Breaking Brielle

N I N E

Breaking Brielle

Chapter Nine

Not Edited

~ Brielle Clark's POV ~

My mom and I would go shopping every Wednesday. I know that sounds like a lot but sometimes we wouldn't even buy anything. We enjoyed spending time together. She would pick me up after school and we would go to this strip mall. It wasn't anything special. All the stores were from franchises but it was a nice time.

Sometimes we would go into expensive stores just to try on their clothes. I made sure we put all the clothes back so we didn't bother the retail workers. Mom always found amusing. She said I had acted just like my father. He was always that type of person. If he could help, he would. And even if he couldn't help, he would do anything in his power to get whatever help the other person needed.

I only picked up on that from the small stories I would hear from Mom. She never wanted to talk about him. It was too sad for her. She never remarried or even dated. That's absolutely crazy. Not having any romantic ties for 18 years. He was the love of her life and she lost him when she was 22 years old. Then she had to raise his child, who was a spitting image of him.

I would always catch the sad look in her eyes when I would do something that reminded her of him. The first few times, I had asked her about it, but she was just laugh it off. As I got older I realized it was about my father and stopped asking.

As she got sicker, we stopped going on our weekly shopping trips. It was like when we found out she had limited time we got distant.

"Brielle are you okay?" Harper knocked on my changing room door.

"Yeah! Sorry I got distracted" I called out while closing my phone that had a picture of me and my mom on the screen.

"How do I look?" I asked.

"I like it. Buying stuff for winter?" Harper asked.

"Yeah" I grinned as I looked at myself in the mirror.

I had picked out some high waisted jeans with 3 gold buttons (I have an obsession with these types of pants!) and a long sleeve floral crop top. This one was white, yellow and green.

"Woah. What happened?" I asked as I saw a bruise on Harper's back from the mirror.

"Oh, it's okay. That's just my dad" She sighed and my eyes widened.

"Your dad did that to you?! Harper you need-"

"To tell someone?" She raised her eyebrow. "I already did. Don't worry, Brielle. My parents are getting a divorce. He just showed up when I was home alone last week and he was drunk. I called the police"

"Good. Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine. I've dealt with this my entire life. I'm just glad my mom finally took a stand and filed for divorce" Harper sighed. "Everyone knows now. Or at least are speculating it. My brother Anthony would always have bruises, nobody would question it because he was on the football team. When he left home, I was the target. It took my mom 3 months to call the police. So now everyone knows they're divorcing and that their kids always had bruises"

"That's terrible" I frowned.

"It is. But that's just how life is sometimes" She laughed quietly.

"That's true" I nodded before going back into my changing room to try more clothes on.

Faye and Margaret met up with us 30 minutes later because they wanted to try on prom dresses. We made our way to the opposite end of the mall where the dress store was and spent at least an hour discussing the dresses we wanted with the sales woman.