*Author's Note: Haven't done this in a while. Sorry if choppy or nonsensical. I don't plan things out very well, just like my main character. Apologies!*

I felt it on my skin at night. 

The dark room was made darker by mom yelling at my brother outside of it, and the sounds wafting in it. It was something she almost never had done. 

Then again, she had never been so satisfied with me being broken. So she had never had to look for another punching bag. But she was taking it easy on him, just yelling - no punching. But if she couldn't take it more easy on her own beloved - 

"I told you what to do when you came from school and you didn't do it, you little bitch!"

"You told me to get the groceries, but I honestly forgot!"

"You whine about food when we don't have none, but when I give you money you take it and use it on yourself! You are even leaving your sister hungry!"

"I'm sorry!" Said my bro. "If you didn't get so fixated on me leaving to go straight home after a finals day, maybe I wouldn't have came straight here and forgot about the groceries!" I forgot he did not know how to argue, nevertheless hold his temper, because he never had to deal with this.

"You're trying to explain why you disobeyed me? You need to shut your mouth, that's what you need to do."

He didn't. 

"No, no I don't. You need to hear me out and stop taking things so seriously," he said, weary of maybe the first argument he had with his mom.

His face sounding like a popped rubber band made me spring from my nap. I sat up in my bed in only my underwear, and then slipped from beneath the bedcovers, yanking a shirt off the floor to cover my boobs. I jerked open the door and ran to her. I had no other ideas in my head. 

I rushed to her, grabbing her two hands, with my shirt hand and free hand so she couldn't hurt me, and pushed her back, a meter, towards the wall. It was rougher than I thought. Her head snapped back and then forward, and I jerked mine back so her forehead wouldn't hit mine. And then I put her hands above her shortly after the impact. Squeezing the backs of her hands into the wall with my hands, I blurted out the first thing that would come. 

"The fuck did you do that for? This is your kid you're hitting. I don't care if you don't love me, but you don't treat my brother like that. He didn't do anything to you...And I don't wanna see him abused next."

"Get the fuck off me you stupid wench, she said, struggling from my grasp. She did, and then her hand went for my face. I dodged and then turned behind her and pushed her. Her head smacked into the refrigerator door handle and she said shit, and then I grabbed my brother's hand and couldn't think of anything else. "Let's go!" I said, pulling him down the hall to the front door. "Open the door!" I told him while I shirked on my shirt. He looked at me like I was crazy, and his hand froze after landing slowly on the knob, so I turned his hand and the knob under it, the door opened, I opened the gate door, and we ran. My mom caught up with us and slammed her hand against the frame of the wooden door by the time we had opened the screen one, so I had pushed him into the run. I almost thought I saw him tumble down the stairs, but he just found the rain and his step, and hurried down before me. 

I ran and ran and ran, in the opposite direction, and I pulled him then and told him we needed to run the other way. He chased after me and then surpassed me. I couldn't run too fast because without a bra, it was uncomfortable. I noticed I left my phone at home.  "Shit. Andy, call Uber."

He grinned hard and handed me the phone. I mumbled under my breath because I didn't feel like trying to steadily order an Uber while in mid-run, but to be honest I probably knew how to operate this better than he did, unless he and his friends got Uber rides while I stayed at home unable to hang out with any...because how and why else did he have Uber?

The request went through. I had money from previous jobs saved up. And hopefully my credit card information can be removed later - after I decide how I'm going to do anything. 

"Are you cold?" he said, though it's like 70 degrees outside. We are now at a jogging pace. He looked back. 

"She's really not following us," he mouthed in a tone of unbelief.

I stopped jogging. "Thank God." I walked slow, and now I was 'very' aware of my jumping breasts since most my body didn't jiggle as much as them while I was walking. Still, it was liberating until I got pulled over for indecent exposure or being a runaway. I'm sure Uber would help. Besides...I'm still in my underwear. Breezy, beautiful underwear....it was a very possible offense to be pulled over for, if not the fact that I wasn't supposed to be away from home. But that only really initiated seriously after the legal curfew of 10pm. 

I panted, my movements rhythmic to keep up my pace (and speedier, again, since I was now speed-walking and felt I could afford it since I could catch a breath, finally). "We should get there in at least five minutes. I told the Uber we'd be at 53rd in Welsh in 10. So we don't have to hurry."

He exasperatedly sighed. I giggled, softly. I started to feel self-conscious as the streets passed us up, and my speed started to trail. "Hey, can you lend me your jacket?" I noticed he had one and thought that was a little odd for the weather. It would be better than me going down naked, though, so I didn't really judge it that hard; I was thankful. He was substantially chubbier than me who was compact in many ways of the definition; it would reach over my butt a little and make my exposure less indecent.  

He groaned. "It's gonna smell like teenage girl and have boob juice all over it. Eww. Throw it in the washer, afterwards."

'Girls don't leak boob juice you twerp,' I was going to say but didn't; such senselessness needn't a response.

Andy's jacket - I shirked it on, my mind emblazoned with a new, more focused fire not quite unlike the one it had while I was leaving the house...realization was very empowering, and reminded me thus with its passion whenever I was lollygagging in thoughts...because lollygagging has a much lazier aura. One that my brother couldn't help but still give off right now after what we've just been through. "You know whatever washer we're going to use we're going to have to pay for, right?" Would he ever get this through his rainbows and gumdrops-skull?

He jerked his head in my direction, and away from the train tracks that were ogleably forward. "What do you mean? We're going back tomorr-" I stuffed my hand over his mouth and my arm around his neck and guided him to the car - because I then saw it drive up. We must've been slow; my fault for slowing down; or he must've been nice. 

And it was a dark black Nissan Altima, glinting in the summer sun. I felt this was a covert operation as I jumped in. "Yep, I'm going to New Heights High School."

"You're going to our school? What the fuck?" Andy asked. "Is it still open even at this time?" 

"It's only..." I look at his phone after taking it from his pocket and extracting a growl from him.

"It's only 4:45," I continued. "The building should be open until 6. Let's hurry!"

He growled, again. "I just came from there like 30 minutes ago. Why are we taking Uber instead of a bus, anyways?"

I hoped my dagger eyes cut him. "It's different when you're running away from a crazy person you think might chase you or call the police on you and confess you're a runaway. To be honest, go back to her if you'd like."

"I was just asking a very simple question," he snatched his phone back. "I haven't eaten yet, so wherever we go, we better go, fast."

"That is the truth -" the driver confessed, "I have another ride to do after this one. I estimated it would take 15 minutes?"

"Yes, that's how long it takes to get there by car," I emitted. I sighed and put my head against the headrest. I was paying this money for nothing. I could go back. I also could just take the bus. It would take more time but less money...it's not like we didn't waste time walking to the Uber. Wasting more time walking to the bus was very...not much of a dent in our schedule. What would I find at school anyway? What if the nurse was gone? My plan was to go to her and tell her I want the DCFS involved, and give her proof of why. I never thought of calling them myself. Also, I simply needed clothes and the school has uniforms I could borrow for now....the school has adults I could trust. I have no family members to contact and no friends whose addresses I know...and only a few phone numbers of people I barely trust because my mom would never let me hang with anyone or really have a life and bond with them....I'd go straight home like I did today. Just minus the nap that I took today, which was very rare, and which probably directed her to bother Andy instead.....ugh...I didn't think this through. I just wished someone would take me in and help me. 

I looked at the clean-cut-and-dressed man in the driver's seat (trying to ignore if he had a second other job to have dressed so nicely, because obviously that wasn't that important) and leaned against his chair. "Can you take us to the police station, actually....no...no...the school. I'm sure I can trust the teachers, there."

He sighed....palming his face. "God...this sounds terrible."

"Not once I get help."

"She's over-exaggerating," Andy said.

"Not until she does more than hits you."

"Yeah, yeah." 

I whacked him with the bottom of my hand. "Dude." Stared him in the eyes blankly. "I did so much for you...I care about you - love you....please stop acting like that."

He didn't look at me right after those words were uttered: whether salty or told, it made me feel better because I had hoped and believed he'd had some commons sense to be reprimanded by that than still hold his own faulty opinion that we were separated because of her, that I didn't love him one bit, and that she wasn't that bad. Man...those lies burned underneath my skin even though I never thought they could've ever been true or even thought, so not even lies - not even existent...but it makes sense.

I see the structure and the hierarchy of hate and distrust....I also see he thinks I'm stupid. Oh, well.

I nodded to the driver who uttered - "New Heights High School it is?"

"Yes, please." I sat back in my chair and awaited the end of the ride, eyes closed against the dramatic silhouette of it all.

You'd never know why I didn't get DCFS, in other words the state-level Department of Children and Family Services that I'd heard of on many instances on television and in talks at school, which was once a fairy-tale for the stagnant life I thought I could live, involved right away...

I knew what he wanted, and I knew what I wanted: to stay together. I knew that a chaotic foster home structure would tear him to pieces. Besides: it was his mom. The one he knew he could trust, and the one I wish I could tell him he can't. I can't slice their relationship apart like that...but I can definitely distance him from the visceral nature that it will take on. Someone will take me, and him. Someone we know. 

If they don't, I guess I have no choice but to initiate curiosity and investigations....and indubiously his blind, unknowing hate that I know simmers for me just now....isn't that why he wouldn't look at me?

*               *               *

"Andy..." I said, grabbing him by the arm...we walked up to the school in a few more seconds of silence after he said "What?" in response to these sudden actions of mine. But I couldn't let him go like this....I literally didn't want to see him endure pain.  

The Uber was heard far off in the distance as its engine inched away from us and the school...and then fluttered into the distance. My mind subsequently groveled: I was here...I was relying on a staff member to get back home, to be honest...

"If you really don't want this," I finally decided to say aloud, "You can leave." Despite all my sisterly bonds of protection and love for him and our relationship, and ourselves. 

He hesitantly stayed by my side and only rubbed my hand off his arm, and grasped the door handle to the school and lurched it open. He swung it to me. I stepped in. 

And we seemed to have just continued.

I seemed to have just gotten lucky; for now. 

(*Tell me how you like it guys...or if you need some more fries with that...Peaceee.*)