Lay Low 'Missing' Chapters

Dislocated

I waited for him to stop shouting.  I wasn't even hearing the words anymore.  I only felt the anger radiating off of him and specks of his spit hitting my face.  He stood up taller suddenly.

"Well?" he asked.

I hesitated.

The back of his hand connected with my cheek and the pain burst through my senses.  I grabbed my cheek and rubbed it.

"I'm sorry."

He glared at me.

"For what?"

"Um..."

His hand connected again, this time on the other side.  His ring caught my cheekbone and I felt the skin tear.

"Shit! Look what you made me do now," he barked. "I'm gonna have to keep you off school now."

He pushed me against the wall as he stalked out of the room.  I grabbed a tissue and used it to stop the flow of blood.

I could hear glasses clinking in the kitchen and the clock showed it was already 10pm. He wasn't on shift tomorrow, no doubt he would be back to see me before he went to bed. If I had to stay off school with "flu" for a few days, he would take his opportunity to beat me up some more, without fear of what I would look like.

I decided to slip out unnoticed.  Hopefully he would think I had gone to bed and not care to wake me up. Not that he hadn't dragged me out of bed to start on me many times before.  Fuck it; I just wanted to get out of there for a few hours.  I'd deal with any consequences later.   It wasn't like I wasn't going to get beaten anyway.

I got out without detection and starting walking.  I wasn't sure where to go, but anywhere but here.  I headed over to the local recreation area.  I started to feel a little anxious as I saw a group of teenagers ahead of me.  They looked a bit older than me, but not by much. They were obviously hanging around drinking; cans of lager were empty on the ground and a 3 litre cider bottle was being passed around.  There was a car on the street next to them, the doors opened and music was playing. As I came up on them, the tallest in the group came walking towards me.

"Hey, do you go to Parry?" he called as I approached.

"Yeah," I replied, kind of defensively.  Some people took school rivalry far too seriously.

"We played you last term at football.  We've got you again next week.   You play centre half right?" He was smiling.

"Yeah, that's right.  You must be from St John's."  I recognised him as I shook his outstretched hand. "Aren't you a midfielder?"

"Yeah man.  That was a tough game, you were all over us," he said, "you have a lot of good players."

"A few of them play for the county."

"Shit, no wonder we didn't have a chance!" He shook his head. "Come have a drink with us. Unless you are off somewhere in a hurry..."

I smiled back.

"No, I've got nowhere to be."

"I'm Ben."

"Jake."

He introduced me to his friends and a few of them were on the team.  They passed their drinks and cigarettes to me freely and after an hour I was feeling a part of their group.

I laughed hard at a joke and felt my cheek burn.

"Jake you have some blood on your face, man."

I scrambled for my tissue as I felt it run down my cheek.