by Jo Cassidy
"It's old," Dalton said.
Folding my arms, I leaned toward him. "So, you're basically saying you don't know how to play it, right?"
"That's not what I said." Dalton played a few chords, trying to find the melody.
Brendon winked at me, and I couldn't fight back the blush.
Dalton showed me how to hold the guitar. Excitement swept over me. I had a real guitar in my hands. I never thought it would happen. Good things didn’t happen to me.
Dalton took my hands and put them in place. “Let’s start with A.”
I waited for his touch to warm my body like Brendon’s did, but nothing happened. I noticed Brendon turned a little stiff when Dalton’s hand landed on mine. Was he worried about my safety? I didn’t think Dalton would try anything with Brendon there. Daddy always beat me in the confines of our basement where no one could see or interrupt.
Playing the guitar was a lot harder than I thought it would be, but I really enjoyed it. Dalton would get frustrated anytime I got a key wrong and Brendon, and I would have to calm him down.
"I said E minor!" Dalton pulled a little at his shaggy hair. The bell rang, and he took his guitar from me. "I'm not doing this every day. You'll drive me crazy. Let's do Monday, Wednesday, and Friday." He put his guitar in its bag and stood, slinging the bag around his back.
"Deal." I smiled at him as he walked away. I couldn’t be mad at him for getting so upset. I’d just had my first guitar lesson, something I never thought would happen. Warmth spread inside, and I was tempted to squeal like Jenna always did when she got real excited. But Daddy didn’t like outbursts like that. I clenched my hands. I hated that no matter where I was, Daddy snuck into my mind and took control.
I turned to Brendon. "If he'd taken my journal, don't you think he would’ve brought something up by now?"
Brendon twirled an apple core in his hand. "He has. The whole guitar thing."
But he hadn't mentioned anything else or been hesitant around me. Whoever stole it, if they read the entire thing, they'd do something about it. Threaten me or call the cops. The stories in there, all the truths . . . they were dark and torturous. The high I’d just had quickly vanished, and I fought back a shiver.
"I'm scared, Brendon."
He put his arm around me. "Why?"
I quickly stood up, removing myself from his embrace. I enjoyed it too much. "I need my journal back."
Brendon stood. "We'll find it. Don't worry."
"I better get to gym class." Wrapping my arms around my backpack, I hurried to the locker room. Being near Brendon threw too many emotions at me. I didn't know how to handle them, let alone know what they all were.
There was a small part of me that thought Brendon might like me, especially after everything Jake had said. The happiness came back. Could we ever be more than friends? Would he hold my hand again? Or kiss me?
With a smile, I opened my locker. There was a piece of paper sitting in the back corner. My smile slowly faded as I glanced around at the other girls, but none were looking at me. I slowly picked up the paper and opened it.
The fun is about to begin.
That was all it said. But my world came crashing down. All the sounds around me drowned out. Panic burst through my veins, exploding like tiny pinpricks covering my body. Crushing the paper in my hand, I held it close to my chest and thought of all the things Daddy would do to me if he found out we'd been exposed.
Chapter 16
Daddy locked me in my room after he'd dropped me off after school. I threw my backpack on my bed and paced the length of the room. My hands fumbled as I undid the top button of my shirt. I usually kept my sleeves down, but I threw caution aside and rolled them up. It put me in thinking mode.
"Rough day?" Noah asked.
My head snapped to the bed, but he wasn't there. "Noah?" I went around the side of my bed and saw him lying on the floor. "What are you doing down here?" Picking him up, I set him on the bed in his proper spot between the two flower pillows.
"It's about time. It's boring being on the floor all day."
"And being on the bed is thrilling?"
He chuckled. "Touché." He sighed. “It would be so much easier if I was stuffed with muscles instead of cotton. Then I could actually move.”
I thought of him wandering around my room, playing with everything. If he could move, he’d get me in trouble one day. He’d probably break something or make a complete mess out of boredom.
"So, still no journal." I began pacing again. "It could be Dalton. He knew I wanted to learn how to play the guitar. Although, he said he couldn't remember how he found out I wanted to learn."
"The person who stole the journal could have told him," Noah said.
I smiled at him, pointing my finger into my chest. "That's what I said. If that's true, then he knows who it is. Maybe I'll need to pry that information out of him."
"Who else could have taken it?"
Pausing for a second, I kicked off my tennis shoes before I went back to pacing. "Brendon and Jenna have already ruled out Kendra, and maybe Julien as well."
"We can trust them, right?" Noah asked. "This Brendon and Jenna." Their names sounded so strange on his tongue.
I turned to him. "You met them. Kind of. They were the ones here in the room."
"How can I forget? They were very nosy. Snooping where they don’t belong." His tone held a twinge of annoyance.
“You didn’t give them a chance.” I had really wanted Noah to like my friends. They were my only friends aside from him and Sally. But with the way Noah had reacted to them being in my room, he hadn’t been fond of them, and I’d been too chicken to bring them up since then.
Sally was the one I needed to talk to, but she was stuck in the basement, and I was locked in my room.
Noah grunted. "They were okay, I guess. Did I mention they were smelly?"
I sat down on the bed next to him. "You know they can't replace you, right?"
"That's nice to hear. I was beginning to worry."
I took him into my arms, squeezing gently around the middle. He smelled like vanilla. I hadn’t been able to talk Daddy into getting a pine air freshener like Noah had wanted. Daddy said that little girls shouldn’t like the smells of the outdoors. We were meant to be inside the house.
"You'll always be my best friend." I'd never told Noah about Sally. He'd be too jealous. "We can trust Brendon and Jenna. That leaves Sydney, Dalton, and maybe Julien. Unless it's someone else from my classes. Really, it could be anyone at the school. It doesn't have to necessarily be someone I know. They could just know me." There was also Mr. Mendoza, but I hadn’t told Noah about him yet. I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. As much as I loved Noah, he could be judgy. With Sally, I could tell her anything.
"Well, that's comforting," Noah said.
I kissed the top of his fuzzy head. "I love your sarcasm."
"You seem awfully calm about this," he said. I put him down next to me.
"I'm good at faking, remember?" I leaned against the headboard and paused to make sure there weren’t any noises in the house before I continued. I always kept my voice low, but it was good to be extra cautious living with Daddy. "I found another note. It was in my locker." I’d hoped I could avoid the subject. I'd smashed my fears almost as quickly as they had come – I couldn't have a meltdown at school. But now I had to face reality.
"What did it say?"
I pulled the letter out of my pocket and showed Noah.
He sighed. "Well, Cora Flora, it was nice knowing you."
I slapped his trunk. "Not helping."
"If you could donate me to a nice young boy, that would be great. Not too rowdy, though."
Taking the note, I analyzed the writing, trying to see if I recognized it. If I remembered correctly, it matched the first note.
I'd never paid attention to anyone's writing before. I'd have to take the letter to school and compare it to Sydney, Dalton, Julien, and Mr. Mendoza's handwriting. But would Dalton, Julien, or Mr. Mendoza h
ave gone into the girl's room to put the note in my locker? I guess they could have asked someone else to do it.
"The invitation." Reaching over, I grabbed my backpack from the floor and set it on the bed. I'd kept Jenna's party invitation. It could be the only invitation I received in my lifetime, so I couldn't part with it.
I didn't want to believe Jenna would take my journal – just the thought of her betraying me broke my heart. But I couldn't afford to rule out anyone without solid proof. Holding the invitation and note side by side, I compared them. Jenna’s writing was just as bubbly as her personality. Lots of squiggles, too. The note from the locker room was slanted with straight lines. They were nothing alike.
I tucked the invitation and note into my backpack, relieved.
Then I checked the note against Brendon’s phone number, but with just numbers and his name to go off of, I couldn’t tell. I needed something more substantial.
Noah kept quiet while I studied. I'd been so focused on my Algebra II assignment that I didn't hear Daddy pull into the driveway. All of a sudden my door swung open and Daddy barged in.
"Hi Daddy!" The smile on my face melted away.
Fury burst from every inch of his body. Storms raged in his gray eyes, thick and heavy, and I had no way to shield myself.
I pushed myself into the headboard and yanked Noah into my arms. "Daddy, what's wrong?"
"I ran into a friend of yours at the store today." Daddy picked up a pink snow globe he'd given me for my tenth birthday. It had a smiley teddy bear inside wearing a pink bow around its ear. He tossed the globe in his hands a few times. "I told you that you couldn't have friends." Wrapping his hand tightly around it, he chucked the snow globe with everything he had, and it smashed into the wall above me. Water and glass shards rained down, showering me with sparkles.
The terror in my body made me freeze. Nothing would move no matter how hard I tried. Why was he so upset? I’d never seen him destroy something like that.
"She knew who I was." With a growl, Daddy yanked a fabric doll from the dollhouse. "She asked me how our trip was."
"Daddy please calm down." My voice quivered.
"Calm down?" Veins bulged from his neck as he took the doll by the head and pulled, the cloth tearing away until the head had fully come off.
I watched in horror as the pieces fell to the floor, the cotton leaking from the head and body. Would he ever do the same to me?
"I had no idea what she was talking about. I looked like a fool." Taking a wooden chair from inside the dollhouse, he smashed it in his shaking hands. "She said you couldn't go to her sleepover because we were going out of town to visit family."
A warm sensation slid down my skin. Peeling my gaze from Daddy, I pulled a quarter-sized glass shard out of my arm. I’d forgotten to roll my sleeves back down. The cut wasn't too deep, but a small amount of blood trickled out. I worked moisture into my mouth. "I had to make an excuse of why I couldn't go."
Daddy stomped over and wrapped his fist around my arm, yanking me off the bed. Noah fell from my arms and onto the floor.
"You didn't tell me about her inviting you." Daddy threw me against the wall, so my back was to him. "She shouldn't have invited you in the first place." His belt paddled his pants as he yanked it off, the sound turning my blood to ice. "No friends, Cora."
The belt whipped hard against my back and I screamed in agony. He’d never beat me like this in my room before, so the smooth walls left me with nothing to grip.
"No keeping things from me." Pain rippled through my back on the next strike. "No making me look like a fool."
The belt slapped along the middle of my back, tearing open the skin under my shirt, the sting unbearable. A distorted cry fled my mouth. Why was he doing this to me? I didn’t deserve it. Not this bad.
"No disobeying your father."
I focused on the sparkles left on my arm as his leather belt slashed open another section of skin and blood dripped down my back. The warmness contrasted with the cold swirling inside of me. The blows kept coming. I lost track after twelve. My legs finally buckled and I fell to the ground, my fingers digging into the carpet. He continued to strike me with the belt. My hand begged to reach out for Noah, but pain and fear paralyzed me.
I could hear the spittle on Daddy’s lips. “Boy, you’re a pathetic excuse of a man!”
Surprise snaked through me, dulling the pain for a brief second. Had he called me a boy?
The doorbell rang, and Daddy paused, his heavy, ragged breaths replacing the sound of the belt. His tone was animalistic, almost feral. "Now look at what you've done. A neighbor probably heard your crying."
He dropped the belt on the floor and left me alone in the room, his footsteps thunderous down the hall. I curled into a ball, wrapping my trembling arms around my legs, and sobbed. My back screamed out in pain with each shudder of my body.
Something had changed within Daddy. In all the years I’d lived with him, he’d never been this violent. He’d whipped me, but it wasn’t hard enough to rip open my skin.
Had Daddy stopped loving me? Was I not safe with him anymore? I had nowhere else to go and no one to take care of me.
After a few minutes, Daddy stormed back into the room. I tried to cower into the corner, but he was too quick. His hand gripped my arm tight, and he pulled me off the ground so hard I worried my shoulder would come out of its socket.
"I had to lie." His voice held a dangerous edge. "That was Mrs. Roberts. She wanted to know what was happening." He dragged me down the hall, my heels sliding across the carpet. "I told her we were watching a horror flick and we'd turn down the volume." He unlocked the basement door and forced me down the stairs, my feet thumping against the wood. With a grunt, he tossed me on the stained mattress. "You'll stay down here until I'm ready to see your face again." I didn’t need a light to see a tornado had overtaken his eyes. His whole body heaved in a stiff way that made goosebumps break out on my skin.
Finally – after several excruciating moments of me fearing he’d start hitting me again – his boots pounded against the steps as he walked back up, leaving me alone in the dark, cold basement.
I lay there on the cement, crying uncontrollably. Any way I turned, my back stung. I finally lay on my stomach, clutching my hands against my chest and grinding my teeth in pain.
For the first time in years, I wanted out – away from him and his controlling ways. The thought terrified me. I had no idea who I was without him, and I had no way to take care of myself. I wish I knew how to make him happy, but nothing satisfied him anymore. Maybe he’d forever be angry, and I’d just ruined everything.
Chapter 17
In the middle of the night, I woke to the sound of spraying water. My eyes scanned the dark basement, trying to find the source. Water burst from a pipe near the water heater. Knowing I needed to turn off the water, I stumbled around in the pitch blackness, searching for the valve. Daddy didn't allow lights in the basements, so all I had was a strip of moonlight slipping through the window.
I searched in vain. There were too many pipes and objects and with no light, I couldn't tell the difference between any of them.
Cold water slapped against my feet. That was when the panic really sunk in – the basement was flooding. Daddy would be furious when he found out. Somehow, he'd blame it on me and my carelessness.
I sloshed to the basement steps, falling a few times. Water soaked my pants, shirt, and hair by the time I reached the bottom step. I crawled up, sucking in sharp breaths at the pain in my back. The water stung against all the lashings.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I knocked on the door, softly at first. I wanted to wake Daddy but didn't want to alert the neighbors. After a few minutes, I pounded harder, hoping and praying that Daddy would finally come.
As the lock grinded and the door opened, I fell onto the ground, tired and sore.
"Cora?" Daddy grabbed a flashlight he kept in the hallway near the basement door, hopped over me, and ran into the
flooding basement, his thuds shaking the stairs.
Holding in screams from the pain, I crawled to the bathroom, my wet and bloody body dragging along the carpet. Inside, I slid over the tile and reached into the shower, turning the valve to hot. I wanted to wash off as much as I could in case the water upstairs turned off.
Water rained down as I peeled off my clothes, took out my braid, and climbed into the tub. I sat on the bottom, letting the water fall onto my skin. The burn overwhelmed me. Blood slithered through the water, creating a pool of red all around me. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, trying to not pass out.
My tears blended in with the water. Pulling my legs into my chest, I rocked back and forth, humming a soft melody while trying to wash away all my sins.
The water turned off before I had finished. Daddy must have shut off the water through the whole house. It took every ounce of energy I could muster to crawl out of the tub and wrap a towel around my damaged body. I leaned against the cupboards and continued to rock and hum.
After a few minutes, Daddy appeared in the doorway. His pants were soaked to his calves. He stood there, panting, staring at me on the floor, his eyes softer than they had been in a while.
"A pipe burst," I whispered.
"I saw," he mumbled.
I wrapped my arms tight around myself. "I tried to find the valve to turn off the water, but it was too dark."
With a deep sigh, he fell down beside me and pulled me into his arms. "I know you tried, angel. I should have trusted you with a light so you could see down there." He kissed the top of my head, his lips lingering on my wet hair. "I'll put the bulb back tomorrow morning." He rocked with me, the motion soothing. "I've been thinking about my encounter with the girl at your school." He stayed quiet for a moment – like he was trying to collect his thoughts – before he spoke. "Maybe I was too rash. She seems like the type of girl who would make friends with anyone, even if they weren't trying." Again with the dramatic shift in moods.
"I wasn't trying to be her friend, Daddy," I said. Being friends with Jenna had just come naturally. We had stuff in common.