Tragedy ✔️

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven: Best Sibling Relationship
River Jenkins

I was wiping my busted lip with my thumb when my aunt opened the front door before I even had the chance to lift my free hand to twist the doorknob. She must have sensed me coming seeing that the curtains of the front of the house were drawn, so she could have easily seen me walking over the driveway to the front door.

She gasps when she sees my busted lip and the trail of blood that ran from it. “River,” she starts, looking at me worriedly, “don’t tell me you’ve been back to that awful place.” She then grabs my chin with her hand and tilts my head so she could get a better look at my busted lip and bruised face.

I pull my chin from out of her grasp. “I’m fine.” I insist. “Fighting is the only way I could forget. You know that.” I then smile at her, just to assure her some more that I was doing okay. “It helps a lot. More than you know. I don’t mind having a busted lip and bruised face.”

“But I do!” She says when I threw my school bag to the floor. “I know you like coming home with a bruised face and bleeding knuckles, but I don’t like it, River.” She shakes her head at me and I could have sworn she was on the verge of crying. “It’s dangerous. And you’re so young… You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

I turn my hand over, looking at my bruised and bloodied knuckles.

The blood against my knuckles was dry and the cuts on them were much deeper than it was before today. The cuts I got from punching the mirror last week has opened up yet again in today’s fight, and it stung whenever I clenched and unclenched my fist. The cuts were definitely going to scar, no doubt, but I loved that I had a reminder of winning that fight on my body.

I look at my aunt. “I told you I’m fine.”

“You skipped support group, didn’t you?” She asks. “You skipped it to fight?”

I nod. It was no use trying to lie to her when she already knew the truth. “I told you before that the support group with Oliver doesn’t help me.”

“It’s because you don’t give it a real try!” She says, her voice thick with emotion. “You don’t talk to Oliver. You don’t talk about what happened. The support group was made for talking, River.”

“I am fine.” I breathe out. “I feel much better since the fight I had today.”

I hope she absorbs the words.

I know she is concerned for me, but if she knew how much fighting has helped me since all hell broke loose. She should be more concerned for my safety, and my health, if I didn’t have fighting. Fighting and pain helps me deal with the taunting voice inside my mind, and if I didn’t fight or feel pain, I would come home looking much worse. I would have turned to something else other than fighting, something much worse than fighting.