Juliette Oakland is from a small town in New Haven, Vermont. Since the moment she was born she was thrown into a world of abuse and neglect. Her mother died during childbirth which led her to fall victim to the hands of her alcoholic father. She had...
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***Harvey Maddon***
Juliette's P.O.V
It was only a little while after arriving at Layla's when a knock sounded at the door. I raised my eyebrow in question as she got up. "You really don't think that I was gonna text Harvey." She responded, rolling her eyes.
A slight panic shot through me as she put her hand on the door handle. Harvey was always there for me no matter what, much like Layla, he had never judged me or made me feel unwelcomed, but right now I wished that Layla had held off on telling him.
He was like a big brother to me, and though I loved him as such he could be a bit irrational and hot headed at times. We've been friends since middle school and since then he had always been my biggest protector. He biggest advocate when I was unable to stand up for myself. Anytime that anyone in or out of school had done anything to bother me he would always make sure to 'take care of it.'
I was thankful for him and his friendship, but his hot-headedness was also the reason he knew a lot less about just how bad my homelife had really gotten. Sure, he knew the gist of it, he was one of my closest friends after all, but if he knew the details to went on... God only knows what he would do. As it was I had a hard enough time talking him out of going over to my father's and 'talking' to him. We all knew that much more would amount to the encounter besides a simple conversation.
After years of knowing him, I knew that his end goal would always be to protect me, but I feared that if he tried to do anything in regard to my father that I would still be left to live with him, at his mercy. That would just make everything so much worse in the long run.
On top of that a part of me was afraid that Harvey would finally cause my father to finally officially be kicked out. It was bad enough that much of his anger towards me came unprovoked, without reason. I could only imagine what would happen if he was given a reason to be rid of me once and for all.
Neither Harvey nor Layla understood that part. They why's to the reason which I never really tried to permanently flee from him. But he was the only family that I had, this was the only home that I had ever known. It was anything other than perfect, unbearable at times even, but was I really ready to give up on the sliver of hope that I continued to hold in hopes that he would change?
The very thought was a ridiculous childlike hope. After being this way for seventeen almost eighteen years there was no possible way that he would change now. If anything, it seemed as he had gotten worse, more drunken and violent as the years progressed.
Or maybe the silver lining in which I continued to hold was just a blanket covering the truth. Maybe I thought that I deserved it, and that's why I continued to put up with the torment. And maybe I did. After years of being told exactly that it was difficult to not think that very thing.
