Chasing Sevens

Chapter Three

3

The sound of breaking glass pierced the once calm night air. Walking over to the window, I peeked out slightly to see, but not enough to be noticed. My heart sank when I saw which unit the sound was coming from.

"You good-for-nothing whore!" An angry man, whom I assumed was Calvin, called out.

They stopped hollering for only a few seconds until his anger arose once more. "I was gone two hours, and you had another man over, didn't you?"

The bickering continued back and forth, but I was startled out of my eavesdropping position when a figure approached me.

"Candice?" I whispered, ducking out of view of the window.

"What's goin' on? It's past two in the morning," she replied, seemingly still half-asleep.

"Just Nina and Calvin arguing. We're safe. You can head back to bed. I'm gonna text Seven and make sure she's okay."

"Okay," she mumbled, looking dazed and confused. She staggered back into her room. Upon seeing the door close, my hands scrambled for my phone. Before I could even get a sentence typed out, there was a quiet knock on the door. Waiting on the other side of it was an instant heartbreak for me.

"Tobi?" Seven whimpered, eyes wide and slightly shivering. It was like the poor thing had seen a ghost. Guided by the porch lights in the pitch black, I could see she was bleeding pretty badly. The fact that she was dressed in a sweat suit likely meant she'd been woken up from her sleep.

"Oh, my God."

I wrapped one arm around her to guide her to the couch. She practically fell over, clinging onto me like I was dangling her above a cliff. "It... It won't stop! The bleeding... There was a piece of glass... I pulled it out but that just made it worse... I don't know what to do!" Her sentences were choppy, and I knew I didn't have much time to think.

She'd already lost a lot of blood. "Stay here."

Making a dash for the bathroom, I prayed Mom also inherited a first- aid kit in the mountain of stuff she'd stored in here. Fumbling through countless expired medications that she refused to allow me to toss, I was unable to locate any ointment, but I found a bundle of old bandages, their wrappers yellowing. My annoyance with my mother continued to grow. I could always count on her to indirectly make an emergency ten times more difficult to deal with.

A distraught Seven waited for me back in the living room. Leaning against the armrest, she used her sleeve to cover the wound between labored breaths.

"Breathe." I ordered, snapping my fingers. "Stay with me."

I took a deep inhale, and she matched mine, her arm wrapped around my leg as I stood above her. She didn't say a single word.