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You would never know what happens behind closed doors, unless you’re the victim.

 

 

We’re Domino and Ashlynne Gonzalez. We’re both fourteen and don’t have the highest self esteem, but hey what teenage girl does? Everyone thinks we’re living the highlife, because we live in a big house, and our parents aren’t divorced. But if they only knew what really happened in our messed up little lives they would think differently. We live in a family of five. We have one other sister, and her names Liza, she’s 4 and has no idea what is really going on, neither does our mom. Speaking of our mom, she’s a workaholic, so she’s never there.So my dad is an okay guy, its just when he starts drinking his whiskey, it’s like one glass after another. He’s only hit my mom once, it was a hard slap to the face, that sent her crashing into the wall where she crumpled to the floor. Most of the time though, he just hits me and Ashlynne. Ashlynne gets it worse though. I think its because I fight back and she doesn’t. I remember one night, he had been hitting me pretty hard, and out of nowhere Ashlynne jumped on him. He threw her off pretty quick, turned around, and started kicking her. I tried to get up, but he had broken my arm. I had to sit and watch her being kicked over and over and over. When I got it in a cast I lied, and said I fell off my bike. They believed me. I told my mom the same story. You don’t know how much I wish I could have told her, she would have taken us away to somewhere safe. Its just that, it broke our hearts to see her young face turn with sorrow and pity for us. So we choose to not tell her.

There was another night. When my dad was beating on Ashlynne pretty bad. I would have helped her. But she asks me not to, she says she would rather get the s**t kicked out of her than have to watch me get beat up. So I told myself that if he was hurting her really bad I would jump in. He was. He had pushed her against the wall, and was choking her. I remember seeing her look at me, while struggling to get him off. I ran as fast as I could to our bedroom. It was Ashlynnes idea to hide a bat under her bed just in case. I reached under the bed, and pulled out the bat. I ran back to Ashlynne only to find he was still choking her. I pulled the bat back, ready to swing. Something inside stopped me though, for some reason I didn’t want to hurt him. But when I looked up, Ashlynne’s eyes were looking into mine, and then they closed. My heart skipped a beat, and I swung. I smashed the bat as hard as I could into his upper back. He let out a yelp, and then fell to the floor. Ashlynne slowly slid to the ground. My dad stirred a little, and I kicked him. All these memories flooded into my mind. When he slapped my mom, I kicked him again. When he broke my arm, I kicked him again. When he attacked Ashlynne for trying to help me, I kicked him again. I was about to kick him one more time, but Ashlynne stopped me. I guess she had that same little voice inside her head too. She looked up at me with her big blue eyes and I knew she wanted me to stop. She was holding my hand but suddenly let go, and fell back on the floor. I quickly scooped her up, and carried her outside. I shook her a little, and she was still. I shook her again; she still didn’t move. My eyes became smart, and a tear rolled down my cheek. Did I take to long to help? Should I have helped her sooner? Is it to late? I laid my head on her chest. I could hear her heart beat, it was soft, but it was beating. She was breathing ever so slowly. I walked over to the corner on the porch and sunk to the ground. I curled my head into my knees and started to cry. Then out of nowhere I heard something.

“Domino?”, it was so quiet of a whisper that at first I thought it was just in my head. I looked over at Ashlynne, and she was awake! She was slowly lifting herself up, I quickly jumped up to help her. I helped her to her feet, and once she was up I held her. I thought she was never going to wake up, I was so scared. So I held her, she whispered a thank you and then we started to cry. She asked if we could go to the park, and we started off down the street. She was holding my hand, which at the time was shaking. I know it seems like she’s weak, with the way that she just lets him hit her repeatedly. She’s stronger than I am though, how she would rather die then see me get hit, and how she wont let me help her, but she‘ll do everything she can to keep him off me. I keep wondering when she’s not going to be able to take it anymore, when she’s going to break. When we got to the park, Ashlynne sat on a swing. She loved the swings, because they made her feel like she could fly, and when she could fly, she could leave. She felt like she could leave with me and just leave this town. Sadly she couldn’t just leave. She wasn’t strong enough, yet. She was still swinging when she asked me a question that made my stomach twist into an uncomfortable knot.

“ Domino?”-Ashlynne asked quietly, she was never very loud-“ Do you think that if you weren’t there when he was choking me, he would have killed me?”.

“ That wouldn’t happen” I said while questioning myself, what if I wasn’t there to help her?

“ Well what if you weren’t there?”, She asked again.

“ I would never leave you alone with him, I will never leave you, I promise.” that was the truth, I would never leave Ashlynne, especially with what happened that night. She could have died , but because I was there she lived.

It started to get cold, and we hadn’t brought any jackets. We walked home, hand in hand, waiting for the first step into that hell hole. We walked in, still holding hands; Ashlynnes was shaking. Our dad had fallen asleep in his chair with a glass of whiskey in his hand and the T.V blaring. I walked over to it, and turned it off.

We walked into our bedroom and plopped on our beds. She had said she was tired so she was going to go to sleep; I turned off the light and laid down on my bed. It was painfully quiet, and I wondered how it could be so quiet with a monster like him in the house. And then out of nowhere, I could hear Ashlynne whimpering. She was crying, I was going to ask her what was wrong, but that would have been a stupid question because I knew what was wrong. She was tired of being stuck here, getting beaten, and nearly killed. I was tired of being here to. That’s when I thought of it. We could runaway. I’m tired of living in Jacksonville, Florida; I want to go somewhere new. So I thought of a place that you could make something out of nothing. And that’s when it hit me. California. They have LA, you could get a job easy there, whether its working at Mc Donald’s, or being a big shot actress. I figured I would tell Ashlynne tomorrow morning. She likes to wake up early, and make Liza breakfast. We always left before our dad would wake up, she liked it like that, so that we wouldn’t have to risk him hurting us before school.

One time he had back-handed me, and he was wearing a ring; so it cut open my cheek. I stayed home so that kids and teachers wouldn’t ask me what happened. Ashlynne was afraid of leaving me alone with him. So she stayed home with me.

Before he woke up we walked to the park, we figured staying at the park for a while will keep us out of trouble with him. It was about halfway until school was over when a cop car drove slowly past the park. I ran over to the bushes and Ashlynne followed, we ducked down and watched as he went by. Man, if he had caught us he would have called our dad, and that would have been a one way ticket to another beating. Anyways, that was the plan. LA. That was our next destination.