Amor Rebelde

Chapter Thirteen (unedited)

*Thinking of rewriting; what do you all think?*

"You're afraid to tell people how you feel because it will destroy them, so you bury it deep inside yourself where it destroys you."

~Unknown~

 

 

While walking usually cleared my head after my parents had a huge argument, today it only helped in filling my mind with even more vicious words that tore at my heart. Past fights trickled in as my feet slapped against the pavement. After my mother had stormed out, I had slid to the ground and cried my heart out. The whole tears, hiccups, and boogers ordeal. Of course, I tried to stay quiet for my father's sake, as he was probably trying to recuperate after the amount of courage he had mustered up to win that battle against my horrid mother.

I had to feel proud of him, though, for finally standing up for himself after eighteen years of marriage. Who knew he had it in him?

Not me, that was for sure.

I had forced myself up, eyes glistening with the tears that had wanted to slip out since this morning, and finished cleaning the kitchen. It was as if a fight hadn't happened moments before. It looked as if a normal family ate and talked together, laughed and shared stories of their days. And, I believed it. I created a whole world. One that protected me, for a few minutes, from my harsh reality. It shielded me from the truth of what my family actually was. The fragments of our life were brushed away into a box until I was ready to open it back up and face the truth.

With that in my head, I turned a sharp corner and stopped, glancing at the towering trees in front of me. The leaves flapped and the wind whistled around me. A part of me screamed for me to turn back around. Last time I had come near here, I ran into Jonathan, and while that encounter was a blessing at times, it also ruined part of my life. If I turned back now, I could avoid seeing someone like him again for today. No one knew exactly who wandered into the woods for a smoke or drink, and I didn't want to find out.

But, then again, I had nowhere else to go. Curfew was at ten, and I was sure Mr. Karls would end up finding me and dragging me back to my crumbling home life.

So, as a pair of headlights rounded the corner, I stepped over the small pile of discarded twigs and stumbled forward into the cover of the silent forest.

Eerie silence surrounded me. Every time a bird cawed in my direction, I cowered and stumbled away, as if it were going to eat me alive. My cheek still throbbed from the earlier impact, but I barely felt the sting as tears poured freely from my eyes. And while I tried to stop them, they continued on their own free will, ignoring every sense in my body to stop. The sweater I wore covered the forming bruises my mother had left on my arm, but I knew they were there, and that was enough to terrify me. What if someone found them? They'd take me away for sure, and while I hated my mother with a burning passion that I felt in the pit of my stomach, I wanted to be around for my father's remaining moments on this planet.

That alone kept me from crying to the police. Maybe once he was gone; maybe if I could gather all my courage to speak even one word, or even lift my sleeve to show them.

But I knew that would never happen. I was too frightened of the world to throw my problems onto someone else, even if they were helping. Sometimes, I would think I was placed in this world to take that abuse to keep another child from receiving it. For as long as my mother was my mother, I was the only one she could ridicule and tear apart until I was exposed to the taunts of the rest of the despicable humans like her, the sympathizers, and the bystanders that hid from the reality that was this society.