One Who Flees - A Modern Cinderella Story

Chapter 12 - My Story At Last

Chapter 12 – My Story at Last

“Okay, let’s start with the very first lies I told. My name is not Brooke Kendrick and I’m not from Miami. My name is actually River Kennedy and I come from LA. You might have seen something about me on the news over the past few months. According to the story I vanished from my home in the middle of the night, am suspected murdered and my devoted step-father is desperate to find me. Basically none of that story is true. My step-father well knows I wasn’t kidnapped. He knows just why I ran away. This is what really happened.

“For this story to make sense I’ll have to start from right around the time of my 6th birthday. Until I turned 6 my life was picture perfect. I would go to school and play outside every night until I had to come in for tea. I had lots of friends but my dad was my best friend. He was the best guy in the whole entire world. No matter how tired he was, he would always play with me and he would read me a story in bed every night. Every Christmas he would dress up as Santa and give me a stocking stuffed to the brim with the best presents I could have asked for. And he and Mom were so in love. It was just so obvious. You would see them playing all the time and it was beautiful. We were so happy. Then everything went wrong.

                “On my 6th birthday Dad took me out for the evening to see Swan Lake. It was and still is the best birthday I’ve ever had. Then when we got home he got a nosebleed. It seemed like nothing at first but then it wouldn’t stop. Mom called a friend who was a nurse and she told us we had to take him to the emergency room. So we all bundled into the car and drove to the local hospital. Mom knew what the danger was but I was completely oblivious.

“A couple of hours later, the news Mom had been dreading was delivered. My Dad had leukaemia. He had an extremely aggressive form of the disease and was admitted immediately. The very next morning he started chemotherapy. He had every side-effect in the book. He was sick, he got blisters in his mouth and his hair fell out. He lost loads of weight until he was barely skin and bones. It was awful seeing my dad, my best friend fading away but I never wanted to leave his side. However after a week or so Mom dragged me kicking and screaming out of the hospital and made me go to school. I prayed every night that he would get better but it didn’t do any good. Just a few weeks after he was diagnosed my dad died and I was there holding his hand when it happened.

“As you can expect Mom and I were completely devastated. For months we spent every moment talking about him and crying. I had stolen one of his shirts which I slept with every night. It took a long time but eventually we reached some kind of normality. I went to school, Mom went to work, we’d come home, we’d eat and we’d go to bed. I never went back to dancing though.

“Then just before my 8th birthday everything changed again. Mom got a new job and there she met a man named Zane. I couldn’t believe that she would ever love someone again after Dad died but she certainly seemed to fall for him and quickly. I never liked him and the feeling seemed to be mutual. He seemed to like Mom but he never seemed like he saw me as anything other than a nuisance that he would have to put up with. He moved in with us just after I turned 8.

“Before he moved in he would be nice to me in front of Mom but ignore me otherwise. Then after he moved in the nice façade was never seen again. He was strict with me. He moved me out of my bedroom and into the basement. It was cold and dark. There was no carpet and only one small window which let in barely any light at all. I was still scared of the dark then. I wasn’t allowed to play out with my friends any more, I wasn’t allowed to go over to their houses and they certainly weren’t allowed over to our house. Mom didn’t stop him. She never had the strength to stand up to him. Whatever he wanted he got.

“A few months after he moved in, I stood up to him for the first time. My friend was having a birthday party and I wanted to go. He told me no but I insisted. Fuming with silent rage he clasped his hand around my wrist tight. I cried out in pain but no-one came to save me. He dragged me down the stairs to my room and flung me onto my bed like I was no more than a rag doll. There was a sharp crack and I screamed as pain radiated form my wrist. I looked at my hand and my wrist was red and swelling up. I looked up at Zane with tears welling up in my eyes. I asked why he’d done it and he shrugged. He saw my wrist and swore quietly under his breath before telling me to come with him.