Make The Unknown Known

I

(Image is Katrina)
I woke up to my father yelling at me. Like any other day, he yelled about my mother's death being my fault. I won' t go in to detail; let's just say I left with at least a sprained wrist.

I walked to school in my black skinny jeans, knee high converse, Attila shirt and my over-sized jacket. My friend Max was running up to me, a couple of guys chasing after him. I noticed the figures as Jim, Blake and Ian. Great. Every day they beat the crap out of me and Max. As they reached me, Max was already out of breath and his ebony black hair was soaked in sweat.

"Get your ass back here!" I could hear Blake's voice right as he stopped in front of me and he turned to his friends, smirking.

"Running to your girlfriend again, Maxi poo?"

"Wow guys. What, it's been since 5th grade and you still can't come up with a new pick up line?" I sarcastically reply. Max is standing upright again and is slowly getting in front of me so they wouldn't be able to hurt me.. too badly. Jim advanced to the right and Blake to the left. Ian stayed in the same spot, an idiotic smirk plastered over his face. I felt pressure on my wrist, the same one my father injured, but didn't give any sign of weakness to satisfy my attackers.

"Leave her alone, Jim." I looked at Max to see him still staring at Ian. Jim laughed and twisted my wrist more. Still having no response, he shoved me to the ground and began to kick me. Quickly, my arms automatically covered my face and my legs covered my stomach. I could feel his steal toe boots every time he kicked me. As his boots began to draw blood, I glanced through my hands to see Max being held by Ian and Jake hitting him.

After a while, they began to get bored with us and let go of Max and Jim stopped kicking me, moving on to the next kid. Max rushed over to see if I was okay and started to freak out when he saw the cuts on my legs and blood covering almost half of my face.

"Oh my god. I am so sorry Katrina. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let him push you. I'm sorry." His eyes traveled to my probably now broken wrist then up to me. I quickly hid it in my jacket sleeve, cringing at the pain and stood, surprised my legs could actually support my weight since I could see blood tinting my black jeans, making them darker if possible.

"Your wrist was hurt before, wasn't it?" His deep voice sounds filled with worry as I hide my face in my red hair. I glanced back at him to see anger in his green eyes.

"I'm fine, Max. See," I picked my bag up with my left hand, almost dropping it.

"Stop hurting yourself, Kat. It just makes me mad that that bastard hurts you every morning." I walked over to him, putting my bag back on my shoulder.

"Tree house?" I asked. He nodded. When we were little, my uncle had built us a tree house in the middle of the woods as kind of a safe place for me and Max since both our parents are abusive. My uncle was a carpenter and he basically took care of me after my mother died. That was, until a few years ago he went to jail for almost killing someone at a bar over drugs..  Then I was handed over to my dad. Ever since my mom died, he began to drink. That was why I was taken by my uncle when I started freshman year; but, when my uncle died, I had no choice but to go back to my father. When I went back, the first few days it was just yelling. Then after a week, it was shoving. Finally, after a month, the abuse got worse by the day; hitting, sometimes he would go as far as to stab me; nothing really life-threatening just enough to inflict pain. I was too worried to tell anyone other than Max and I made him promise to not tell anyone else.

His story was even longer than mine and it's not really my story to tell, so I'll lay it at rest.

As we approached the middle of the forest, we could barely see a lantern hanging off of a tree branch. The rope was put away too tall for me to reach so Max laughed and pulled it down for me.