Perfect Smile | Mason Thames |

Chapter 7: Daddy issues

April 14, 2021

Monday

Narrators Pov:

Jules woke up that morning feeling exhausted. Every bone in her body ached from the previous two days. Saturday her and her friends spent the day at the beach and on Sunday they spent the day at her house. They were watching movies in her movie room along with baking cookies, pillow fights, late target run, and playing a nerf gun battle in her house.

Eventually her friends had to leave. It made her sad knowing that she would have to stay in her house all alone with no one to talk to. Her Mom was at a friends house, planning her new store opening up. Ethan was out hanging with his friends, he was supposed to come home Sunday morning but ended up sleeping over and wouldn't be back until Tomorrow.

She didn't know where her dad was if she was being honest. He was probably at some bar in the middle of no where, wasting his days off on beer if she was guessing. She hasn't seen her dad in almost a month, no calls and no texts were exchanged. She knew his past about being an alcoholic; Before meeting her mom, he would spend his days inside of a bar doing god knows what. He would start fights and end up in jail because of his stupidity and greed. When he met Jules's Mom, Suzanna, he stopped all those things. He said it was because he 'loved' her, But his true self began to risen after his fake act started to fade.

Jules knew a lot of things about her father, about his drug addiction and how he stole from stores and people. She knew all of this at the age of 12. She found out everything after witnessing a brutal fight between him and her mother. A fight that consisted in blood and yells, yells that can be heard from across the street and blood splats seen on the floor. She watched on the stairs behind a wall as she saw her own father throw punches at her mom, his own wife. Jules was frozen, glued to the ground as she watched her mom take in the kicks to the stomach as she was on the ground. Jules didn't know what to do, so as any 12 year old, she kept quiet. She never told anyone what she saw that day, not her mom, not her brother, not her friends, and especially not her dad.

Jules's dad, Henry, grew tired of his life. He started falling back into his old habit and started drinking. It started as one beer 3 times a week, then 4 beers, then eventually it came to a point where around 2 pm, he would drink countless amount of beers a day, starting the year 2018, just a couple months before Jules's 12th birthday. That was the last birthday she had were her family was whole. Where they were one big 'happy' family.

But what Jules hadn't realized at the time was that the same day, the day she turned 12, was the day her father started beating his wife, her mom.

When she found out about what her father did to her mom, she felt sick. She felt horrible. Why was it that day? Why did it have to happen at all? Why couldn't they be just a normal, happy family? She made the day all about her, when her mom, the woman she loved most, was being punched repeatedly in the room next to her party. While she was laughing and having the best time of her life, her mom was being beaten, forming black and blue bruises all over her body with cuts and scrapes and having the worst time of her life. When she found out, she hated her birthdays ever since.

Jules couldn't help but cry. She has been in bed all day and she was crying. She was happy that her mom was safe now, that she was far, far away from the man Jules once loved. So why was she crying? As tears rolled down her cheeks, with sobs leaving her mouth every so often, she couldn't help but blame herself. Blame herself for the beatings her mom took, from the sleepless nights her mom faced, and for having to take care of two children while her body ached from the brutal force she took the night before.