Reason to Breathe

7. Repercussions





It took me a few blinks to remember where I was when I woke up in the queen bed, with the sunlight beaming behind the shaded skylights. I rolled over to find Sara in the bed across from me, still asleep with the down comforter pulled up around her. She groaned as the alarm beeped to wake us so that I could get home in time to do my weekend chores.


She grumbled, flopping her hand down on the snooze button. She revealed her blue eyes reluctantly, peering over at me with her head still on her pillow. “Hey.”

“Sorry you have to get up so early,” I offered, with my head propped up by my elbow.

“I know how it is,” she replied with stretched arms above her head. “Em, I’m really sorry I bailed on you last night.”

I shrugged, not wanting to think about it. “It’s not like I’ll be going to another party any time soon.”

“True. So, Evan, huh? This is really happening, isn’t it?” Sara ran her fingers through her long hair as she sat up in the bed, propping a pillow behind her.

“Not really,” I contradicted. “I mean, I’m talking to him, or was. Who knows what he’ll think of me after last night.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s still interested. Please don’t give up on him. I don’t know all that happened last night, but I still think he’s good for you. Give him a chance. Try to be friends, or at least use him as an emotional punching bag. He seems to be able to handle the backlashes that you can’t unleash on anyone else.” She said it like being reprimanded by me was a privilege. She studied my face with a soft smile to make sure I understood.

I returned a half smile, trying to digest her words.

Knowing I wasn’t going to say anything, she flipped back the covers and swung her feet to the floor. “Well let’s get you back to hell before the devil realizes you’re not home.” It would have been funny, except that it was too close to the truth for me to laugh.





When I walked in the back door, the house was strangely quiet. With George’s truck missing from the driveway, I guessed he and the kids were getting the Saturday morning donuts and coffee. That meant she was here, somewhere - my stomach dropped. I focused on getting to my room without having to see her.

Just outside my door, I was abruptly stopped in my tracks with a sharp pain shrieking through my head. I winced as her claw dug deeper into the fistful of my hair, tugging my head back so that my neck snapped awkwardly, forced to face the ceiling. She hissed in my ear, “Did you think I wouldn’t find out that you went out last night? What did you do, screw the entire football team?”

With an unexpected amount of force, she thrust my head forward without giving me a second to resist. The front of my skull collided with the doorframe. A thunderous bolt shot through my head as the hall blurred around me. Black dots filled my eyes as I attempted to focus. Before I could find center, her vise grip tore the hair from my scalp and drove my head into the hard wood again. The corner of the frame connected with the left side of my forehead. The stinging burn above my eye gave way to a flow of warmth that ran down my cheek.

“I regret every second you’re in my house,” Carol growled with contempt. “You’re a worthless pathetic tramp, and if it wasn’t for your uncle, I would have shut the door in your face when your drunken mother abandoned you. It says a lot when she can’t even stand you.” I slid down the wall, collapsing on the floor with my bags by my side. Something landed on my knees. I made out my navy blue soccer jersey from Thursday’s game crumpled on my lap.

“Clean yourself up before they see you, and get rid of the stench in the basement. You’d better be done with your chores and out of my sight by the time I get back from grocery shopping,” she threatened before disappearing.

I heard the truck pull into the driveway and the doors closing, followed by the excited voices nearing the back door. I didn’t want them to see me either, so I clumsily tossed my bags through the open door of my room and pushed myself to my feet. I stumbled into the bathroom with the support of the wall, as I heard Leyla announce, “Mom, we have donuts!”

I pressed the shirt against the left side of my head, trying to stop the bleeding as the cut pulsed under my hand. My head pounded as I tried to regain control of my balance. The sensation that I was about to lose consciousness seized me. I gripped the sink, fighting to focus, as I took deep even breaths. A minute passed before I was able to stand up straight. The dizziness subsided but the claw of pain dug into my head.

I slowly let up pressure. The side of my face was covered with blood that ran down my neck, seeping into the collar of my turtleneck. I couldn’t quite tell where the opening was. I took a few tissues and exchanged them with the shirt so I could run the shirt under cold water.

I wiped the drying blood from my face with the damp jersey and revealed the small incision above my left eyebrow. It wasn’t very big, but it didn’t want to stop bleeding. I applied more pressure with the shirt as I searched in the medicine cabinet for bandages. I pulled out two butterfly bandages and applied them to the gash, pulling the sides together so it could heal - hopefully leaving a minimal scar.

In the center of my forehead, along my hair line, was a large lump that was already turning purple. I couldn’t bring myself to touch it – the unwavering pain was making my eyes water. I knew I needed to put ice on it but couldn’t figure out how to do that without being seen.

I leaned against the wall across from the mirror and closed my eyes. I couldn’t hold back the tears that rolled down my cheeks. I struggled to maintain a steady breath so I wouldn’t cave in to the full out cry that the lump in my throat yearned for. The images of what happened flashed through my head. I didn’t hear her come up behind me. She was obviously waiting for me.

As much I tried to be invisible, she was inescapable and her wrath was crushing. I wanted nothing more than to destroy her as I stared into the mirror at my seeping eyes, aglow with fury.

I looked down at the bloody jersey in my hand. Her blitz attack had nothing to do with the football game, or my dirty laundry; it had everything to do with me. I knew all I had to do was make one phone call, or walk into the school psychologist’s office and utter one sentence, and this would all be over.

That’s when I heard the squeal of laughter in the kitchen from Leyla, accompanied by a chuckle from Jack as she said something to make them laugh. It would be over for them too, but in a way that would damage them forever. I couldn’t ruin their lives. Carol and George truly loved them, and I wouldn’t take them from their parents. I swallowed hard, determined to compose myself, but the tears refused to stop.

I opened the cabinets under the sink and pulled out the cleaning supplies; with my lips quivering and hands shaking, I scrubbed the tub, swallowing against the sobs. The built up pressure from keeping the cries contained infuriated the pain in my head. My whole body ached.

I was back to my numb, emotionless state by the time I finished cleaning the sink. I blankly stared at the water running down the drain, rinsing away the chemicals and blood. My raging thoughts were quiet.

“I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” I heard Carol announce, closing the door behind her. The kids were watching TV in the living room. I couldn’t hear George.

I looked at myself in the mirror and mindlessly wiped the remaining dried blood from around the bandages before I opened the bathroom door. I stepped into the hall to retrieve the broom and mop from the hall closet when George rounded the corner. He stopped and his eyes widened. But his shocked expression quickly dissolved.

“Bump your head?” he asked casually.

“That’s what I get for walking while reading,” I droned, knowing he would convince himself of anything except for the truth.

“You should put some ice on it,” he recommended.

“Mmm,” I agreed and walked back into the bathroom to complete my task.

After my chores were completed, I returned to my room to find a bag of ice waiting for me on my desk.

I gently put the bag of ice on the lump and watched Jack and Leyla chase after George in the backyard through my window – sworn to silence in my hell.





I awoke in a panic around midnight. I stayed pressed to my pillow, my eyes fervently searching the room. I was breathing heavily; my shirt was damp with sweat. I tried to detach myself from the nightmare that had awoken me. It was hard to push away the urgency of the dream that had me pinned beneath the water, drowning. I took in a deep breath, confirming that I was still alive as the air passed easily through my lungs. They weren’t burning for oxygen as they had been in my dream. I had a hard time falling asleep after that. Sleep finally found me just before the sun rose.

I was awoken by a hard knock on the door. “Are you going to sleep all day?” the voice barked from the other side.

“I’m up,” I mustered in a rasp, hoping she wouldn’t come in. I looked at the digital clock next to my bed that read 8:30. I knew I had to take a shower before nine o’clock or do without. I slowly sat up with the throbbing pain, a reminder of my living nightmare. I needed to find a way to ice it again so the lump would be gone by the time I went to school tomorrow. I knew there was nothing I could do about the dark purple bruise. Thankfully the area around the cut wasn’t bruised. Sara’s new hairstyle was going to come in handy with covering up most of it.

I gathered my clothes together and slipped into the bathroom without being seen. Washing my hair was more painful than I anticipated. I hadn’t realized how sore the back of my head was from her iron grip of my hair. I felt blood scabbed over where some of the hair had been forcefully removed. I was so focused on the contusion that the back of my head didn’t register until now. I gingerly used my fingertips to rub the shampoo into the front of my hair, but it still felt like a form of torture. I turned off the water before the knock and proceeded to dry off and get dressed. After gently drying my hair with a towel, I discovered that brushing my hair was worse than washing it. Tears filled my eyes with each stroke of the brush. There was no way I was going to be able to blow it dry. Reluctantly, I made the decision not to wash my hair the next day despite how atrocious I knew it would look after sleeping on it. I wasn’t willing to go through the pain again.





“Does she know about this afternoon?” I heard Carol ask George from the kitchen as I sat at my desk engrossed in my Trigonometry homework.

“Yeah, I told her yesterday,” he replied. “She’s going to the library and will be back for dinner.”

“And you believe she’s going to the library?” she asked doubtingly.

“Why wouldn’t she?” he questioned.

I didn’t hear a response from Carol.

“I’ll be back around one,” she finally said. Then the back door opened and closed.

“Want to go outside and play with Emma?” George asked the kids.

“Yeah,” they screamed in unison.

“Emma,” George bellowed through the closed door, “do you mind taking the kids outside?”

“Be right there.” I grabbed my fleece jacket and was greeted warmly by jumping, cheering kids.

The rest of my day was actually fairly pleasant. I kicked the soccer ball around in the postage stamp backyard with Leyla and Jack. George and Carols’ house was modest, puny compared to Sara’s. The section of town we lived in was typical middle America, but compared to the Pleasantville of the rest of Weslyn, it might as well have been the other side of the tracks.

I rode my bike to the library while George and Carol took the kids to the movies. I spent the remainder of the afternoon hidden in the stacks completing my assignments or in the computer room typing my English paper. I avoided human interaction at all cost, fearful of the reaction I’d receive at the sight of me. I finished with a few minutes to spare before I had to start home, so I called Sara on the pay phone.

“Hi!” she exclaimed, a little too overzealous for someone I had just seen the day before. “How are you calling me?”

“I’m at the library, on the pay phone.”

“Oh! I’ll be right there.”

“No,” I blurted before she could hang up the phone. “I’m leaving in a minute, but I wanted to prepare you for when you pick me up tomorrow.”

“What happened?” Sara asked with concern, almost panic.

“I’m okay,” I calmly assured her, trying to downplay her reaction. “I fell and hit my head, so I have a bandage and a little bruise. It’s really no big deal.”

“Emma! What did she do to you?!” Sara yelled with a mix of fear and anger in her voice.

“Nothing, Sara,” I corrected. “I fell.”

“Sure you did,” she said quietly. “Are you really okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. I have to go, but I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Okay,” Sara replied reluctantly, before I hung up the phone.