I shrug on my shirt and pull up my three-day-old jeans. There’s a faint paint stain, but I brush it away until it fades enough. Then, when I am dressed, I reach my door, grab my bag, and when I go to lift it, a spark of pain hits my arm, and I drop my bag.
Taking a deep breath, I reach for it again with my left hand and shrug it over my shoulder while opening the door a crack. Mum steps back, her burning red, tired eyes blinking fast as she struggles to keep the sadness from sweeping over her. “I made breakfast,” she murmurs, pointing to the table.
I look away from her and focus on what’s behind her. The living room and kitchen are pristine enough. She must have cleaned early this morning while I was in my room with my earphones in, crying myself to sleep, cradling my right arm.
There are no remnants of last night. It’s like none of it happened.
Mum wasn’t cowering, Dad wasn’t drunk and violent, and I wasn’t the scapegoat.
But I wish there was something because I sometimes think I’m going crazy on days without remnants of what happened the night before.
Perhaps my daydreaming has become so real that I have convinced myself that the bruises over my body are because Dad was drunk and abusive, not because I ran into a display stand at the service station.
Except, I will look in Mum’s eyes and know it’s real, and the dreams of me, desperate to escape the trauma, arereal.
“I’ll get something on the way to school,” I declare when I notice it’s plain toast. “And after work, I’ll buy some butter.”
Soft brown eyes burn a solid black. “You’re working again?”
I nod once. Slow. “Someone needs to pay the bills.”
“Your dad…” She becomes rigid when my gaze returns to her, my face turning to stone. “Never mind.”
I step away from her, leave home, and make my way to school, saying nothing else.
There was a time when I sympathised with Mum. Earlier on, when I first understood what was happening, I cried. Except my cries made it worse for her. Even so, the tears wouldn’t stop. They flowed like a waterfall.
Mum would cradle me. She caged me in her arms like the knight I desperately wanted. She told me everything would be okay. It was a misunderstanding.
I believed her words until the day he hit me. He backhanded me after I stood up to him and refused to get him more beer. The blow was harsh. Ferocious.
I didn’t see it coming, but I felt it.
Horrified, I met my mum’s eyes, pleading with her. I expected her to realise that hurting me was the last straw. We would run away. Run so far away that he could never find us.
But the world doesn’t work that way. She turned away, unable to hold my gaze, and acted as if she had seen nothing.
With a shake of my head to clear the bitter memories, my focus lands on the bus stop in front of the Service Station. I enter the store and make my way to the hot food section. Warm pies and sausage rolls.
I grab a sausage roll in a flimsy plastic packet and head to the counter.
Layla gives me her discount, and I smile a little at the help.
I reach into my bag and grab my wallet when another sharp spark of pain tremors across my arm. I hiss at the tension, and Layla’s smile falters as she waits for me to pull the card out to hand to her.
My wallet never leaves my schoolbag. It’s the one place Dad never looks.
After I pay for the food, I leave the service station and wait at the bus stop. When I finish eating my sausage roll, stuffing the wrapper in my bag, the bus comes.
Some students on the bus hang out in the back and claim the “popular seats,” giving them more power than they can handle. But I sit in the middle.
We aren’t popular or unpopular. We sit in the middle—the invisible line. No one bullies us, nor do we have enough status for anyone to appreciate or invite us to parties.
The middle of the bus is my haven where I can sit in the window seat, and no one bothers me. Whoever sits next to me is as invisible as I am, like there’s a divider between us. We don’t like. I’m not sure I’ve even made eye contact. The middle breezes through our lives, overlooked.
The closer we get to the high school, the more students cram onto the bus until it’s full. And when the bus stops out the front, I wait until the students already standing leave first. Then I wait for the popular students at the back of the bus to leave.
Then I wait for the popular students at the back of the bus to leave. And then, the invisible void (us) leaves.