Better Than I Know Myself

Chapter Five

I wake up the next morning, dead tired; sleep didn't come easily last night. I look at the clock; it is only six in the morning. There is no use in trying to go back to sleep. I roll out of bed and get dress. I walk out of the room and see that my aunt's door is still close. I don't know what to do until my aunt Emmy wakes up. I don't want to leave the house just in case she wakes up soon. I don't need her to worry more than she already is about me. I guess the only thing I can do is make breakfast for us.

I walk into the kitchen, if there is one thing my mom taught me is cooking, which is a good thing. After everything that happened with Holly, she stopped cooking for us and I was on my own. I look in the fridge and pantry and I grab everything I need. As I am mixing up the batter for pancakes, I think about how Holly and I would wake up early every Saturday to make breakfast. The fun we used to have together and the mess we always had to clean up, but we never minded as long as we did it together. I swallow back the lump that is in my throat. I hate how much everything around me reminds me of Holly. I don't know how they expect me to move on with my life when everything brings back a memory of Holly. I take a deep breath and finish making breakfast. By the time I finish, my aunt walks into the kitchen. I set two plates of food on the table.

"Morning Jesse, you didn't have to make breakfast."

I just shrug my shoulders.

"Well thank you and it looks delicious."

I watch as my aunt eats her breakfast. I can see she is thinking about something. Most likely thinking of a way to casually bring up what had been happening back home.

"It started a week after Holly disappeared."

I take a deep breath and close my eyes, as I let the memory play in my head.

"She hadn't been herself since Holly never came home that day, she started drinking and most days I would find her pass out on the couch or on the floor. I would help her up and put her in bed before my dad came home. However, that day was different while I was trying to help her something came over her. That was the first time she ever hit me. I was shocked at the time. I didn't know what to do, but after she took a swing at me she passed out again. So I just thought it was just a misunderstanding and brushed it off. Nothing like that happened until the first time I was expelled from school. By the time I got home she was pretty plastered. As soon as I walked inside, she grabbed me and threw me to the floor. She hit me over and over, while she yelled about me being a huge disappointment to her. That was the day I got my first beating from her, despite being drunk she made sure not to hit me where people could see the marks."

My aunt grabs my hand, she had been quiet the entire time I was speaking. Her eyes were bloodshot and her cheek stained with tears.

"Jesse you don't have to tell me everything all at once."

I nod my head, but I just want to say everything to her all at once.

"So after that day, she would beat me every couple of days. Always made sure to remind me how I screwed up and it was my fault Holly was gone."

I take a deep breath as I blink back the tears that are building.

"Then, when my dad told her he wants a divorce and moved out that was when it started happening on a daily basis. Most days the beatings weren't that bad and the verbal abuse wasn't bad. I know I am a screw up, that I messed up. I'm the reason Holly is gone, but the times I got expelled from school the beatings were pretty bad. This last time I was expelled, she was really really drunk."

I close my eyes, when I got into a fight that day; it never occurred to me what day it was.

"That was when I got the worse beating of my life. I had forgotten that it would have been Holly's fifteen birthday, so you know dear old mom was feeling pretty sentimental that day. She was so fed up with me; fed up with getting calls from the school and just fed up that I was still alive and Holly wasn't."