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1. 🔧 Road Rage

JUSTICE

Seventeen years ago…

Chocolate cake has erupted from the handprint in its center. A lone candle burns brightly on one side. Fourteen others stick up like tombstones among the white and blue icing. Mom had the bakery match it special to the colors of the Dallas Cowboys, my favorite football team.

The destruction continues with the multi-colored birthday streamers Mom had put up this morning. They are torn in half with one side trailing the ground while the other spins in the blades of the ceiling fan, creating a whirring noise.

Gary, my stepfather, and I had gotten into it as soon as he came home.

Even on my birthday I can’t get a reprieve.

“Don’t walk away from me, you little shit.” Gary says in his raspy smoker’s voice. “You think you are a man? I can still knock you on your ass.”

My skin prickles with tension. I turn, opening my mouth to tell my stepfather to lay off.

He doesn’t give me the chance.

Gary’s fist flies into my face, knocking me back a few steps. A pulsing pain explodes like a grenade from my cheek to my chin.

For a short dude, he packs a punch. I should know, I have received them on a daily basis for three years.

And how I hate that I have let his abuse continue.

The sickness of it has my stomach in knots. There are people I could tell. Places I could go, but that wouldn’t make me my father’s son.

Standing on your own two feet makes you a man, Justice. Nothing else in this world matters except your independence. Never be beholden to no one. They’ll hang what you owe them over your head forever.

That is what my dad taught me before the police hauled him off to jail.

So, since he’s not around, I keep his teachings close. It is all I have to hold on to.

A soft moan escapes from my mom’s lips, whipping my attention to her. She stands in the corner, her thin arms wrapped around her waist. Tears rain down her cheeks. Her heart, torn.

I know, because she loves my stepfather as much as me… or rather she loves how he gave us a home. A big change from the truck we had been living in after my dad got arrested.

Gary—an evil bastard who loves to knock me down every chance he gets—had elevated Mom from a server at a greasy diner to the respected wife of a car dealership owner.

Personally, I think Gary has a Napoleon complex. He loves to strut around his dealership locations (in Oklahoma City proper and the surrounding areas) like a dancing peacock after a peahen, shouting out orders to those he feels are beneath him.

Like me.

Well, I’m done being his punching bag.

I swipe my tongue along my lip. A metallic taste greets me at the corner.

Gary curves his mouth upward in a dirty smirk, pleased with his aim. He wipes my blood onto the pristine handkerchief he pulls from the pocket of his dress pants.

The creases from the maid’s ironing remain after he shakes it out.

I reduce my height into a slouch and lower my eyes in a subservient gesture. I want him to think I am ready to receive his next blow.

Like a Swiss clock, Gary is consistent if nothing else.

His verbal abuse often lasts until my bedtime, but he has never hit me more than twice.

That is another reason my mom stays with him. Choosing him over me, time and time again.

Two licks never hurt anybody, Justice, she often tells me.

She is wrong. They hurt. A lot. Each punch, kick or slap breaks me down inch by inch.

Until, I can no longer take it. And today is that day.

I watch the tips of Gary's shiny black shoes move closer, knowing his raised hand is ready for his last blow.

His spit lands on my pulsing cheek as he snarls, “You are just like your bitch father—a no-account bastard who’s rotting away on a life charge in Huntsville. Mark my words, you will end up—”

Like me, he never completes his sentence.

I straighten. My arm snakes from my side to deliver a crushing strike to Gary’s head. My knuckles ring with pain even as my smile of satisfaction grows.

Gary’s toupee, the dead squirrel that fooled no one, swivels to a jaunty angle. It slips off when he falls to his knees. He sways like a sapling in a strong wind for a moment before his eyes roll to the whites and he topples sideways onto the hardwood floor.

With a cry on her lips, Mom scurries from the corner. She kneels next to her husband and picks up his hand, checking for a pulse. Her long blond hair obscures her bright blue eyes and most of her face. Pressing two fingers to his wrist, she lets out a relieved sigh.

Her meal ticket will be just fine.

Without lifting her head, she scolds, “You shouldn’t a done that, Justice. You shouldn’t a done that. He woudda only hit you once more. He won’t stand for you in his house after this.”

A weight settles on my chest as it always does when she chooses him over me. My disappointment in her won’t deny the fact it is the way of the world to choose creature comforts over flesh and blood.

I can’t hate her for it. I had accepted my fate once they married.

Hell, even before that.

The first time I’d met him, Gary had bruised two of my fingers when he shook my hand. When he let go, his eyes had dared me to tell my mom. I didn’t. From then on, the abuse got worse.

I bend, kissing the top of her head, allowing myself to pat her hair just the once. “I’m sorry, Mom. I really am.” Scooping up the iPhone and charger cable from amidst the torn box and wrapping paper Gary had flung on the floor, I tread with heavy feet to my room.

Mom had saved her allowance for months to buy me the cellphone. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the kids I go with to private school received the same model three years ago.

It was the thought that counted.

And I am grateful for what I get.

However, Gary hadn’t appreciated the gesture.

The simple box with the Apple logo, the contents bought secondhand from a friend of a friend, had started our fight.

I ended it and my stay at Casa Abuse with a satisfying punch to my stepfather’s head.

Shit was long overdue.

Closing the door to my room, I take the hiker’s backpack from the right-hand corner of my walk-in closet. I’d been preparing for my departure ever since New Year’s Eve when I came in five minutes after my ten o’clock curfew and Gary greeted me with an umbrella to the temple.

With the money I had earned working as an (underage) mechanic in one of Gary’s garages, I filled my getaway bag with necessities for the road. I’d put the backpack in the corner because the wall of my window seat blocked it from Gary’s prying eyes. The prick would toss my room occasionally, looking for what he said were drugs or “nudies.”

He had his nerve. Gary snorted his drug of choice by the kilo and his office cupboard was full of porno.

After today, I will no longer have to put up with his hypocrisy. By taking a stand, the fights would only escalate... until one of us ended up seriously hurt...or dead.

I can’t have that.

No matter what Mom hasn’t done for me these last three years, there are countless times when she has put me first. And as much as Gary hates me, he treats Mom like a queen. It’s what she deserves after all we’d been through.

My leaving is for the best.

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