The Broken (Short Story)

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

We spent the next half an hour asking easy questions, like what our favorite school subject is, and what our hobbies are. Spencer likes Calculus the most, who knows why, and he loves driving around the town on his bike in the middle of the night. We also talked about what we want our future careers to be, and Spencer was shocked when I mentioned wanting to be a lawyer. The truth is, after my dad started to abuse me, I decided that after I get out of my situation I wanted to help get all of the bad people in the world taken away.

"Riley?" Spencer asked me, and I knew it was serious. He only calls me Angel. From the first day we met, he only calls me Angel, and honestly, I love it. One look at his face was all the conformation I needed to figure out that he was going to ask me the question I had been dreading from the beginning.

"Yeah?" I sighed.

"Will you tell me what happened to your face?" Spencer's eyes were full of so much hope, and I couldn't say no.

"If I tell you, you have to promise not to freak out and tell other people, okay?"

"Angel, if someone is hurting you then you need-"

"If this gets out, people will get hurt. I'm serious, you need to promise that you won't tell anyone. Especially not the cops."

Spencer sighed, and nodded. "I won't, I promise."

I took a deep breath.

"So, I already told you what happened to my mom, she died giving birth to me. But I never told you about my dad." I looked up at Spencer, and it was like he immediately understood. His eyebrows drew inward, and his jaw tightened. He looked like he was about to say something, so I spoke up before he could.

"Please, let me tell you the full story before you start asking questions." The full story. I haven't even told Ruby and Nate the full story, so why was I about to tell Spencer it? Why do I trust him so much? Is it because he told me one of his darkest secrets?

Regardless, Spencer nods, and I continue speaking.

"As a child, my dad was always calm with me. Always. He had never yelled, and definitely never raised a hand at me. He was amazing! We would go on long road trips together every few months, and every weekend he would take me up to the park and push me on the swings, despite the fact that he would work twelve hour days during the week. It barely felt like my mom was gone, because I hadn't known her, and my dad was a great parent so it didn't feel like she was missing."

I started to smile a little bit. I loved those memories. I was young, and thought life was fun and there were no problems. Times were a lot simpler back then.

"But on my tenth birthday, my dad started to become harsh. He suffered 10 years without the love of his life, and I guess I just wasn't enough for him anymore. He didn't buy me any presents, and stopped taking me to the park. I wasn't a clueless kid by any means, and I knew that he was upset about my mom, so I tried to stay on his good side. He would tell me to do more and more things every night and I complied. Although, my dad would always scream at me, and tell me that I was doing a sloppy job."

I take a breath and look down at my hands. "Then he started drinking."

"For the first 4 years after the anniversary of my mother's death, my dad would come home after a long days' worth of getting hammered, and I didn't know what to do. He would come home at random times, but never before midnight. I would have to stay home alone all night, and there were times when I was so scared I would cry myself to sleep. My dad started telling me awful things and calling me a sorta of names. He would tell me how ugly, and fat I was, and how I'll never get anywhere in life looking the way I did. He would tell me that I was the reason for my mother's death, and that I should've died instead. His words really messed me up, and by freshman year I was done."