Maeya Brookes

Chapter 2 - Freedom

-//- Chapter 2 -\\-

--Freedom--

            I’m cold. I’m freezing cold. I felt ice running all over me. Am I outside? I opened my eyes with a shiver to see I wasn’t outside, but rather I was still lying in a ball in my shower. The once-hot water had turned cold and was running down on me; how long it had been cold, I had no idea. I shakily pulled myself up and turned off the water. I stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around me. I still couldn’t stop my body from shaking uncontrollably.

            I opened my bathroom door and walked slowly into my room. I looked at the clock and seeing it made me stop dead in my tracks. It was an hour. It had been a whole, sixty-minute hour!

            “I was in there… for an h-hour?” I gasped. The longest shower I had ever taken before today was a fifteen-minute one and the water always started to lose its heat after ten. Thinking of that made me shiver even more. I walked to my closet and pulled out some clothes I knew would keep me nice and warm: a navy blue long-sleeved sweatshirt and black sweatpants. To make myself warmer, I put on two pairs of socks. I used my towel to dry my hair before hanging it up in the bathroom to dry.

            I looked out my window at the icy street as I brushed my hair and I was happy to be inside and warm. That’s when it hit me that I was hungry. Putting my brush down, I slightly opened my bedroom door. The sound of my father snoring filled every room in our 1-story house except mine, so, with him asleep, I walked to the kitchen to get some food. I wanted to make macaroni in cheese like I was planning to before my day turned out to be extremely abnormal, but I was afraid the good smell would wake my father from his slumber. I could picture him stumbling from his room, yelling as he did, then eating all the food, and leaving me to wash the dishes he left behind.      

Instead, I got four slices of bread and some ham, cheese, and mayo to make two sandwiches. I sat down to eat just as the phone rang. I sat frozen through the five rings overlapped by my father’s snores. Then I heard the beep and someone leaving a message that I could just barely hear.

“Hello, Mr. Brookes, thank you very much for your call. This message is to inform you that we, in fact, have space in our confinement facility for your daughter. You can bring her by tomorrow morning if that is your wish. Remember you will have some paperwork to fill out, but we can contain her free of charge. Please call back on the number you called earlier if you have any further questions.”

“Bleep beep! Message saved.”

I held my breath until I heard my father, luckily still snoring, louder than ever. That moment was when I decided I finally needed to pack up and leave. Before, I could deal with his constantly yelling and even the abuse he dealt me. I didn’t think leaving was wise anyway, because where would I go without any money? I had no job back then. But right at that moment, I guess I had an epiphany. I knew living at a confinement facility would be a hundred times worse than living here. No, it would be far worse than that! So I made my decision.

 I ate my sandwiches, rinsed off my plate, and began to prepare. First, I made two more sandwiches, this time PB & J so they would still be edible tomorrow. I grabbed my father’s blue cooler that had a shoulder strap, and put them inside, along with a couple bags of chips, and some bananas that were almost ripe. I also filled three water bottles and found some canned foods (beans, fruit, and soup) along with plastic utensils and napkins, and put them in the cooler as well. I filled the extra space with lightweight snacks, like the Halloween candy I stashed after sneaking out to trick-or-treat in October and some energy bars.