Page 35 of Konstantin

Riley

Bring an umbrella.

I exhale slowly. If I can’t save Nate, his life is over. He’ll probably be killed in prison. The thought of him dying is like a razor blade to my heart. My brother is all I have left of the fucked-up family I was born into.

My eyes close, and I see Nate taking me for ice cream when he was like fifteen and I was around eight. Those days were the times when I forgot how awful my life was. When I actually had fun.

It would be another two years before I started cutting, when the pain of my existence became too much to bear.

I was one of those kids who enjoyed going to school because life at home was worse than anyone could imagine. When I was around ten, the men my mother brought home would try to touch me. Others hit me for fun, slapped me around when I said something they didn’t like. But Nate was always there, defending me. He was the only normal I knew.

My mind races, replaying the day he saved me, when he nearly killed that man. If he hadn’t stepped in, I might not have made it out alive.

AGE FOURTEEN

The cigarette burns low between Lloyd’s fingers, the ash curlinglike a slow, deliberate threat. I feel his eyes on me as I move in the kitchen, him on the sofa while my mom is laid out on the floor. Drugged up, not dead.

I think…

“Get me a beer,” he slurs, eyes glassy, that ugly grin spreading over his face like grease.

I nod, forming a barely there smile, my stomach twisting as I open the fridge and remove the cap before walking up to him.

When I try to hand him the beer, he grins at me, his dirty fingers lingering on the top of my hand. “Can’t be this pretty and not expect me to look.”

My heart beats faster.

Run. Just run and don’t look back.

But where can I go? Nate has a life. He has a job. I can’t make myself his responsibility.

As I inch away, my pulse thuds against the thin skin of my throat. When I try to take another step, his hand snatches my wrist and the beer falls on the floor, spilling across the carpet.

Crap. My head grows lightheaded when he gets to his feet.

“Now look at the mess you’re gonna have to clean up.”

“Uh, it’s okay. You-you can sit. I’ll clean it.” I rush for the kitchen to get paper towels.

“Oh I know you will.” He crowds my space, his fingers inching up my stomach as I’m backed into the counter.

His laugh is like acid on my skin. “Don’t be so scared. Your mama likes it. You’ll learn to like it too.”

His hand reaches toward the hem of my tank top, fingers thick and cracked from whatever work he does when he’s not trying to touch girls like me.

And something inside me snaps.

When I notice the glass ashtray on the counter, my hand moves without thinking. I grip it, swing it, and feel it connect. Hard.

The sound is sickening. Something wet and solid all at once.

“You little bitch!” Blood spills from the side of his head.

Not waiting a second longer, I bolt toward the door, sprinting out of the house as fast as I can. I don’t wait to see if he’s chasing me. I can’t afford to.

The pounding of my heart drowns everything else as I push myself harder. Only when I’m on the city bus, twenty dollars from Mom’s purse in my pocket, do I let myself slow down.

A small cry escapes when the bus pulls away, and I press my face against the cold window, trying not to sob. But by the time I reach Nate’s apartment, the tears are already drying on my cheeks.