Flawless//Broken by Sara Wolf

Mrs. Lambert into letting me store some food in her home ec class, and cook it during lunch break. She was the only teacher who suspected what was going on - she offered to call child services once, but I refused. I knew it would only make Dad madder. Scarier. She was the one who wrote my recommendation letter to UW, the one who helped me with my financial aid forms. Desperation made me do funny things - like trust her. An adult. I knew they couldn’t be trusted, but I fell for it anyway, because I wanted to leave so badly.
    And then she betrayed my trust. She fucked it all up.
    She told Dad I got into the University.
    I couldn’t walk right for a week. Even now, my left ear sometimes stops working. My nose will never be straight again.
    I thought I was going to die that night on the dirty trailer floor, covered in blood and bruises. But Dad’s fury had an upside - it never lasted long. He always got tired and stormed out to the bar to drown the rest of his anger in whiskey.
    I ditched school for a week so nobody would see the bruises and start getting nosy. Ellie worried, but she knew what it meant when I disappeared, and let me be. I spent my days studying my textbooks in the local park, mostly, ducking into bathrooms whenever the police drove by. It only took me two times of being detained for truancy and dropped off at school to figure out how to avoid them.
    But there was a good side to it all.
    I met Josh at the park.
    He was eating an ice cream on a bench. I was sitting in the grass studying for my Chem final. We were across from each other, his bright blue eyes glancing over mine, brown hair tousled by the wind. He had kind eyes is what I remember most. My face was covered in bruises, so I tried to hide in my hair. It didn’t work. He walked over after a half-hour and sat beside me.
    “Don’t stick around,” He said, voice like an electric guitar - tangy and rich.
    “What?” I whispered.
    “Whoever did that to you,” He said finally. “Don’t stick around them.”
    I would’ve told him to fuck off, if he wasn’t so cute. People liked giving me advice for some reason. But he had good reason to.
    We talked for along time - until the sun started setting - about stupid shit. And not-stupid shit. Grades, parents, bands, death, life, happiness. I forgot I was hungry, or thirsty. I got lost in his eyes, as corny as that sounds. I was lost. I could barley find myself in our conversation anymore - it was ours. Together. We’d finish each others’ sentences and thoughts. I couldn’t tell where he began and I ended.
    I went to the park every day that week, and every day Josh was there, smiling with an ice cream cone. He bought two, this time. And the time after that. We sat and talked and ate ice cream, and I realized I was falling in love when he told me his brother had committed suicide after being in an abusive relationship, and I told him about Dad. I didn’t want to be in love. The first time we kissed I told Josh I wasn’t safe - nothing about me was safe. He asked if I was afraid. I said I was afraid constantly, all the time, ever since I could remember. He was the only male kindness I’d had in my life up till that point, and I clung to him like a well in a desert.
    He was twenty-two. I was seventeen.
    In retrospect, I know better, now. I know men like young things, sometimes disturbingly so. But I’d been so sure. I’d been so sure that Josh really cared about me.
    He stopped coming to the park, after our first night together. Didn’t call, didn’t text, didn’t even facebook friend me. He just disappeared. He used me and abandoned me, just like Mom.
    It was juvenile, what I did to get back at him. What I thought was revenge on him was really just punishment to myself - I left for University later that year. I was nursing a broken heart, and a broken body. Ellie sneaked me off, bought me the plane ticket, drove me to the airport in the dark. Student loans and my diligent studying got me enough