Page 32 of Run
“We’re moving,” Mom interrupts me, and it takes me a second to process.
“Who’s moving? Me? Why would I pay for campus housing when we live so close?”
“No.” Mom sits on the edge of the couch and puts a hand on my leg, which I brush off. “We’removing. All of us. I called the landlord and told him we’re leaving at the end of the month. Your father found another house to rent on the other side of the city. It’s a nice neighborhood. He and I will live there while you go to college.” I start to protest, but she just continues. “You’ll have your own bedroom for when you come back on summer break, for holidays or long weekends or whatever.”
“No!” I jump up, cradling my bad hand to my chest. “I don’t want to move to a different house!”
“Ethan, honey, calm down.”
“No! You can’t just make these decisions for all of us!”
“We’re not going to stay living next to that monster!” She matches my anger and stands as well.
“He’s in jail!”
“He’ll be out next month!” I take a step back. “The police said there isn’t enough evidence to keep him behind bars since Ari never reported the abuse, and there isn’t any documentation of abuse at the hospital or with DSS. And,” Mom stops andswallows before she says the next part, “she later denied the things she told the officer. Since you and your father weren’t being charged with assault, she recanted. They are keeping Axel locked up as long as they can, but he will inevitably be released. And we are not going to live here as long as he is next door.”
My skin breaks out in a sweat. “What about Ari? They aren’t going to let her live with him, right?”
No answer.
“They can’t!” I choke on the last word. “I’ll tell them! I’ll tell the police all the times I’ve seen him hit her through the window. All the times she had bruises, and … and …” Mom slowly steps toward me but I back away. “We can’t leave, Mom! We can’t leave Ari here by herself with him. She can stay with us! She can have my bedroom and I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Ethan, listen to me.” Mom tries to calm me as I shake my head, my mind going a mile a minute. “Ethan James, look at me.” My eyes finally come up to hers. “That girl is in love with you, and as long as we stay here”—Mom points at the floor—“she will stay there”—she points out the window. “Even if you go to college, she will wait for you to come back for Christmas, or summer, and she will endure his abuse.”
Gasping for breath, my mind wraps around the truth as Mom’s arms wrap around me. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. She will be alright. She just has to find her way. Hopefully she’ll reconsider what she told the police and come clean about Axel. Maybe she’ll go back into foster care. Maybe she and Lena will move into their own place.” Mom pulls away and takes my face in her hands. “But, honey, we can’t save her.Youcan’t save her. She has to save herself.”
“But she’s only—”
“She’s a young woman, Ethan. She’s not a child anymore. You, above all people, know that.” Mom gives me a knowing look. “She is strong. We have to let her be strong.”
I wipe the snot from my nose with the back of my good hand. “Will I see her again before we move?”
Mom shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”
I pull away from her and go to sit on the couch, leaning my head against the back of it. Mom shuffles her feet in front of me. “Honey, there’s a whole world out there that is much better than this. Much better than the world you’ve seen and been living in all these years. It’s time you go and explore it.”
The problem is, I don’t want to live in a world where Ari doesn’t exist.
CHAPTER 11
ARI
“Hold your horses!” I shout, piling the dishes into the Tupperware tub and clearing the table before wiping it down.
“You know I’m not a patient man, baby girl!” Joe, one of the regulars, whines as I pass by him to drop off the dirty dishes in the kitchen. I feel a swat to my ass as I do.
As with most of the males who come through these doors, Joe doesn’t care that I’m only seventeen and finishing my senior year in high school and he’s like, middle-age, or whatever. Because he’s a scuzz. They all are. All the men in this bar. Heck, all the men on this planet are. Well, all except …
Nope, don’t go there.
Heading back into the kitchen, I almost run into Lena. “Oh! Hey,” she says as she ties an apron around her waist, looking over my shoulder. “Is Joe behaving today?”
“Does he ever?”
Lena got me a job at Fitz’s Bar & Pub a few months after I was released from foster care and placed back into the custody of her and Axel. I used to only tag along on her shifts, but once I got my driver’s license, I began accepting as many shifts as they had available for me. Anything to get me out of that house.
So, most days after school I come right here. It’s in a terrible part of the city and I have to take the parkway to the highway to the Inner Loop to get here.
