Laughter and smiles never last. Happiness fades.
Especially when someone dies.
My dad died in a random robbery one night on his way home from work. He stopped at the gas station down the road, nothing new. It was the one he always went to because he thought the cashier was nice, and he believed talking to someone who was kind at the end of a long day was a great way to have a better night.
He walked into the gas station and never came out. Two masked men had followed him, locked the doors, and shot everyone without hesitation, including the cashier. They stole all the scratch-off lottery tickets and cash in the register before fleeing.
My dad died alone, near the damn candy aisle, drowning in his own blood.
Life hasn’t been the same since. It’s been three years, and with each year that goes by, nothing changes. Time hasn’t made anything better. Life has gotten worse, especially with Trevor being here.
My new stepdad.
My mom lost her job has a bank teller and now works the streets with Trevor. He is her pimp. Yep, my mom is a whore. She doesn’t seem to care, though. She stopped caring about everything when Dad died, including me.
She doesn’t believe me when I tell her Trevor is a creep and likes to come into my room at night and watch me sleep. I feel his fingers against me, running down my arm or caressing my face. I’ll pretend to be asleep as the bed dips and his fingers brush through my hair. He becomes more daring every night.
Trevor scares the living hell out of me.
It’s why I need more than what life has given me so far. I need an outlet.
“Finley! Get your ass out here. It’s time for school. If you miss the bus, I’m not fucking taking you again. You hear me?” my mom yells from the living room. I’ll bet anything she’s smoking a cigarette, sitting there in her underwear with a fan blowing on her. We don’t have air conditioning since Trevor or my mother won’t get it fixed.
Who would have thought having a/c in the middle of summer was such an inconvenience?
I download the app on my phone and stuff it into my pocket. I swing my dark auburn hair over my shoulder as I lace my arm through the backpack strap.
“Now, Finley!”
I roll my eyes at my mom’s despair. If she would stop doing the drugs Trevor gives her for one damn minute, she’d remember my schedule.
I’m a senior in the last semester of school. I don’t have a first block class anymore. I have a ten o’clock math class and that’s it. Getting out of this house at seven-thirty is fine by me. The less time I have to spend here, the better.
I open my bedroom door and smack into Trevor’s chest. He’s shirtless, sweaty, and smelling of booze and cigarette smoke.
“Well, well, well, look at you, Finley,” Trevor mumbles around the cigarette he has in his mouth, and the ashes flicking off the burning ember float toward the ground. He takes a step forward, his chest almost touching mine. His dirty fingers run through my clean, freshly washed hair, and he hums. “So damn pretty. Looking at you, it’s hard to believe you’re only seventeen. With a body like that and the face of a model, you look like you’re twenty-five.”
I slap his hand away. “Looks can be deceiving then. I am only seventeen. Those are facts. You should remember that.” Sidestepping him, Trevor blocks me and raises his arm to lean against the doorway. I try to move to the other side, to break free, but he blocks me there too. I sigh with impatience. I hate dancing, especially with him.
“Maybe you shouldn’t look so pretty then. Isn’t it what you want? Attention? You’re wearing those skin-tight jeans and low-cut shirt to show your small tits. If you don’t want attention, maybe cover up.” His hand slides around my backside and squeezes. Tears brim my eyes when he jerks me flush against his body. “Wouldn’t want anything bad to happen, would we?” he taunts.
I shove at his chest and run down the hallway, away from his wandering hands. I don’t say goodbye to my mom. I open and slam the door behind me and run through the woods like I typically do so Trevor can’t watch me through the window.
Once I feel like I’m a good distance away, I sag against the tree and glance toward the sky. “It’s all okay. You’re going to be okay.” I hate crying. It shows how weak I am when it comes to protecting myself. I don’t know where else to go. Trevor is a creep, but until I turn eighteen, it’s the only place I can sleep and eat.
Until I’m an adult, what are my
other choices?
I brush the tears away and reach for my phone in the back pocket of my jeans. Out of habit, I glance around to make sure no one is around me when I click on the dating app. I’m too young to use it, but people lie all the time on these things, right?
My feet settle into the pine needles on the ground, cracking and crunching under my black Converse. The bark of the tree snags my hair, and I wince as a strand is plucked from my scalp. I rub the spot and scowl.
Still, the woods are my favorite place to be. It’s quiet, peaceful, and no one can touch me here. I miss my dad. I miss what my life used to be. I hate always having to be on guard. I don’t mind being alone if I can learn how to adapt to being lonely.
With another wipe of my cheek, I open the app and sign into the account I created last night. The site says I’m twenty-six, a redhead with green eyes, and looking to meet new people. My age is the only thing that’s a lie on my profile. It’s wrong, I know that, but I need an escape. Nothing is ever going to come of this, so what’s the big deal?
It isn’t like I can say I’m eighteen because I’m not for another two weeks, and no one on this site is going to talk to an eighteen-year-old. The only thing I don’t have on there yet is a profile picture, so I lift the camera and take a quick snap of the tree tops and peak of the blue morning sky.