Four

 

Chapter four
I sit in my room watching the happy family on the field outside of my window- it’s the weekend. The days I dread, I’m home for 48 hours. Whereas on weekdays I’m gone for 6 hours.
I think I am the only person in the world who hates weekends. But then again those hours aren’t free of torment, of hatred, of pain.
Those 6 hours I’m hit, punched, kicked, laughed at, called names, and pushed around, then I go home and it starts all over again.
I sometimes wish my parents were the opposite, they didn’t hit and they didn’t just watch me wither in pain.
But then I don’t see my parents being like that.
For an hour I don’t have to worry about my father coming up and hitting me; they send me to my room 2 hours on each Saturday and Sunday so I can do work, but once those 2 hours are up I’m not safe, I can’t hide behind a door. I have to put up with the pain each punch causes me.
I shift my weight on the window bench; this is the only remotely expensive thing in my room.
My walls are a horrible shade of grey, my floor is concrete. My bed is a moth-eaten mattress with a blanket and pillow.
In the far corner is a small wooden table with a broken lamp on top and a metal chair in front.
My window could be beautiful, it is large and in the shape of an arch. The thing that makes it ugly is the room it belongs too. My room.
I look away from the family; they don’t know me and I don’t know them- yet they’re killing me.
I get up and go to my desk, pick up a pen and pull a scrap piece of paper and write:
I will choose Freedom, you don’t care for me, and I don’t care for you.
I fold the letter up and write the date on the top and slip it under my mattress.
After you choose you get to see you family even if you chose to leave them. For those 30 seconds I will see them for I will only say 4 words: 
Look under my mattress. 

‘Ruth, come down’ my mother yells.

I look at the clock on my wall, it hasn’t been 2 hours; he is early.