprise, it was brimming with lots of packets of multi-coloured capsules. Throughout my childhood, there'd always only been 9 or 10 different kinds of medicines in there.

I caught sight of all the regular medicines, like the anti-allergy ones and the flu medicine, but there were so many others that I'd never seen.

As I dug through the mountain of boxes and bottles in search of the pain-killers, my fingers curled around a small, cylindrical object. I extracted my hand to see what it was, and... it was a little plastic syringe, filled with a dark brown liquid.

I felt like my heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second. Was my father a drug addict?

After frantically searching through the cabinet for a few more minutes, I discovered several tiny packets, filled with some kind of dark coloured powder.

My breathing became more rapid. Was this why dad had such unpredictable mood swings? Was this why he'd tried to hurt Melanie? Why he had hurt me?

Were all those strange pills drugs, too?

I was overcome by the strongest desire to empty the cabinet and flush all its contents down the toilet.

Before I succumbed to the temptation, though, I remembered what could happen to me--and Melanie--if dad discovered that I'd done that.

Albeit unwillingly, I put the packets and the syringe back, and then shut the door of the cabinet before going back to my room. I didn't care about getting pain-killers anymore.

As I got dressed for school and went downstairs to get breakfast ready, I felt like I was in a daze of sorts, not really paying attention to my surroundings.