Twenty-Five

        Where We Fail

        As I walk up the walkway, I don’t know whether to just go inside or not. I don’t feel welcome in a place that is supposing my home so I raise my fist and knock. I only hit the wood twice before the door swings open and I see my father’s sneering face.

            For a moment, I don’t know who I’m staring at. His face is wrinkled from stress and his hair is so thin and disheveled that I don’t think he takes care of it. His skin is so red that he must have high blood pressure from his anger and fear takes a hold of me.

            My father grabs the collar of my shirt and yanks me inside.

            I’m practically thrown through the door and pray that if Jacoby saw, he doesn’t take this as a sign to come help me. This is nothing.

            “About time,” Dad snarls.

            I catch myself as I trip and look over the house. It’s only been less than a few months and it looks like nobody has lived in it for years. Dust covers the hardwood on the floor and cobwebs hang along the railing of the stairs. Maybe my father never came home until shortly before I did.

            I whirl around to face my father and feel my knees tremble at the sight of him. Though horrible before, he isn’t the same as I remember; he’s worse. He looks like a monster, full of evil and ready to strike at any moment.

            “Where’s mom?” I ask nervously. “Where’s Belle?”

            Dad slams his closed fist on the coffee table beside the front door. “Shut up!”

            “You said they were here,” I object, standing my ground. I want to move away from him but I know it will show I’m scared. All I can smell is Wild Turkey from his angry breaths.

            “Shut up!” he repeats, louder this time. His voice echo’s through the house.

            Ignoring his drunken orders, I turn away and lift my head. “Mom!” I call, though I’m unsure if she will reply. “Belle! Belle, it’s me, Stevie! Where are you?”

            Suddenly I wince in pain as it feels like a million tiny needles are poking the back of my head. My father takes his fistful of hair and yanks me backwards towards him, hard.

            “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

            I cower and try to reduce the pain from moving my head closer to his hand. I need to find my mother and sister and make sure they’re here but first I need to get away. Fighting will make things worse so I plea.

            “I’m sorry,” I whimper, grasping for my own hair. “Please, let me go. I’ll stop, I swear!”

            He gives my hair one last yank and laughs darkly. My father drops his grasp and shoves my away, ripping out some strands that were still caught in his fist.

            I take a deep breath and touch the back of my head, making sure there isn’t a chunk missing from my head. Dad moves into the kitchen in search of a glass and makes a note of watching me as he pours.

            I turn away from him and catch sight of Jacoby outside, hiding behind one of our unkempt bushes. His expression is worried and he looks ready to move to come to my rescue. He mouths if I’m okay and I nod. I tell him to stay outside.

            “What are you doing?”

            I jump at my father’s voice. I can feel his musty breath on the back of my neck and cringe.

            “I need to go to the bathroom.”

             “Leave and I’ll hurt your mother,” he slurs, grumbling as I head for the stairs. I take them two at a time and pretend to close the bathroom door so he thinks I’m there. When I listen to make sure he’s not following, I tip toe down the hall, opening doors.

            I hear movement in my bedroom.

            “Belle?” I whisper, moving through the room. “Belle?”

            I find her curled up in my mother’s lap in the corner beside my bed. My mother’s hugging her, wrapping one hand around her mouth to keep her quiet. I expect my mom to scream and be afraid of me, but she does the exact opposite. She raises a finger to her lips.

            I nod and open my arms. Belle practically jumps into them, sniffling. “Stevie,” she cries.

            I move her away to arm’s length and repeat my mother’s gesture. Belle nods, understanding and moves to our open dresser. It looks exactly the way we left it when we took everything we needed. Belle grabs a piece of paper and starts writing.

            He’s not himself, Stevie. He’s not our father.

            Our eyes meet and she repeats the gesture to be quiet. We’ve gone in a full circle.

            Belle touches my arm gently and points to the paper. She raises it to my face and I struggle to read it in our dark room.

            He has a gun.

            I hear his footsteps on the stairs and freeze. He’s coming up; he’s going to figure out that I found my family and things are going to get bad.

            Adrenaline makes my heart race and survival instincts fill my brain. I instruct for my mother to hide behind my bed and make Belle crouch down with her.

            “When I say to, run,” I whisper, grabbing Belle’s shoulders. “I mean it. Both of you.”

            They both nod and I turn, ready to face my father. When he opens the door, his eyes are full of fury and if I wasn’t so pumped up, I would freeze in fear.

            “What the fu-“ he starts.

            I don’t let him finish. I lunge towards him and punch him somewhere indescribable. He wails and falls to his knees in pain. My hair whips my face as I spin around and call to my family.

            “Run!”

            I usher Belle out of the door first and my mother follows after me. We barrel down the stairs and Belle trips. I catch the back of her shirt and pull her up before she can face plant and we make it down the stairs so fast we could have rehearsed it.

            I lead the way to the back door as my father’s weight creates bangs on the floor above us as he runs. He’s screaming and yelling words I can only make out as curses. I hear him on the stairs just as I grab the door’s handle.

            It’s locked.

            At first I can’t comprehend this. How can it be locked from the inside? It’s a regular door! But then I see it. My father’s poor handiwork shows the lock has been pried out of its regular home and switched backwards, so that it locks from the inside with a key.

            I spin around, almost falling on the hardwood and point forwards. “Front door.”

            I grab Belle as she runs behind me and lead her in front of me so that she makes it out first. The only thing that’s important to me is that she’s the one who’s safe; that she will get outside into Jacoby’s hands, perfectly unharmed.

            It’s one of those moments where things are going at normal speed but feel slowed down, because you can see every, small detail happen.

            My father’s feet bang on the last few steps and jumps onto the ground floor, shaking the small house. He whirls around the banister, using it to propel him. His body blocks the front door, out only exit that I don’t remember him locking.

            A curse leaves my lips as I brace myself to push past him. I’m shoving through, Belle pausing behind me and I try my best to knock him over. I didn’t think this through. When I’m at the door I throw it open, using the wood to shove my father away.

            He stumbles, more from being drunk than the impact. I scream for Belle to come and my mother urges her forward. Her brown eyes are so wide and innocent that I want to scream. How can a parent put their child through this?

            I don’t understand what happens next.

            My father snarls and raises his hand. He uses the back of it to shove Belle away from the line of freedom as hard as he can. Her small, frail body is thrown back, her feet dragged across the floor and catching on a rug as her body flies. The rug stops her from moving any farther into the living room and she starts to drop.

            A sickening crack sounds through the house as the back of Belle’s head smashes into the corner of the coffee table.

            My mother screeches and I freeze, feeling like I’m not really here, living this. It’s a dream. It’s a dream. It’s a dream. It’s a dream.

            I open my mouth and let out my loudest scream. Whenever I have a nightmare I scream and it always wakes me up, bringing me back to reality because of how loud I am. But it’s not changing. The picture in front of me – the blood, it’s still there.

            My mother is crying over Belle’s unmoving body. Her big, brown eyes stare lifelessly at the ceiling, as if she’s a porcelain doll.

            I don’t hear my father until I close my mouth and I’m able to single out the noises. My mother’s screaming, her sobs, faint sirens in the back round and my father’s rambling.

            “It was an accident,” he’s saying. His red face is now as white as ghost and he’s pacing back and forth, gripping his hair. “I didn’t mean to! I didn’t! It was an accident!” His screaming becomes so ripping that I have to tune him out.

            I can’t move. I feel like my whole body has turned into cement and I’m stuck. All I can do is separate the noises from each other and stare at my dead sister.

            Police officers break open the back door and a few stand outside behind me. They’re too late. My father pulls a pistol out from inside his beige pants and raises it. I expect him to point it at the officers, to try and shoot them. But I’m wrong.

            I stare into the barrel completely motionless. I still can’t understand what’s happening and I’m finally able to label it as shock. I’m in shock because my sister is dead.

            “Put the gun down or we’ll shoot!” The officers repeat this a few times but they’re voices are too distant to hear. All I can hear are my parents.

            “My poor baby,” my mother sobs, clutching Belle in her arms. Her head bleeds all over my mother’s hand but she doesn’t seem to notice. “Oh my god, my poor baby.”

            “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t supposed to happen! It was an accident!”

            For the first time since what happened I meet my father’s eyes. He looks scared and as horrible as I felt for doing this to him before, now I feel no remorse in him being frightened. He deserves it.

            His body moves in jerky motions as the bullets pierce is chest. He falls to the floor as my ears start ringing and his body lands with a thump.

            I still can’t move.

            My sister is dead.

            My father is dead.

            A policeman laces his arms around me and drags me off but I don’t tear my eyes away from the scene in front of me. I can’t look away; can’t turn my gaze anywhere but forward. When the doorway is out of view a new person holds me, this time against their chest.

            “Stevie,” they whisper. They move in front of my and all I can see is a chest. “Look at me.” I can’t move my eyes. “Look at me.”

            Jacoby raises my chin to meet his eyes but I can’t look at him. I stare at his chest.

            When he realizes I’m like this he pulls me into him and just holds me, letting me hug him as sobs start to rock my body.