The End in the Endgame 2/11
Chapter One: Friends
“I’m such a sad, sad sight, on such a cold, cold night.
I’m screamin’ from the top of the world!”
Screamin’, Tokio Hotel
You were around ten when you first met.
Before you, her life was perfect, the kind of American Dream most people are foolish enough to dream. Everything about her seemed to jump out of some glamorous television advertisement, the type that should be banned because of its complete lack of authenticity: blonde Christian parents, blonde older brother, big house, affluent neighborhood, private school, connections with all the right families, invites to all the right events.
Yes, she was one of those kids. Pampered constantly and flaunted shamelessly, practically set to be the next First Lady. Maybe even the next Miss Milky Way, or some shit like that.
You, on the other hand? The exact opposite. You just finished scattering your mother’s ashes across your backyard after your step-father broke the urn in a drunken rage, your brother just lost his football scholarship after punching his teammate into a kick-ass concussion. And you were the girl everyone wrote you off as the child who was bound to become the black sheep of the classroom, the dark stain in the middle of the fresh white of your generation.
You weren’t even a teenager yet and people were already slapping labels on you like posters during election period.
Your paths should never have even crossed in the first place. Thinking back now, you realize that Fate is such a cruel, heartless douche, for playing that joke and making you two meet.
Especially the way he made you two meet.
You remember it quite well, for multiple reasons. It’s not like you can forget, considering the collection of thin, long scars on your left arm, running parallel from the point of your elbow to inside of your wrist.
It was a cold, stormy night, one that brought the rain pounding angrily on your roof, keeping you wide awake. The sound of the thunder roaring loudly through the dark sky had you sitting tensely on the edge of your mattress, arms wrapped tightly around yourself. Occasionally, you would see the sight of the sky momentarily splitting in half as lightning flashed, bright and jagged.
It was beautiful, and breathtaking, and you were so fucking frightened.
In the past, your mother would have been there to hold you close to her to help you sleep, singing soft Spanish lullabies with her gentle voice. Your mother made you feel safe, made you feel protected from everything in the world. But now she was gone.
You made your way softly to your her room, hoping to find something - anything - of hers that you could wrap snuggly around yourself, something that would help you inhale her scent, a smell you’d connected to being home. Nothing would bring her back. But you could pretend, even if was just for a little while.
You were already in her room, hugging an old sweater of her’s to your chest when he came.
It was the heavy smell of alcohol permeating the air that made you realize he was coming. Fear kicked in, because your step-father was always unstable whenever he happened to drink too much - which was all the time now, since your mother’s demise.
“What are you doing here?” He yelled in a drunken slur, glaring at you unsteadily. You sat frozen on the floor, sweater clutched tightly in your hands. His eyes zeroed in on the article of clothing that you were holding possessively to yourself, and a flash of recognition briefly crossed his face. Then his frown deepened and he growled, “Give that back, little girl, that isn’t yours.”
You remained where you were, too scared to move or make a sound. He must have taken your temporary paralysis as disobedience, because the next moment he was holding your arm tightly with firm fingers, tearing the sweater from your grasp.
“No!” You remember screaming, trying to get the sweater back. He began to rip the sweater into tiny pieces, yelling obscenities at the top of his lungs.
You were crying out in fear before you could help yourself, fighting to escape his hold on you with all the strength in your tiny body. Somewhere in between flailing desperately and kicking frantically, you managed to land a light - but firm - blow on his shin, and he cursed as he let go of your arm. You were about to run from the room, back into the sanctuary of yours, when he grabbed the nearest object to him - a long, cylindrical mirror - and hurled it towards you. You held your bare left arm up to instinctually protect the rest of your body from the impending crash.
You didn’t even realize you were bleeding until you saw the dark red dripping tantalizingly slowly from torn flesh. Screw that. It wasn’t until that moment that you fully comprehended the frailty of human flesh, the fragility of human life.
“Get out!” You remember him yelling. He began throwing more objects in your direction, objects you couldn’t identify because you were beginning to feel dangerously lightheaded. “Get the fuck out!”
You were beginning to sway unsteadily on your feet, and you were slipping in and out of focus. But in your head a voice was steadily increasing in volume, screaming with desperate tenacity: “RUN!”
An all-consuming desire to be as far away as possible from him - and from this house - filled you, until you forgot about the burning pain on your left arm and the fear pounding white-hot in your veins. It filled you until you could think of nothing else, until your entire body seemed to be buzzing with adrenalin, chanting “run…run…run…run” in a dizzying mantra.
And so you did. You ducked out of his reach as you sped to the door. You heard someone yelling your name from behind you, but you didn’t bother to stop. You ran to the front door, threw it open, and threw yourself out into the wild night.
You ran. You slipped and fell and got soaked by the rain and tainted by the mud, but you just kept on running. You didn’t look back, and you stumbled forward blindly.
Somewhere along the way, after you had long lost all sense of direction, you realized, for the first time in your life, what it meant to be completely and utterly alone - and to have absolutely no where to run to.
You wandered aimlessly, restlessly, your right arm supporting your left as the rain beat down on the crown of your head. You were still bleeding, and somewhere in the back of your ten year-old mind you knew this was very, very bad. But you didn’t know what to do and you didn’t want to stop moving.
Until this day, you’re still not sure how you made it all the way to her high-class neighborhood, the kind that was supposed to be locked off from the rest of the world by those automated iron gates guarded 24/7 by at least three security guards. You weren’t even sure how you managed to get in - one minute you were groping blindly in the dark, the next you were falling hard on their perfectly paved pavement.
The rain began to calm when you walked past all those rows and rows of huge houses towering above you. Every single one of them seemed to stare down at you disapprovingly, as though they could just tell that you didn’t belong there. You hoped with all your heart and soul that no one would notice you. But of course not. Fate laid a hand, after all.
By the time you reached one of the last houses on the end of the first block you could barely see anything. The adrenalin was fading quickly from your body, and exhaustion was beginning to kick in. You eyelids were traitorously drooping lower and lower, and your entire body began to sag.
You didn’t even feel the impact of the ground when you fell, the haze in your mind cushioning you from all the pain. Right before you lost yourself to the darkness crawling in the corners of your eyes, you thought you saw your mother smiling down at you - then you heard a cat start meowing somewhere nearby.
* * *
“Dad! Dad! DAD! DAAAD!”
“Brittany! What are you doing outside? Do you know what time it is?”
“Dad, you’ve got to come quick!”
“Britt, sweetie, you’re supposed to be in bed!”
“Mom, you have to come. Charity found someone here!”
“I - What? Brittany, come inside!”
“I think she’s hurt! We have to help her!”
“Brittany, please, please keep quiet. You’ll wake the neighbors. Come back inside honey, please.”
“She’s hurt! Help her!”
“Brittany -”
“HELP HER!”
* * *
You woke up to the stinging, burning sensation from your left arm. You were tucked in the center of a gigantic bed, smack in the middle of a strange, enormous room. You threw the covers off your tiny frame to inspect your arm, which was wrapped tightly in pristine, white bandages. For a moment you felt nothing but confused panic, then a voice squealed excitedly out from somewhere near the door -
“You’re awake!”
Your eyes snapped to the source of sound, your body tensing. You saw her for the first time, and even then, you knew. You knew that this moment was going to change everything.
The first thing you saw were her eyes. You were told once that eyes were the window to the soul, but you never took that crap seriously until that specific moment. Wide, and amazingly, surreally blue, her eyes were shining with so much earnest curiosity and sparkling with so much vibrant life, looking at you fully - almost as though she was really trying to see you. Up until that moment, no one ever looked at you that way.
“Are you alright?” She asked you, stepping out of the semi-darkness, allowing you to have a clearer view. She was wearing duck-patterned pajamas, her yellow hair cascading messily around her face. She was tall, thin, her pale skin clear and flawless. “You were moving a lot in your sleep. Did you have a nightmare?”
Her voice was gentle, laced with surprising concern. You swallowed.
“Where am I?”
She tipped her head to one side, looking at you wonderingly. “In my house.”
Her answer was hardly informative, and even less reassuring. The discomfort of being in a strange house and the uneasiness of being taken care of by this little angel began to grow steadily in your chest. You remember sitting up quickly then, ready to leap out of the bed.
“Dad said you should rest.” The mysterious girl said quickly, moving closer to the bed. “He said you lost a lot of your life force and you need to rest to get it all back.” She explained hurriedly, trying to urge you back into the bed. Life force? You remember thinking dazedly. Was this girl for real?
“I need to get outta here.” You muttered. Your mind rushed as it tried to come up with a valid enough excuse. “I, ah, I need to get home.”
Her brows furrowed slightly. “Okay,” She said slowly. “But you need to rest first. Dad said so.” You made another motion to get out of the bed, but before you could, she threw herself on your good arm and held you down. “Please,” she pleaded softly. “You’re hurt.”
You were startled, to say the least. Her grip on your right bicep tightened, until you slowly eased back into the bed. She let out a sigh of relief and released your arm. Then she set herself down softly beside you, which made you feel all kinds of uncomfortable - you never were this physically close to a person before, other than your mother.
“Is it painful?” She asked you moments later, pointing to your bandaged arm.
You wanted to say yes, but you were still filled with that uneasiness, and she accepted your silence as answer enough. She moved back slightly, allowing you to have some space between you.
“I’m Brittany. Brittany S. Pierce.” She whispered eventually, her eyes never leaving your face. “You’re really pretty. What’s your name?”
You looked at her then, and she looked so encouraging and reassuring that the tension coiling in your gut began to ease a little bit.
“Santana.” You replied softly, saying it bringing an odd sense of calm rushing through your body. “Santana Lopez.”
She smiled at you then, and it was blinding, and breathtaking, and a whole set of adjectives that were too many to mention but all true just the same. Tentatively, she reached out and took your unharmed hand in hers, squeezing once.
“You’re safe now.” She said quietly, smiling gently. “Whatever hurt your arm can’t hurt you here.”
Neither of you noticed the shadow of her father hovering slightly outside her door, jotting down your name on a piece of paper, before moving away to call the police.
* * *
You weren’t sure how it happened, but somewhere along Brittany’s attempts to pull you into conversation, it became difficult not to trust her. You were on the verge of telling her what happened with your arm, when the door of the bedroom flew open and a group of children peered in quietly.
“We heard you found a stray.” A high-pitched voice called out excitedly. “Is it here?”
“Obviously, Rachel.” Another voice called out, from the blonde leading the trio into the room, her expression cool and condescending. “It’s right there, can’t you see it?”
“What’s there?” A tall, oafish boy asked, peering from behind the blonde. “Oh…”
“Hi, guys.” Brittany replied to them, rather lamely. The tension in your body was back, and you clutched the sheets to you tightly. The movement of your arms made their leader’s gaze drop to the white bandages.
“Ohhh, you rescued it.” She observed haughtily. “How heroic.”
“Quinn.” Brittany said, her voice a blatant warning.
“What?” Quinn snapped back. “Are you actually sticking up for this thing, B?”
You felt your hands clench into tight fists, and rage pounded in your head painfully. You glanced sharply at Brittany.
“We don’t associate ourselves with this sort.” The girl named Quinn continued, smirking down at you. If you weren’t uninjured you might have just scratched her face off.
“That’s mean.” Brittany huffed. “And you’re just repeating the stuff your mom told you.”
The perfectly plucked brow of the other blonde rose slowly. “Wow, you are sticking up for this thing.”
“Her name is Santana.” Brittany responded lowly, moving out of the bed and setting her feet firmly on the ground. Slowly, she rose to her feet, moving towards Quinn.
“Does it look like I care?” Quinn deadpanned, an ugly look crossing her face.
“I think you should leave.” Brittany whispered.
Quinn’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Are you sure you want that, Brittany? It’s us, or her.”
You remember feeling stunned, because what the fuck, Brittany barely knew you. She was obviously going to pick them. Or so you thought.
“I think you should leave.” Brittany repeated, raising her voice. “Santana needs to rest.”
The other two behind Quinn looked stunned, but they began to retreat anyway. Quinn remained standing coolly before Brittany, her ears and cheeks red.
“Don’t think about coming to my pool to swim anymore.” She said through clenched teeth.
“Okay.” Brittany said calmly.
“I’m serious. You can’t hang out with us if you want to be around things like her.”
“I heard you the first time.” Brittany said coolly.
Quinn tossed you one last menacing look over Brittany’s shoulder, before storming out of the room loudly.
Brittany was back in the bed a short moment later, holding your hand tightly in hers. You asked in a soft, hesitant voice, “Why did you do that?”
She looked at you, smiling slightly. “Silly. I actually like you. Besides, you need me more than they do.”
* * *
It was only much later, when you were back home, Brittany’s home number printed in large black numbers in the inside of your right wrist, listening to the sound of your brother suffering the whipping from your step-father (the whipping that he volunteered to take for you), that you gave in to the confusing mixture of fear and elation.
“I’m such a sad, sad sight, on such a cold, cold night.
I’m screamin’ from the top of the world!”
Screamin’, Tokio Hotel
You were around ten when you first met.
Before you, her life was perfect, the kind of American Dream most people are foolish enough to dream. Everything about her seemed to jump out of some glamorous television advertisement, the type that should be banned because of its complete lack of authenticity: blonde Christian parents, blonde older brother, big house, affluent neighborhood, private school, connections with all the right families, invites to all the right events.
Yes, she was one of those kids. Pampered constantly and flaunted shamelessly, practically set to be the next First Lady. Maybe even the next Miss Milky Way, or some shit like that.
You, on the other hand? The exact opposite. You just finished scattering your mother’s ashes across your backyard after your step-father broke the urn in a drunken rage, your brother just lost his football scholarship after punching his teammate into a kick-ass concussion. And you were the girl everyone wrote you off as the child who was bound to become the black sheep of the classroom, the dark stain in the middle of the fresh white of your generation.
You weren’t even a teenager yet and people were already slapping labels on you like posters during election period.
Your paths should never have even crossed in the first place. Thinking back now, you realize that Fate is such a cruel, heartless douche, for playing that joke and making you two meet.
Especially the way he made you two meet.
You remember it quite well, for multiple reasons. It’s not like you can forget, considering the collection of thin, long scars on your left arm, running parallel from the point of your elbow to inside of your wrist.
It was a cold, stormy night, one that brought the rain pounding angrily on your roof, keeping you wide awake. The sound of the thunder roaring loudly through the dark sky had you sitting tensely on the edge of your mattress, arms wrapped tightly around yourself. Occasionally, you would see the sight of the sky momentarily splitting in half as lightning flashed, bright and jagged.
It was beautiful, and breathtaking, and you were so fucking frightened.
In the past, your mother would have been there to hold you close to her to help you sleep, singing soft Spanish lullabies with her gentle voice. Your mother made you feel safe, made you feel protected from everything in the world. But now she was gone.
You made your way softly to your her room, hoping to find something - anything - of hers that you could wrap snuggly around yourself, something that would help you inhale her scent, a smell you’d connected to being home. Nothing would bring her back. But you could pretend, even if was just for a little while.
You were already in her room, hugging an old sweater of her’s to your chest when he came.
It was the heavy smell of alcohol permeating the air that made you realize he was coming. Fear kicked in, because your step-father was always unstable whenever he happened to drink too much - which was all the time now, since your mother’s demise.
“What are you doing here?” He yelled in a drunken slur, glaring at you unsteadily. You sat frozen on the floor, sweater clutched tightly in your hands. His eyes zeroed in on the article of clothing that you were holding possessively to yourself, and a flash of recognition briefly crossed his face. Then his frown deepened and he growled, “Give that back, little girl, that isn’t yours.”
You remained where you were, too scared to move or make a sound. He must have taken your temporary paralysis as disobedience, because the next moment he was holding your arm tightly with firm fingers, tearing the sweater from your grasp.
“No!” You remember screaming, trying to get the sweater back. He began to rip the sweater into tiny pieces, yelling obscenities at the top of his lungs.
You were crying out in fear before you could help yourself, fighting to escape his hold on you with all the strength in your tiny body. Somewhere in between flailing desperately and kicking frantically, you managed to land a light - but firm - blow on his shin, and he cursed as he let go of your arm. You were about to run from the room, back into the sanctuary of yours, when he grabbed the nearest object to him - a long, cylindrical mirror - and hurled it towards you. You held your bare left arm up to instinctually protect the rest of your body from the impending crash.
You didn’t even realize you were bleeding until you saw the dark red dripping tantalizingly slowly from torn flesh. Screw that. It wasn’t until that moment that you fully comprehended the frailty of human flesh, the fragility of human life.
“Get out!” You remember him yelling. He began throwing more objects in your direction, objects you couldn’t identify because you were beginning to feel dangerously lightheaded. “Get the fuck out!”
You were beginning to sway unsteadily on your feet, and you were slipping in and out of focus. But in your head a voice was steadily increasing in volume, screaming with desperate tenacity: “RUN!”
An all-consuming desire to be as far away as possible from him - and from this house - filled you, until you forgot about the burning pain on your left arm and the fear pounding white-hot in your veins. It filled you until you could think of nothing else, until your entire body seemed to be buzzing with adrenalin, chanting “run…run…run…run” in a dizzying mantra.
And so you did. You ducked out of his reach as you sped to the door. You heard someone yelling your name from behind you, but you didn’t bother to stop. You ran to the front door, threw it open, and threw yourself out into the wild night.
You ran. You slipped and fell and got soaked by the rain and tainted by the mud, but you just kept on running. You didn’t look back, and you stumbled forward blindly.
Somewhere along the way, after you had long lost all sense of direction, you realized, for the first time in your life, what it meant to be completely and utterly alone - and to have absolutely no where to run to.
You wandered aimlessly, restlessly, your right arm supporting your left as the rain beat down on the crown of your head. You were still bleeding, and somewhere in the back of your ten year-old mind you knew this was very, very bad. But you didn’t know what to do and you didn’t want to stop moving.
Until this day, you’re still not sure how you made it all the way to her high-class neighborhood, the kind that was supposed to be locked off from the rest of the world by those automated iron gates guarded 24/7 by at least three security guards. You weren’t even sure how you managed to get in - one minute you were groping blindly in the dark, the next you were falling hard on their perfectly paved pavement.
The rain began to calm when you walked past all those rows and rows of huge houses towering above you. Every single one of them seemed to stare down at you disapprovingly, as though they could just tell that you didn’t belong there. You hoped with all your heart and soul that no one would notice you. But of course not. Fate laid a hand, after all.
By the time you reached one of the last houses on the end of the first block you could barely see anything. The adrenalin was fading quickly from your body, and exhaustion was beginning to kick in. You eyelids were traitorously drooping lower and lower, and your entire body began to sag.
You didn’t even feel the impact of the ground when you fell, the haze in your mind cushioning you from all the pain. Right before you lost yourself to the darkness crawling in the corners of your eyes, you thought you saw your mother smiling down at you - then you heard a cat start meowing somewhere nearby.
* * *
“Dad! Dad! DAD! DAAAD!”
“Brittany! What are you doing outside? Do you know what time it is?”
“Dad, you’ve got to come quick!”
“Britt, sweetie, you’re supposed to be in bed!”
“Mom, you have to come. Charity found someone here!”
“I - What? Brittany, come inside!”
“I think she’s hurt! We have to help her!”
“Brittany, please, please keep quiet. You’ll wake the neighbors. Come back inside honey, please.”
“She’s hurt! Help her!”
“Brittany -”
“HELP HER!”
* * *
You woke up to the stinging, burning sensation from your left arm. You were tucked in the center of a gigantic bed, smack in the middle of a strange, enormous room. You threw the covers off your tiny frame to inspect your arm, which was wrapped tightly in pristine, white bandages. For a moment you felt nothing but confused panic, then a voice squealed excitedly out from somewhere near the door -
“You’re awake!”
Your eyes snapped to the source of sound, your body tensing. You saw her for the first time, and even then, you knew. You knew that this moment was going to change everything.
The first thing you saw were her eyes. You were told once that eyes were the window to the soul, but you never took that crap seriously until that specific moment. Wide, and amazingly, surreally blue, her eyes were shining with so much earnest curiosity and sparkling with so much vibrant life, looking at you fully - almost as though she was really trying to see you. Up until that moment, no one ever looked at you that way.
“Are you alright?” She asked you, stepping out of the semi-darkness, allowing you to have a clearer view. She was wearing duck-patterned pajamas, her yellow hair cascading messily around her face. She was tall, thin, her pale skin clear and flawless. “You were moving a lot in your sleep. Did you have a nightmare?”
Her voice was gentle, laced with surprising concern. You swallowed.
“Where am I?”
She tipped her head to one side, looking at you wonderingly. “In my house.”
Her answer was hardly informative, and even less reassuring. The discomfort of being in a strange house and the uneasiness of being taken care of by this little angel began to grow steadily in your chest. You remember sitting up quickly then, ready to leap out of the bed.
“Dad said you should rest.” The mysterious girl said quickly, moving closer to the bed. “He said you lost a lot of your life force and you need to rest to get it all back.” She explained hurriedly, trying to urge you back into the bed. Life force? You remember thinking dazedly. Was this girl for real?
“I need to get outta here.” You muttered. Your mind rushed as it tried to come up with a valid enough excuse. “I, ah, I need to get home.”
Her brows furrowed slightly. “Okay,” She said slowly. “But you need to rest first. Dad said so.” You made another motion to get out of the bed, but before you could, she threw herself on your good arm and held you down. “Please,” she pleaded softly. “You’re hurt.”
You were startled, to say the least. Her grip on your right bicep tightened, until you slowly eased back into the bed. She let out a sigh of relief and released your arm. Then she set herself down softly beside you, which made you feel all kinds of uncomfortable - you never were this physically close to a person before, other than your mother.
“Is it painful?” She asked you moments later, pointing to your bandaged arm.
You wanted to say yes, but you were still filled with that uneasiness, and she accepted your silence as answer enough. She moved back slightly, allowing you to have some space between you.
“I’m Brittany. Brittany S. Pierce.” She whispered eventually, her eyes never leaving your face. “You’re really pretty. What’s your name?”
You looked at her then, and she looked so encouraging and reassuring that the tension coiling in your gut began to ease a little bit.
“Santana.” You replied softly, saying it bringing an odd sense of calm rushing through your body. “Santana Lopez.”
She smiled at you then, and it was blinding, and breathtaking, and a whole set of adjectives that were too many to mention but all true just the same. Tentatively, she reached out and took your unharmed hand in hers, squeezing once.
“You’re safe now.” She said quietly, smiling gently. “Whatever hurt your arm can’t hurt you here.”
Neither of you noticed the shadow of her father hovering slightly outside her door, jotting down your name on a piece of paper, before moving away to call the police.
* * *
You weren’t sure how it happened, but somewhere along Brittany’s attempts to pull you into conversation, it became difficult not to trust her. You were on the verge of telling her what happened with your arm, when the door of the bedroom flew open and a group of children peered in quietly.
“We heard you found a stray.” A high-pitched voice called out excitedly. “Is it here?”
“Obviously, Rachel.” Another voice called out, from the blonde leading the trio into the room, her expression cool and condescending. “It’s right there, can’t you see it?”
“What’s there?” A tall, oafish boy asked, peering from behind the blonde. “Oh…”
“Hi, guys.” Brittany replied to them, rather lamely. The tension in your body was back, and you clutched the sheets to you tightly. The movement of your arms made their leader’s gaze drop to the white bandages.
“Ohhh, you rescued it.” She observed haughtily. “How heroic.”
“Quinn.” Brittany said, her voice a blatant warning.
“What?” Quinn snapped back. “Are you actually sticking up for this thing, B?”
You felt your hands clench into tight fists, and rage pounded in your head painfully. You glanced sharply at Brittany.
“We don’t associate ourselves with this sort.” The girl named Quinn continued, smirking down at you. If you weren’t uninjured you might have just scratched her face off.
“That’s mean.” Brittany huffed. “And you’re just repeating the stuff your mom told you.”
The perfectly plucked brow of the other blonde rose slowly. “Wow, you are sticking up for this thing.”
“Her name is Santana.” Brittany responded lowly, moving out of the bed and setting her feet firmly on the ground. Slowly, she rose to her feet, moving towards Quinn.
“Does it look like I care?” Quinn deadpanned, an ugly look crossing her face.
“I think you should leave.” Brittany whispered.
Quinn’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Are you sure you want that, Brittany? It’s us, or her.”
You remember feeling stunned, because what the fuck, Brittany barely knew you. She was obviously going to pick them. Or so you thought.
“I think you should leave.” Brittany repeated, raising her voice. “Santana needs to rest.”
The other two behind Quinn looked stunned, but they began to retreat anyway. Quinn remained standing coolly before Brittany, her ears and cheeks red.
“Don’t think about coming to my pool to swim anymore.” She said through clenched teeth.
“Okay.” Brittany said calmly.
“I’m serious. You can’t hang out with us if you want to be around things like her.”
“I heard you the first time.” Brittany said coolly.
Quinn tossed you one last menacing look over Brittany’s shoulder, before storming out of the room loudly.
Brittany was back in the bed a short moment later, holding your hand tightly in hers. You asked in a soft, hesitant voice, “Why did you do that?”
She looked at you, smiling slightly. “Silly. I actually like you. Besides, you need me more than they do.”
* * *
It was only much later, when you were back home, Brittany’s home number printed in large black numbers in the inside of your right wrist, listening to the sound of your brother suffering the whipping from your step-father (the whipping that he volunteered to take for you), that you gave in to the confusing mixture of fear and elation.