I roll my eyes and fold my arms across my chest.1“No me importa, loca.”
She turns the car on. “Before you call me crazy, you should be grateful. Cases like yours usually get filed away and forgotten. Consider yourself lucky, young lady.”
She pulls out of the lot, then glances at me. “And put on your seat belt.”
“This is hell,” I mutter, staring out the window as I click it into place.
“No,” Her voice sharpens as she presses the gas. “Hell is you getting out in two years and ending up on the streets. Or God forbid, in a ditch somewhere.”
“Do you give this pep talk to every teen who leaves, or…?” I exhale. “It’s not working. That man is the devil himself.”
Simona breathes out through her nose, eyes fixed on the road. For a split second, she looks at me.
“You ended up there because of your actions. Not because he magically wanted you locked away.”
When you are young, the whole world feels wrong. Nothing is your fault. And when you lose everything, you don’t blame yourself. You blame everyone else in it.
“Yeah.” I roll my eyes. “Right.”
Her voice fades into background noise. I lean my head against the window and watch the road blur past. The glass is cracked open just enough for the air to slip through. The faint smell of salt brushes my nose, even though we are still far from the ocean.
I close my eyes.
Sun smears into thousands of floating dots, pulling me backward into the night where everything began. The night I lost everything, including myself.
2014.
All I could hear was my own breathing and my heart pounding as I ran toward the front door. My ears rang as my bare feet slapped against the wooden floorboards. Every time I looked down, I saw red.
My bare thighs were coated with blood.
I looked at my palms. They shook. I turned them over. My hands were covered in blood. The metallic smell clung to me as I moved through the house, disoriented, searching for anything.
Loud knocks slammed against the door.
I couldn’t open it.
I was too afraid.
My heart started to beat louder in my chest. A baby cried somewhere upstairs.
“Sofia,” I whispered.
I ran up the stairs, skipping two steps at a time until I reached the top. I rushed into the nursery.
And she was right there in her pink onesie, her chubby pink cheeks wet with tears. Just nine months old.
“Shhh,” I said as I lifted her. I pressed her to my chest, but she kept crying.
“Shh,” I whispered again, trying to calm her, but it did nothing.
My hands shook as I moved. She didn’t stop crying.
I ran downstairs with her, but my eyes blurred as I cried with her.
It was just the two of us left.
The front door stood open, and behind it a deep male voice shouted, “Hey,” but I didn’t stop. I ran faster.
