HOPE

Chapter 17

I walk out of the area as fast as I can. Tears flow down my face even as I'm wiping them away. I can't seem to stop it. My chest hurts and with it my left ring finger as well. 

The same group of guys that eyed me when I walked towards the restaurant, sees me with the tears and starts to approach me, saying things like "Oh, cupcake, What's wrong?" and "Don't cry. Let us make you happy. Come here." I run from all of them. I just run. 

I run all the way to the subway, to get away from those people and to get myself distracted from running. 

On the subway, I think about how I just ran away from my mother banging the door at her face. I know I shouldn't have done it but her asking me to work there, has been the final straw. I snapped. It just happened. After all I thought of my meeting with mom to be like, this wasn't it. 

I don't cry on the way back to my apartment. I don't even want to think about that. So, as a distraction, I count how many steps there are from the subway to me apartment. 1121 steps, totally. 

At home, I shower, eat a bowl of cereal. It's actually forcing the cereal down my throat cause I'm in no mood to eat but I haven't eaten anything today. So after that, I just lie down in my bed. I am completely exhausted, weak and feels like I was beaten up. 

I manage to avoid any thoughts in my mind regarding the encounter with my mother. I'm actually pretty good at closing my thoughts about something from entering my mind. I've been doing that since Hannah, so I've had a lot of practice. 

but now, lying on bed, staring at the ceiling, I finally let my thoughts flow. 

First off, I take my phone and search for my dad. His name pops up all over my screen and I enter the first page about him. 

It's an article. Apparently, he is doing a very successful business selling cars. There are information about his wife and their 2 year old son. There's also stuff about how he came this far, about his childhood. But there are not mention of us. Nothing. I guess, Being this successful, you can't let everyone know that once you were a drunkard that ruined his family. 

It says here that he was an alcoholic but he got over it on his own and has been sober now for over 3 years. That means it was right after I left. 

I feel pain all over again and my finger starts to ache. So I rub my palm to ease the pain. This has always happened to me before. Whenever I'm emotionally hurt, my left ring finger hurts. I don't really know why that happens but it has been like this since I can remember. I've never thought about it much before. It's weird, I know. 

My dad is living an accomplished life now with a beautiful young wife who was a model in some of his advertisements. That's how they've met and got together. They have an equally cute and chubby little boy who looks more like my father. There was a photo of them smiling happily, in that page. 

I visit his car dealers website and all of it's reviews are excellent. I stop I when I see the name of his company. "Evvy". Tears sprung to my eyes as I'm remember how we named our car that. 

It was actually Hannah's idea to name the car and all of us came up with different names. Finally, after debating between "Helen" and "Evvy", We decided to go with "Evvy" cause that's cute. We sold that car right after Hannah died, and dad quit from his job. 

I can't believe he remembered that. 

Wiping my eyes in the back of my hand, I scroll down on the page. I look at different pictures of different cars. Finally, after scanning the entire page, I find the contact numbers. I stare at it a little while longer but being afraid of what I might do, I back out of that page and keep the phone away from me, switching off the screen.