and my mother would never know what was happening under her roof. If I could just make it a few more years, then I’d never have to see his face again if I didn’t want to… just a few more years. I’d already lived through this for almost ten. What’s a few more?
I watched as the dark ceiling became gray, then finally bright orange as the morning sun peeked into my room. My eyes felt as if I hadn’t blinked the entire night and I was almost positive I hadn’t. My body felt stiff and my ribs ached. The injured side of my face felt bigger than the other and I was dreading looking in the mirror and seeing what I had to deal with Monday at school. I hoped it wasn’t very bad and if it was, I hoped the two days I had before going back to school was enough for it to heal.
As soon as I got up and got dressed, I called Megan to come and get me. No matter how badly I wanted to be out of this house, I couldn’t bring myself to drive that gray Toyota in the garage.
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” Megan said through the phone. We decided to catch a movie, grab some lunch, and catch up on some much-needed shopping.
I spent ten minutes trying to powder away the ugly, swollen bruise on my cheek, and then I peeked in and checked on my mom. The room was dark and she was asleep. I watched her stomach move up and down as she breathed deep. As long as her stomach was moving then she was still with us. Afraid that I’d wake her, I softly closed the door then went downstairs to wait on the front porch for Megan.
“What the hell happened to your face?” she asked with big eyes when I got into her car. “Oh my God, did that happen last night? I was freaking out when I saw you handcuffed. Did your dad freak out on you?” We jerked down the road and worked our way to the movie theater.
I jumped all over her first question. I didn’t even think to say it had happened at The Pit the night before.
“Yeah, some bitch stepped on me and I hit my face on the concrete floor. It looks awful, I know. It hurts like a bitch, too. I still can’t believe I got arrested.” I looked out the window. “I told you going back there was a bad idea. My dad was so pissed.” I quickly changed the subject. “What happened with you?”
“Chet pulled me out.” She tried not to smile. “I ended up going back to Finn’s garage with them. They said Zeke got arrested, too. Did you see him?”
We pulled into the theater parking lot and she slammed her parking brake into place.
“Yeah, I saw him.” And I left it at that.
There was no need to go any deeper into that situation.
I was still pissed off about him baiting my dad. Part of me wanted to blame him for my painful table ride, but I knew I couldn’t do that. He had no idea how sick my father was. He had no way of knowing that by pushing my dad’s buttons he was typing in the combination to release a night of terror on me. I was almost positive, had he known what he was setting me up for, he wouldn’t have said those things. Zeke wasn’t a nice guy, but he was a good guy. Only a good guy would rush a strange girl to the hospital and only a good guy would save me from being trampled to death by a herd of Pit People.
I barely paid attention during the movie. My mind kept going back to Zeke. I kept wondering if he got out of jail. I hoped he didn’t get into too much trouble. If he did, he had no one to blame but himself for carrying drugs around, but still, I did kind of tell on him. Even if I was trying to help, in the end I just made things worse for him. The poor guy had only been trying to help me and I thanked him by getting him drug charges. I hated the idea of him sitting in jail while I was free to go to a movie all because of who my dad was.
At school on Monday, I found out that Zeke was released from jail.