DISCLAIMER
I started writing this eight years ago when I was underage myself and I thought it was cool and edgy to have this dynamic.
It's neither cool or edgy, and if I was to completely rewrite this story I'd make Sam 18+ from the get-go. Underage sex isn't consensual and I'm shocked that I didn't learn that until later in life.
With that, please enjoy (with a grain of salt)!
*
Shit.
Was that blood?
Standing in the middle of a grubby kitchen, with plates piled high and forgotten laundry draped over the back of chairs, there was a brutish man standing in front of me - belt clutched in hand.
I probably should have been thinking about getting out of the corner that I had backed myself into, but I was frozen in place.
He was bleeding, right over his brow. There was no mistaking it.
Had I done that?
Everything had happened so fast that it was entirely possible.
It was the first time I had ever hit him back.
Maybe that would be it, maybe he'd finally get the message that I wasn't going to be pushed around anymore. I was old enough now that I could stand my ground.
So, I stood there - stance as firm as I could make it, although my hand was shaking by my side, looking my father in the eyes.
His name was Henry, and he hadn't always been like this. Not that I could remember, anyway.
I remembered a time before he drank, a time when walks in the park with a blonde woman were commonplace. A woman whose smile could light up Henry's day.
There were photos from that time, once. But Henry had made sure there was no trace of them left within the first week of her leaving. Smashed frames, burnt pictures - the scent of smoke wafting around the house for days to come. There weren't any traces of her here anymore, there hadn't been for years.
"You little shit!" Henry yelled out, hiking his belt that bit higher. Then my brain kicked into gear that Henry wasn't going to stop. As long as I was still standing up to him, and rage bubbled within him, he wasn't going to stop.
His fist hit my gut while my gaze was still on the belt, waiting for that to strike instead. I doubled over, coughing and wheezing as all of the breath was punched from my lungs, slumping to the floor.
So much for feeling brave five seconds ago.
What had we even been fighting over? Who knew, anymore?
Last time it had been because we ran out of beer, another time it was because we didn't have enough money for rent. Whatever it was, Henry wasn't the type to take responsibility for any of it.
And maybe some dark part of my mind agreed with the assumption that it was mine.
I coughed again, the metallic taste of blood bubbling past my lips. Instead of gagging, like my body was screaming at me to do, I spat it at Henry.
Not that it did much good.
It fell short of its target, hitting the floor right by my feet with a pathetic splat.
Henry caught on to what my intention was anyway, lunging forward at me. This time with the belt. Before I could think to move out of the way, I stuck my foot out - squeezing my eyes closed.
When I opened them again, Henry was on the ground - unconscious. My heart raced in my chest, and I was still frozen to the spot.
Was he just faking it?
I took a breath and forced myself to move, if only to nudge him with the toe of my boot - breathing a sigh of relief when he didn't react. I slumped against the kitchen drawers, catching my breath, eyes locked on Henry as his shoulders rose and fell with every breath.
He was still alive.
I didn't know if that was a good or bad thing.
What I did next was purely instinctive. I'd only have a few minutes before he woke up, and I didn't want to be there when that happened. Scrambling from the floor and sprinting upstairs to my room (tripping over my own two feet on the stairs in my haste). I could have just locked the door behind me, braced myself for another onslaught once he woke up.
But I didn't. Instead I rummaged under my bed, digging out an envelope that I had shoved back there months ago.
There were three things inside of the envelope.
A short note, a number, and a one way plane ticket.
It took a minute for me to bite the bullet and dial the number, hands still shaking. The phone call was brief, and I barely gave the person on the other end the chance to speak.
"It's Sam. I'm coming over."
Then I hung up. I didn't want to hear her response, and I didn't have time anyway.
In hindsight, I should have given some more details. What if she had called back, and Henry had answered? I never showed Henry the letter, but there was always a chance he could find me.
Granted, that would mean he would want to find me in the first place.
What I was doing was the best for the two of us. It was. It had to be.
After the call, I grabbed a duffle bag and shoved what I thought of as the essentials into it. Clothes, passport, a book, and the envelope.
My entire life in one backpack. Instead of dwelling on that, I counted myself lucky that I could travel light.
When I made my way back downstairs, I was quiet, making sure that he hadn't woken up before getting to the door. It was only when I started to pull the door closed behind me that I heard a low grunt.
Okay. Definitely time to leave.
Hiking the bag higher up on my shoulder, I started to run.
Taking a cab to the airport would have bled me dry of any funds I had on me, so grabbing the nearest bus to the airport for a few quid was my best option.
The ride was uneventful, and yet my heart still raced. Clearly it hadn't caught up with the fact that I was out of immediate danger. Other than standing up to give my seat to a heavily pregnant woman when she cast daggers in my direction (in my defense, I was a bit too dazed to notice that she was pregnant in the first place - eyes fixated on the seat in front of me), nothing happened. But I was on edge enough to think that something would. Something would stop me in my tracks and pull me right back to where I started.
I had just left my father bleeding on the kitchen floor.
What kind of monster did that?
A monster of circumstance was the only answer I could come to.
It was when I was six that I noticed the picturesque childhood I had was a sham. My parents went from hiding arguments behind closed doors, to out in the open for their kid to see.
Their arguments weren't unlike the ones that Henry and I had now.
But they escalated day by day until they turned into screaming matches at night, so loud that I had to cover my ears with a dinosaur pillow and the neighbours banged on the walls for them to shut up.
After a while, they came to the agreement that they were better off away from each other. That they brought out the worst in each other, and bringing a child into the mix to try and fix the cracks in their marriage had been a mistake.
The courts granted them joint custody, and it worked for a while. Weekdays with my mother, Violet, weekends with Henry.
Then it switched. Weekdays with Henry, weekends with Violet.
Until it turned to weekends with Violet once a month.
And then no weekends at all.
Violet had settled down with Henry early in her life, traded her blossoming career for a small council flat in Camden. And she felt like she had missed out. So, on the last day that I saw her, she pressed a kiss to my forehead and promised me that she'd come back once she'd made something of herself.
I believed it for the first few years.
Henry's life spiralled pretty quickly after that. He was laid off at his job, and suddenly had complete custody of a little kid that I was never sure he wanted in the first place.
So he started drinking, fell into a gambling habit. Lost the run of his life and what he once had.
I was eight when Violet left.
She sent cards and presents on my birthday and Christmas - long letters of how much she missed me and how that certain gift made her think of me. The letters got shorter as the years went on, and phone calls that were once weekly grew non-existent.
The latest I heard from her wasn't for Christmas, or my birthday. It was three months ago, when that envelop arrived in the post.
Would love for you to visit!
Love, Mom x
I never acknowledged that I had gotten the plane ticket, had zero intention of actually using it. But with no other place to go (no close friends or family members), I didn't really have a choice. At least that was what I told myself.
The last time I had been in the airport was when I was much younger, hand in hand with my parents to guide me through.
It took a very nice assistant to point me in the right direction for me to even figure out where I should be going.
Considering the ticket was open-ended, it was lucky that there was a free seat in the first place. Normally people would notify the airline a few weeks in advance, the clerk had tutted at me. But I fixed him with a look that said do I look like I care? He shut up pretty quickly after that.
Security was the next step, blinking at my passport as they tried to make the connection between the person that stood in front of them and the young, pimply boy in the photograph on the document.
"That goes out of date this month," the security officer gruffly told me, raised brow in my direction as she handed the passport back.
"Sure, thanks," I huffed back, shoving it in my pocket and moving on.
My appearance wasn't exactly welcoming to people, I knew that. Hell, that was why I did it. Not to match any certain aesthetic or my own style (did I even have one?), but so people would think twice when approaching me. Write me off as either trouble, or some moody teenager.
I had self-dyed a blue streak through my dark hair (it was meant to all be blue, but I messed up the application and actually liked the streak enough to keep it as was), and there was a stud on my lip - mostly hidden by a permanent frown.
It worked, though. No one talked to me unless they really had to.
The flight wasn't for another few hours, and time seemed to drag. I couldn't sit still, walking around the same eight shops before my flight was called for boarding.
It was only when I was in the plane, sandwiched between an elderly man already asleep against the window, and another man with headphones on (bald head bopping along to whatever music he was listening to), that I felt safe.
I sat back, closed my eyes, and hoped that the next nine and a half hours would fly by.
As I stepped out of the airport, I was a bit taken aback by the amount of palm trees.
I knew that there would be palm trees. There were very few things that I knew about Florida (heat and Disney Land was about the extent of it), but palm trees I had anticipated.
But not that many. That just seemed excessive.
Not five minutes out in the blinding sun, I was already rolling up the sleeves on my jumper and wishing that I had something more weather-appropriate. If I died of heatstroke before I even got to Violet's, I was going to be pissed.
I hailed a cab (which took a hell of a lot more effort than any movie had ever portrayed), having little other choice. There were buses nearby, but I had no idea where they went and wasn't confident enough in my ability to navigate myself to the address when feeling this jetlagged.
So I got into the cab, recited the address to the driver, sat back and tried to enjoy the air conditioning while I could.
It was around an hour later that the cab pulled up in front of a house surrounded by, you guessed it, palm trees.
Was that a pool?
I furrowed my brows as I peered out of the car.
This place was..nice. Expensive looking. What had Violet been doing?
"Hey, kid," the gruff tone of the cabbie made itself known, loud and clearly heard by the entire neighbourhood and not just me, "you gonna pay or what?"
"Right, yeah," came my reserved murmur as I stepped out and tried to offer him the cash through the window. Only to receive a scoff in way of response.
"I don't take that kinda money here."
Right. Of course they wouldn't. I probably should have thought about that earlier when getting money exchanged into dollars was an option. Before I could open my mouth to come to some arrangement (maybe offer him that crumbled up mint at the bottom of my bag in way of payment) another man trotted over from one of the lavish houses.
"Hey, everything okay here?" he asked pleasantly, and I resist the urge to roll my eyes on the spot. Of course someone else had to get involved.
I looked over to the guy, having to physically stop my jaw from dropping. He was shirtless. Did people just walk around shirtless here?
Granted, if I had a body like that, I'd walk around shirtless too.
Strong jaw, tousled brown hair, and almost blindingly white teeth - a part of me hoped that this was just the standard for Floridian guys.
"He's tryin' to pay me with foreign cash." Was that an accusation? I felt myself square up. It might have been a just accusation, but I wasn't going to admit that.
"I've got it," the stranger assured him, taking out a wad of cash from his pocket and handing it to the disgruntled driver who drove off the moment the money was in his sweaty palm. The guy turned to me, that pleasant smile still on his face, as he extended a hand for me to shake.
"Hey, I'm Alex."
I ignored his hand, moving to pull my bag higher up on my shoulder instead.
"Sam."
Seemingly noticing that I wasn't in the mood for making friends and how awkward this encounter would be if we let it continue on any longer, the man just nodded. "Hope to see you around, Sam."
If only everyone else would take a hint to piss off as graciously as that guy did.
He then headed back from where he came from, back around a gate that presumably led to his lavish back garden swimming pool - probably laughing with his equally attractive friends by the pool about the absolute wanker who wasn't bothered to say thank you.
Huffing in the humidity, I pulled the address out of my pocket again and started to look around for house sixteen.
Which didn't take long at all, considering I was standing right in front of it.
Well, there went my opportunity to stall.