Highway To Hell

C H A P T E R O N E

Some foul language is used. Be warned, readers.

O N E : 5 A M

"Get out of my fucking sight, you useless child!" I was roughly pushed out onto the porch, my legs giving out underneath me while the rough concrete bit into my knees. I felt and heard, rather than saw, the heavy mahogany wood door slam shut behind me, rattling the doorframe.

Rain poured heavily outside the cover of the door. I knew from past experience that my mother would shut me out for hours, if not an entire day, and judging from the amount of alcohol she'd been consuming just now, I would only dare hope to come back tomorrow.

Today, it'd be off to my aunt's house. In the rain. In my frilliest, tightest and most unpractical dress.

Great.

I gathered a deep, shaky breath, and dared one step of my yellow flats into the rain. The rain poured relentlessly, instantly drenching my leg. The rest of me soon followed, and my hair soon formed into an unattractive straggly mess.

I made it past my mother's fence and the perfectly trimmed grass of our lawn before slipping and crying out loudly as my torn knees collided with the sidewalk.

I didn't know how long I sat there, gently wiping the dirt embedded in my knees using my ruined dress before I realised that the rain has stopped. I looked up to find a black-haired boy peering through thick lashes at me, holding up a Spongebob umbrella.

"Do you need help?" he asked me in a high-pitched, yet somehow boyish tone.

I shivered as he helped me up, his hand unbelievably smooth and warm and all sorts of comforting, then covering me with the umbrella fully, leaving his own side exposed and helping me into the pastel yellow house next door.

I recalled seeing him and his parents, a seemingly perfect family, with his gorgeously young and kind mother and his funny yet affectionate father, both still blissfully in love. Suddenly my life paled in comparison to this bright, perfect boy next to me, and an undeniable wave of jealousy swept over me. I quickly pushed those feelings away into the separate compartment where I stored away all the abuse and the hurtful words spoken to me and that cruel, tough personality I had developed through my nine years of life and those monsters that hid not only under my bed, but in my head and everywhere I went.

"Alec! Where in the world have you-" his mother broke off mid-sentence, holding up a chocolate-covered spatula, staring at my torn dress and the fresh red mark shaped like a hand on my left cheek.

Rushing away, she returned within seconds with a fluffy, warm yellow towel and wrapped it tightly around me. The warm, clean scent of detergent enveloped me, a scent that I often did not get to smell due to the lingering smoke in the air of my house. Murmuring comforting words, she ushered me to a white and yellow tiled bathroom and turned on the hot water, leaving out the sponges and soaps for me.

"Now, child, don't be shy. How about you take a shower and stay here for the night, then we can work this out tomorrow?" she smiled at me, a smile I had seen so often in the faces of anyone who knew what went on in my home, a mix of sympathy and fury, but helplessness at what to do.

I nodded obediently, stepping into the shower as she took my dirty clothes in one hand and gently closed the door. I relished the warmth of the scalding water that never seemed to come quite so smoothly in our house, and scrubbed myself into smooth pink skin using the shea butter soap.

As the lingering remnants of the dirt and mud drained away, I felt myself wondering about what Alec's mother would make of all this. Me, the rejected child, the result of a failed condom and a forgotten abortion.

Me, the abomination, the pathetic, skinny thing with the too-long brown hair and the dreamy blue-grey eyes.

I avoided the mirror as I combed out the tangles in my hair and dressed myself in the warm, comfortable shorts and shirt I found left for me outside the door, in fear of what I'd find staring back at me.

But I knew what I was afraid of finding.

It wasn't my sharp, gaunt cheekbones or my pale skin or my chapped lips and empty eyes.

It was the reflection of my mother.

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Alec was kind to me. I was pretty sure he knew about what happened to me, or at least what his mother had told him.

We spent time talking, watching all the Avengers movies, debating over whether Batman or Spiderman was better and bantered back and forth constantly about trivial things until the red digits on the clock blinked away into 3 AM and his eyelids drooped as he snuggled back into the huge mound of fluffy, large comforters and array of colourful pillows we had crafted into a fort. I adjusted our large shared down comforter over him more comfortably as I wiggled closer, craving his warmth. Soon, I was lulled into the best sleep I'd had in weeks.

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I opened my eyes and saw the clock blink into 5 AM.

What I did next was unforgivable and I knew that this was the cowardice, the reflection of my mother I didn't want to see, to know, to find in myself.

I ran away.