The Bullet List (The Saving Bailey Trilogy, #1) (9 page)

“Sounds great. I’m going to hit the hay now,” I say.

“Why so early? It’s only eleven. You usually stay up past twelve,” she says.

“That nap threw me off. I am beyond tired,” I lie.

I edge towards my bedroom, anticipating a lecture on how I should brush my teeth, and shower, but instead she just follows me, and saves the lecture for another night.

I find a nightgown to wear, a silky striped one that was my mom’s when she was a young girl. I have many of her lightly worn nightgowns, all of them made of silk and other luxurious fabrics. I slip the nightgown on and crawl under the covers. Mom pulls them up around me and kisses my head. “Sweet dreams,” she whispers, and places something cold and metallic in my hand.

“A flashlight, so the dark wont frighten you,” she says lovingly. A lump forms in my throat, something as simple as this gesture brings tears to my eyes. Mom has never paid so much attention to my fear of the dark; mostly she would just tease me about it, or tell me to get over myself. This flashlight gives me hope that maybe she does love me more than her spirits, more than her cigarettes, and acid.

“Don’t cry, baby, I just wanted to make sure you felt safe, and I couldn’t afford a new lamp. Sleep tight.”

She stands from the bed, and it rises, free from her weight. I feel like I am rising in the same way when I flick on the flashlight and cut through the darkness with the thin stream of light.

Chapter 13

The batteries die sometime during the night, but I don’t wake. By the time I do, I have slept so much that my head is heavy and pounding. Outside my window the wind is howling, and rain is pelting the glass. I groggily roll out of bed and check the time on my cell phone: two PM. “Wow,” I say aloud, surprised by my ability to sleep for so long.

I hear a familiar
clink! clink!
coming from the living room, and my stomach drops. I twist the doorknob, take a big breath, and push it open. What I didn’t want to see is sitting right in front of me, and I can’t deny that I’ve seen it, can’t trick my mind to think I’ve seen something else.

Mom thirstily chugs from a bottle, her head tilting back to get every last drop. My knees go weak, because there are so many bottles,
too many to smash
.
What a big pile of glass that would create, it would slice me into a million pieces.

“Oh, good morning honey, see you decided to finally get your lazy, good-for-nothing ass out of bed,” Mom says drunkenly.

This is not my mother
, I think, and cover my eyes with my hands, wishing the demon would disappear and be replaced with the mom I knew last night. The one who gave me the flashlight. But just like the flashlight, my rightful mom has run out of batteries

“We didn’t have the money for dinner, but you managed to scrape up enough for five bottles of vodka?” I ask, drained.

“No, no, no,” she cackles, “Goodness no! I used your college fund, sweetie.”

I disregard the comment, figuring she is only talking out of her ass because she is insanely drunk.

“Your daddy and I saved up thirty thousand dollars before you were even born, to send you to college.
Thirty thousand
. ” She coughs, as a gulp of Smirnoff vodka goes down the wrong pipe.

“You know how much alcohol that can buy? Not enough!” she rambles on.

I am beginning to believe that a fund for college really does exist; it seems implausible that Mom could think up a story like this while drunk as a sailor.

“Oh and you will get a kick out of this honey bunches, guess how much is left in that account?” she says.

I stare at her frozen, my arms glued to my sides.

“
Twelve dollars, and seventy six cents!
Ha!” she laughs.

This is the tipping point for me. I slide into my boots, grab every unopened bottle of liquor that I can fit into my arms and kick the front door open.

“I didn’t spend it all in one sitting! I have been buying drugs and liquor with it since your dad left,” she calls after me as I step into the rain.

“Hey what are you doing with those?” she asks, finally noticing that I have taken away her precious loot, and am approaching the stairs.

The thought of her alcohol being poured away registers in her mind, and she lurches from the couch, coming at me so quickly I don’t have time to escape.

I gasp as she presses against me, her dead weight making me lose my footing at the top of the stairs. Both my feet leave the top step and I am sent tumbling down the flight of concrete stairs. Each hit feels like a bag of bricks being slammed into my helpless body.

My back smashes into a step, and the wind is knocked out of me. I am still clutching onto a couple of the bottles, though a few have broken, and as a result, I have rolled over some shards. They stab into my back, and arms.

Imagine falling from a fifty-story building, and even though the fall is terrifying you can’t catch your breath to scream
. That is what I am going through as I tumble down the stairs.

My head bashes into the last step, and I momentarily see stars. Regretfully, the hit is not enough to knock me out. “Mom,” I cry out.

Except this is her fault: she pushed me down the stairs, why would she come now and comfort me?

Mom comes hurdling down the steps, her face radiating pure rage. She pounces on me, like a cat on a mouse, pinning my elbows into the rough gravel.

“All of it gonnne!” she screams into my face.

I am beside myself, I want to sob and reach out to her, but at the same time I know I should be trying to escape her.

“Mom my college fund! How could you?” I yell back.

Her hair is dripping rainwater down my face, mixing with my tears.

“I could kill you!” she growls, grabbing a shard of glass from one of the broken Smirnoff bottles and holding it to my throat.

“
Mom
,” I sob.

“What kind of daughter does that? Huh? One who doesn’t give a shit about-” she starts.

“
Please!
Stop! Don’t
!” I plead with her.
This isn’t my mom
, I keep repeating in my head.

The shard presses into my skin, and I can hear it tear, like the sound of a shirt ripping.

“Mommyyy, I am sorry, don’t. Please don’t.
Forgive me
,” I cry at her.

She drops the glass, lifts herself off of me. A thin bloody line has formed on my neck, but it is not deep, and I am still breathing.

Her mouth is wide open like a crocodile preparing to clamp down. Thinking quickly, I wipe the blood from my neck and grab her hand. This way when she sobers up, and I am gone,
because I will be so long gone
, she will see my blood, and have a nightmarish time trying to remember what she has done.

Mom steps backwards away from me, her eyes unblinking as she stares at the bloody piece of glass. This is my only opportunity to get away and I take it. I crawl at first, then when my knees have stopped shaking, stand up and sprint away.

It is not easy to run while hyperventilating, pushing forward a body that is on the brink of giving out and collapsing.
My mom just tried to kill me
. A string of sobs follow this thought, and slow my running for a moment. I taper off the road and scramble over to a green dumpster. There, I lean against its rusty surface, trying to suppress the screams that are fighting to escape me. I bite my arm, and release a scream.

My gown is soaked through from the downpour, and the cold is numbing me from head to toe, sucking the pain out of my bruised limbs. When I have finished screaming, I rise again; my legs more steady this time.

The only nearby person I can think of who might help me is Spencer. Sure, Clad would hold me, and protect me, but there isn’t a way for me to get to him, and my phone is still at the apartment.

I am no longer able to run; it is too draining in the state that I am in. My back aches every time I take a step forward; it feels like I have been run over by a steamroller, all my bones crushed.

The streets are flooded from the storm, probably brought on by a cold front. The temperature has dropped at least ten more degrees since yesterday. I am shivering and my teeth are chattering uncontrollably when I walk into the Goodwill. The store lights are dim, casting eerie shadows on all the dilapidated furniture and tattered toys. I force myself to take three giant strides to the counter where I first met Spencer. He is nowhere in sight, so I pound the bell.

No one comes.

I hit the bell a few more times before picking it up and throwing it against the wall in frustration.

Spencer, emerges from the back room just as I am about to pick up the bell to throw a second time. I clench my fists, terrified of what he will think of the way I look.
I wanted Spence to think I am a gorgeous girl, someone worth dating, someone worth loving.
By the look in his eyes I am positive that will never be.

He is looking at a girl who is soaked to the bone, clothes sticking to her thin frame, blood dripping down her neck, and eyes hollowed out in fear.

“What happened?” he asks, jaw unhinged.

I could faint from the expression of sadness that is in his eyes, and I almost do, but he grabs me by my waist and holds me up. He leans me against the counter, and goes to the bedding section of the store, retrieving a red flannel blanket. He dries me off with the blanket and drapes it over my shoulders. I stare at him, my teeth chattering from the cold, and my vision veiled by a stream of tears. His face is beautiful when it is pulled into lines of worry and concern.

“Come outside,” he says, and steers me to the door.

No
, I think,
he is going to make me leave, he doesn’t want anything to do with me!

“Please! Don’t make me go! I can’t, I can’t,” I say franticly.

“Calm down,” he says, his voice relaxed. “I’m going to take you to my home, okay?”

I nod, relieved that he has not yet been repulsed by me.

Spencer opens the passenger door to his truck, and lifts me like a toddler into the seat. He turns the heat up to warm the truck, but it cannot compete with the paralyzing ice that is traveling through my body.

“It’s okay,” he simply says, resting his large hand on my knee. “I will take care of you.”

Those six words are all I need to hear. Tears course down my face.

“God, what happened? Why are you so upset? You can trust me, Bailey,” he says at the sight of my tears.

I am crying because he cares, this boy who doesn’t even know me, cares about me more than my own mother. A complete stranger is going out of his way to console me.

“You’re a great guy,” is all I can say.

He laughs. “Thank you, is that why you are crying?”

I shake my head.

“What’s wrong?” Spencer tries again.

I pull the blanket tighter around my neck, it covers my cut.

“Cold?” he asks.

I avert my eyes. Glue them on trees and passerby’s as we drive to his house. We pull into the driveway of a one-story, sky-blue house; a carbon copy of all the homes in Cape Coral.

“My sister Sarah should be home,” he says as he lifts me out of the truck and sets me in a puddle. I take a few steps forward before I slip on the wet concrete. Faster than a whip, Spencer grabs me by my arm, preventing me from falling.

“You can meet her,” Spencer says, standing me up straight.

With an arm around my waist, he guides me to the door. He reaches for the doorknob to open it, but a young girl with shoulder length, dirty blonde hair, and the same copper eyes as Spencer, swings it open before he can. She looks disappointed, then shocked all at once.

“Bailey, this is Sarah. Sarah this is Bailey,” Spencer introduces us.

“Your eyes are pretty,” she says, trying to shake my hand. I pull away from her, I don’t know why.

“That’s okay,” Spence says to me, closing the door behind us. “She’s not feeling well, Sarah.”

She nods thoughtfully, and I feel a pang of remorse for not greeting her properly.

“Sorry we had to meet like this,” I say, my voice quivering.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. Here why don’t you sit down?” Sarah shows me to their couch. It is a shocking red, blood red.
Great, I won’t have to worry about staining it with my blood
.

I sit on the opposite side from Spence and Sarah.

“Don’t sit so far away,” Spence says, and I scoot even farther from him.

“Okay, I’ll come to you,” he says, and bends down on his knees so our eyes meet, and then holds both my hands in his. “Tell me, what happened?” he asks, his voice soft, almost like the purr of a cat.

“I can’t,” I say, my gaze turning from his.

“Please, so I can help you. All I want to do is help you,” he pleads with me.

I have never told anyone besides Trenton and Alana about Mom’s abusive ways.
Would Spencer think less of me if he knew that I am my mom’s punching bag?

He strokes my cheek. “Don’t be scared,” he says.

I look past him Sarah is on the edge of her seat, waiting for me to spill all that has transpired. She wants to crack me open like an egg. The combination of Sarah’s prying eyes and Spencer’s gentle words force me open up.

“My mom,” I say. Sarah draws in a breath, and Spencer squeezes my hands tighter; their reactions seem somehow scripted.

“She cut my throat with a piece of glass, she pushed me down the stairs at our apartment, she pushed me into a pile of broken glass,” I say, showing them my upturned palms.

“She slapped me, and it left a bruise on my face for days.” I am not stopping, because it feels so good to finally share with someone all that I have been through. “When I was little she burnt my hand with her cigarette lighter, because I flushed a whole pack of Marlboros down the toilet,” I say, and my palm stings, as I recall the moment.

“That’s not all, but I can’t say anymore. It hurts,” I finish.

Sarah is speechless, and Spencer looks sickened. Spencer’s hands drop mine, and he stands. He squints his eyes, thinking about what he should do next.

“I am so sorry,” Sarah says at last.

Spencer has left the living room, and is rummaging around in the kitchen for something. Sarah knows what he’s searching for, apparently, because she tells him, “Look on the counter closest to the refrigerator.”

“Got it,” he says triumphantly and returns to my side, telephone and a slip of paper in hand. I catch a glimpse of what is written on the paper, as I reach for it.

“No!” I scream at Spencer who is in the middle of calling Children and Families to report my story of abuse.

“I have to,” he says, dialing the number. “She will kill you, and you’re only a little girl, you can’t handle her on your own. They will help you; they will give your mother the help she so desperately needs.”

“They will cast me out on to the streets! They will take me from her, and then where will I go?” I say, hoping to level with him.
Doesn’t he realize the repercussions of getting these people involved?
It will cause more harm than good, that I am positive of.

“You can go with your dad.” He stops dialing.

“My dad is in prison!
He killed a person
,” I say.

“They will find a safe place for you. Anywhere is better than being with your mom right?” Spencer says.

I jump from my seat on the couch, even though every bone in my body is protesting, and I grab for the phone. Sarah sits bolt upright, startled by my reaction. I lean against Spencer and try to knock the phone from his hands.