save me like you do in this film

chapter 1

Ava's POV:
"GET THE FUCK OVER HERE RIGHT NOW YOUNG LADY, I AM NOT KIDDING", I hear my mother's voice boom from downstairs. I hate the way she screams at me, we live in a town house in  Brooklyn, I'm sure my neighbours have heard all of her outbursts.

As I make my way downstairs, I hear my mother spit several profanities under her breath. Great, what have I done this time? Once I am in the dining room, I am met with my mother's back.
"Yes mom", I ask her, careful not to lace attitude through my tone. "When exactly were you planning on telling me you were auditioning for movies?", she questions. Shit. I look at her blankly, I'm genuinely at a loss for words, she already doesn't approve of my afterschool job, how would she ever allow me to travel for work?
"Well, Ava? I'm listening", she exclaims, "I- I mean it's been a dream of mine for a whil-", she cuts me off, "a dream of yours? A dream of yours?! You think I am going to allow you to follow your dreams, when I gave all of mine up when your father left? You're fifteen fucking years old. You want to make adult decisions, you get the fuck out of my house"

Some part of me is relieved that mom is finally allowing me to leave this prison, but another part of me is terrified for how I'm supposed to survive outside these walls by myself. Before I can even reply, she pulls up the email regarding my audition. Great. She logged into my account again, I must remember to change my password. She gets up out of the dining chair and goes to exit the dining room. Before she leaves, she places her hands firmly onto the doorframe and looks at me dead in the eyes, "I want you out before noon tomorrow, you hear me?", her raspy voice croaks. "Yes mother" I reply, wanting to get this interaction over with already. She continues out of the dining room and leaves me by myself with the laptop.

As I am looking into the illuminating screen, the large words in bold are still yet to process in my head.
'TOP SECRET FILM SERIES AUDITION CALLBACK'
I got a callback? I mean sure I love to act, it is one of my passions. But my only experience is from my high school's drama programme, nothing extravagant, I mean, am I even fit to film a real movie series? As I continued reading the email, the sender stated how they enjoyed the self-tape I recorded, and that they wanted me to come to their studio to perform a couple of chemistry reads with the cast members. I did not know my self-tape was that good, my drama teacher, Miss Jones reached out to her agent to see if it would be possible to find me an audition, and she said it was good, but I was honestly not expecting anything to come from it. I will have to tell her at school when I return from summer break.

The details of my callback were listed at the bottom of the email. It was being held in Los Angeles in only three days time. Luckily I am no longer under the supervision of my mother, there is no way in hell she would have ever let me travel to a different state! The last couple of sentences explained that if I didn't reply promptly then I would most likely lose the opportunity for the callback. After reading this I immediately started drafting my reply.

My reply was short and sweet, it got to the point and hopefully they reach out soon. I'm excited to be travelling to L.A, I haven't been there since when my dad was around. I try to forget those memories, he hurt me, then he left me.

I pull up the flight website to try and book a seat in a day or two. Since I have been working for nearly two years now, I've acquired quite a bit of money into my savings account. My mom doesn't know about this account, hell if she ever found out I would be dead already. Despite her being completely against me working at the cafe downtown, she still forced me to pay all my wages to her, she said, and I quote, "I've been providing for you all these years, If you want to have a job then you must reimburse me", anyone in their right mind would probably think to quit, but I wanted the work experience, and I saved around half each pay check, into an account which I set up with the bank.

As I am flicking through the flights, my eyes widen at the price. I mean sure it is on the other side of the country, but I still need money to purchase accomodation. After spending $320 on my flight, each way, I immediately went to change my password. This is probably the fifth time I've had to do this, I'm not even sure how my mother manages to hack me every time, but I sure as hell know it's not legal. She probably gets one of her boyfriends to do it. She isn't really tech savvy.

I refresh my email after updating my password to see that the casting people have already replied. I swiftly click on the email, to view the address and instructions for the day of the callback. Perfect, now that I have this information I can book a hotel nearby.

I search for half an hour to try and find cheap accommodation, the best one I have found is quite close by to the address, but it is a 2 and a half star hotel. To say I'm nervous is an understatement, but I don't really want to waste my money, especially if this audition thing falls through. I forward all of my bookings to my email and logout. I should probably start packing all of my stuff, considering I am no longer welcome to live here.

TIME SKIP: 2 hours

I've packed everything I own into two large suitcases. Both of which I have checked onto my flight tomorrow. I don't really have many possessions, so it wasn't that difficult to pack everything. Mom stopped buying me stuff after dad left, so ever since I got my own job, I've kept my belongings to a bare minimum to avoid her suspicion and to save my remaining money.

I make my way downstairs to grab a towel for my shower. As I approach the linen closet I turn to see my mother sitting on the couch with a beer in her hand. Yay!! She is drinking. Let's just hope she doesn't spoil tomorrow for me. I will be out of the house before 8am, since she isn't working tomorrow, and she is drinking, maybe she will wake up later than usual. At least I can pray.

Once I have grabbed my towel I make sure to be as quiet as possible when walking through the hallway to get back upstairs. I just don't want her to lash out at me tonight. My last night here forever. She can get quite violent when she is drinking and to be quite frank, if I show up tomorrow with a black eye, they would not cast me, I guarantee it. Just as I think I'm safe, at the bottom of the stairway, I hear a loud smash followed by shards of glass falling on my head. I look down to see the remains of mother's beer bottle. When my eyes meet hers, she chuckles, "Ava come here please", she could have just asked, I can already feel blood dripping down my forehead. I slowly turn to make my way over to the couch where she is still perched on.

She stands up from the couch and walks towards me, I start walking back away but I fall back onto the wall, trapped beneath her gaze. "Have you packed yet?" She ask slyly, "yes mother, I will leave early tomorrow, you do not have to worry", I reply, trembling. I can't have her ruin this opportunity from me, if they don't accept me, I will have to rent an apartment back here, I cannot risk wasting the remains of my money for nothing. "Hmm" is all she says. She starts to turn away, and I use this as my window to run upstairs. But as I begin running, she stops me abruptly and throws a harsh punch right at my left cheek. Her ring on her finger must have scratched my cheek because I can feel blood trickling down into my mouth. I fall to the ground in defeat. But she just walks away.

I pick myself off the ground, grab the towel from the bottom of the stairs, and sprint into the bathroom. Once I've locked the door, I decide it is best to see what damage is done to determine if I can cover it with makeup. As I look into the mirror I visibly cringe at the sight of my face. Not only has the glass from the beer bottle made gashes on my hairline, but the scratch from her ring was actually a deep cut stretching around an inch. And there is no doubt that my cheek won't turn blue by tomorrow morning. I sigh and turn on the shower. Once it has steamed up, I get in and immediately my muscles tense at the warm water. I have found over the years that a hot shower is best for times like these.

After spending around 20 minutes soaking up the hot water, I get out of the shower and begin cleaning my wounds. Luckily I had some butterfly stitches left over from the last time this happened. I remember visibly when I bought these at the pharmacy, the lady looked so concerned when she saw my face, I couldn't go back in there again. the cut was really deep, hopefully these stitches would hold okay.

I turned off the light to the bathroom and then made my way to my bedroom. It was quite mundane now, all empty. Not that it was especially personalised before, as mom would always rip down my posters and burn my old possessions when she was angry, so instead I just stopped replacing them, I didn't see a point. I made sure to lock the door and set an alarm on my phone for 7:30am. I don't have much to do before I leave, so if all goes to plan I should get up, get ready and then leave straight away. Here's to a new adventure I guess.

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Okay that is the first chapter!! Hope you like it so far, trust me next chapter is going to be super exciting 😆😆