“Nope, I’m growing up just like you. Which is why you should stop babying me.” Letting out a long sigh, my eyes wandered to the window, sizing up the couple with the fake smiles who stood on the front porch of what appeared to be the perfect home. “And in a year, you’ll be gone, and I’ll be stuck with this,” I said quietly, motioning to Ken and Barbie, who stood like two perfect dolls, saying the right things, making all the right moves.
But we both knew better. It was the ones who seemed perfect that always turned to shit. And, just by the way Mr. Sinclair held such a firm hand on his wife’s back, watching how she submitted to him in silence without giving away any of the tells a normal battered wife did, I knew.
We were about to walk through another door that led straight to the depths of Hell.
Joey squeezed my hand.
“No matter what happens in there, I got you. It’s you and me against the world, Dillie. Forever and always.”
Squeezing her hand, I whispered back, “Forever and always. We are stronger together than we are apart.”
But I don’t think any amount of pep-talking could’ve ever prepared us for the path our life was about to take. It blindsided us both.
Chapter One
“Boy, get in here!” Mr. Sinclair yelled from the living room. Something had set him off again, and I was pretty sure I knew what it was. I was way behind in school, courtesy of my deadbeat parents, never bothering to enroll us in one when we were younger. Truth be told, school would have been a welcome relief from being at home all the time with parents who were too high to do anything for themselves. But now, as a teenager, my lack of education set me up to fail. I barely knew how to read, let alone pass my classes that were meant for smarter kids. I may have had the street smarts to get me by, but that didn’t help me in classes like science and math, where I had no idea what I was doing. The only class I actually had an A in was Auto Shop and that’s because Mr. Sinclair owns his own body shop, so to speak, and forced me to work there for him for free.
“Yeah, Randy, what’s up?”
The beefed-up Mr. Sinclair sat in his favorite recliner like it was a throne, smoking a cigarette that dangled from his lips dangerously as he sneered at my existence. His arms were massive, looking like he was storing fully cooked hams under those biceps instead of the muscles most sane people had. The wife beater he wore stretched tightly over his chest, where a pop of tattoos barely peeked out amongst his chest hair. His long blonde hair was greased back, and he always sat with his belt undone… just in case he needed to whip it out as punishment.
“I told you to never call me that, you piece of shit.”
Squaring my shoulders, I held my head high, doing my best to show no weakness in front of this sorry excuse of a man. “Sorry, Mr. Sinclair…”
“What the fuck is this?” he asked, waving a piece of paper at me. “Is this some kind of fucking joke?”
At just a glance, I could see it was my report card, but once it was thrust into my hands, I could clearly see the two f’s, two d’s, one c-, and the single A on the sheet.Fuck.
“Looks like my report card.”
“Are you dumb or just plain stupid? This is unacceptable, Boy. I didn’t bring you and your fine ass sister into this house to make a mockery of me and my family. Hell, if you weren’t so fucking good at boosting and hot-wiring cars, I’d already have you back at the orphanage I pulled you out of.”
Nails bit into the flesh of my palms as I tried to hold back my anger. Mr. Sinclair was a piece of shit, but until this point, he had left me and Joey alone for the most part. Now there was a devilish look in his eyes, one that I knew all too well.
Fuck my life.
“Come here, dummy,” he growled.
“No.”
“Boy, I said come the fuck here.”
“No!” I challenged again, refusing to give in.
In one huge move, he was out of the chair and pushing me into the wall until he could wrap his massive fingers around my throat. “When I tell you to come here, you fucking come here.”
Struggling to get out of his grasp, my fingers dug into his palm as my whole body wiggled beneath him.
“Randy, no!” Alisha, his pretty little wife, screamed as she flew into the room. “You can’t hurt them.”
“And why the hell not? Don’t we own them now?”
“The social worker is coming in two days,” she fired back. “We need the State’s money.”
Randy’s eyes darted to his dutiful little wife, and his upper lip ticked upward in disapproval. “You’re lucky you’re worth more to me alive than dead, shithead. Say anything to that fucking social worker about what I’ve been having you do, and you’re fucking dead.” Before I could pull away, a searing heat bit into my flesh, and I looked down to see him butting out his cigarette into the skin on my arm. “Whoops. That’s not an ashtray,” he sneered, daring me to confront him.
Joey was at work. She was a carhop at a local burger joint in town. He never did this kind of stuff to me when she was around, only when she was gone.
