Broken Beginnings

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Chloe

I threw the blanket off my body as Dale’s words washed over me. I felt frozen to the core. My father – the man I had once trusted, now worked for the man who ruled the neighborhood we had been forced to live in as a result of Dale’s inability to hold a job for more than a few months at a time within the last four years. We needed a cheap place, where the rent was easy to make, and no lease needed to be signed. This was the only neighborhood I could afford while trying desperately to save up for a better life for myself. I worked three jobs. I had no friends. They all fell away when my mom died from breast cancer four long, lonely years ago. They had all disappeared as though they never even existed when I’d been forced to leave the comfortable suburban neighborhood I had known, and loved, for the trash-filled gutters and barred windows of the ghetto. I didn’t blame them. I couldn’t blame them. The life I lived was poles apart from the life I had once known. Looking back, I felt as though I was looking into a fairytale or even a dream. The life I had known didn’t seem real. The one bedroom apartment I stood in didn’t even let me believe the life I once had was attainable. The dark place I lived in now fed on hope – crushing it.  

I spun around, feeling almost frantic as I took in the sight of the place I had called home for the last four years. I was certain the walls were once white. Now they were coated with a yellow haze, a reminiscent of cigarette smoke. The carpets were flattened and stained. I tried to clean them, but it hadn’t made a difference. The baseboards were chipped, and in the bathroom they were rotted. The toilet and tub was stained with rusted rings I couldn’t scrub from the ceramic bowls. I had the bedroom and Dale slept on the couch in the living room – on the nights he bothered to come home. I knew if I left him now, he would either die, or he would be forced to smarten up to keep himself alive. I highly doubted it would be the latter. The thought pained my heart. I knew without doubt, that if I left, I was sentencing my father to death. Without me to care for him he had nothing and no one. But I was tired – I was exhausted. And now that he was working for Jimmy, I knew I was in danger. I’d known he was peddling – I’m not stupid. But I thought it was for a small dealer who hadn’t yet made much of a name for himself. If I had known he was selling for Jimmy, I would have run a long time ago. Jimmy was cruel. He was a man without a soul and he walked the streets as though he owned them. There was no crime above Jimmy – he didn’t know the meaning of remorse. In his mind, regret was an emotion only a weak being entertained. Money was the only item he cherished – loyalty and love held no precedence. Dale, my father, knew I hated Jimmy. I loathed him with every fiber of my being. Men like him – men who thought they could take whatever they wanted without consequence – terrified me.

I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t save Dale any longer. It was becoming clearer to me every day, that saving someone who didn’t want to be saved, was not only impossible, but pointless. Sometimes you had to make tough decisions in order to save yourself. This was the toughest decision I would ever face. I knew this to be true by the pain festering in my heart. 

With a tight throat and a rapidly beating heart, I pulled the suitcase from beneath my bed and loaded it with every article of clothing I owned. I sat on it to force the zipper closed before I piled every keepsake I had kept of my mothers into another suitcase. I moved to the window, pulling at the loose frame. I shoved my hand down the crack, pulling out the money I kept hidden deep within the wall. There wasn’t much. I had all of fifty-two hundred dollars. Dale never paid for anything but his habits. I was the one who managed the rent and groceries. I didn’t even have a cell phone, which wasn’t heartbreaking because I would have left it behind anyway. I didn’t want to take anything that could be traced. My car was bad enough, but I planned on ditching it as soon as I got to wherever I was going. It was a piece of junk anyway. At least I had a few grand worth of miles to cover. It should get me far enough.