Haven's Knight Page 2

  I gazed up and started to watch the clouds pass me by. I loved to watch the clouds, and decide what shapes they made. It gave me the escape I desperately needed, even if it was just for a few minutes. The first cloud I spotted reminded me of a castle from the fairy tales my father used to tell me when I was a little girl. He would tell me about the knight in shining armor who would save the beautiful princess from evil, and then they would live happily ever after. When I was a little girl I’d believed in those fairy tales, but now I knew better. There were no happy endings, there was only survival.

  I was looking at an unusually puffy cloud, trying to decide if it had a face or not, when I blinked. When I looked up I saw the face of a boy. He had straight, dark-blond hair that reached past his ears, and expressive green eyes.

  “Hi,” he greeted with an infectious smile. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Startled, I sat up and backed away. I stood up and reached for my schoolbag. I was about to turn and walk away when he grabbed my wrist to stop me. He was tall, like Grant, but he was smaller in build. I immediately cowered away from him. He let go of my wrist immediately and raised his hands in surrender and said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  I stood rooted to the spot with my big eyes fixed on the stranger in front of me. He looked at me with a confused expression at my reaction.

  “I know you’re new and you just really look like you need a friend,” he said in a gentle tone. His expression softened and he gave me a tentative smile. I continued to stare at him silently. I didn’t return his smile while I clutched my schoolbag strap tighter, contemplating whether I should just make a run for it.

  He sat down on the grass next to me. “You don’t have to talk. I can talk enough for the both of us,” he said as he looked at me expectantly. I’d had lots of people try to befriend me over the years, but no one had ever been this direct. His bright and friendly eyes watched me as I wrestled with the decision to sit with him, or turn my back and walk away.

  “I’m going to get a pain in my neck if you stand while I talk,” he said while he rubbed the back of his neck to emphasize his point. Normally, I would have bolted by now, but this boy made me do something that stunned even me. I let my bag drop to the ground, and I sat down.

  “My name is Chris,” he introduced himself. I gave him a brief nod.

  “I know your name is Haven,” he revealed. He settled his packet of lunch between us.

  I didn’t respond to him. I wasn’t ready to interact with him, but just sitting in his company felt like warm sunshine in the middle of a cold rainstorm. He offered me half of his sandwich. My stomach grumbled at the sight, reminding me that I was hungry. I’d only had two slices of bread today, and there was no guarantee that I would get supper tonight, so I accepted his offer and began to nibble at it.

  “Are you really going to make me hold this entire conversation?” he said, as he tilted his head to the side to study me.

  He received no response from me while I held his gaze.

  “All right,” he conceded. “My mom didn’t name me Chatterbox Chris for nothing.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. In the space of five minutes of meeting him, he’d made me smile. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d smiled before this. It had always been easier to just be a loner. However, Chris' attitude was so infectious that I couldn’t seem to help myself. For the time being, he happily chatted away about nothing and everything. It made me smile.

  Soon, I finished the food he had given to me. The grumbling from my stomach finally stopped. He gave me a rundown of who was who in my new school while we watched people walk past. It didn’t matter to me. I didn’t care who they were. I wasn’t interested in getting to know anyone. I wasn’t even sure I was going to continue whatever this was that I was doing with Chris. Surviving to graduation was my only goal.

  “Ah, here comes the pretty boy,” Chris said.

  I turned in the direction he was looking and looked straight into the blue eyes belonging to the boy I’d bumped into early that morning. The very boy I was trying to avoid. My stomach did a flip while his gaze held mine. He was surrounded by a couple of girls.

  Suddenly, Chris’ voice was in my ear again, “How do you know Damien Knight?”

  It pulled me out of the connection with the pretty boy, and I quickly dropped my gaze back to the ground. I turned to look at Chris and gave him a shrug. I didn’t know Damien Knight, so there was nothing to talk about. If I had my way, I would not be getting to know him either.

  Immediately, Chris’ eyes moved to something over my shoulder.

  “He’s still staring,” he revealed when his eyes moved back to mine.

  “As pretty as he is, he really isn’t someone you want to get involved with,” he warned me. The infectious smile was gone and there was a serious tone to his voice. “There are players, and then there’s Damien Knight. He has a flavor of the week. He doesn’t do dates or anything like that. I don’t think he even knows how to spell commitment. For him it’s just a fuck for the week and nothing else. Sometimes they don’t even last a week. He holds the record for closing the deal the quickest: the rumor is that it took him less than five minutes!”

  I just shrugged my shoulders. He didn’t need to warn me, because it was never going to happen. I had enough to deal with, and I didn’t have time for trivial stuff.

  “There’s a fragileness about you. Stay away from him, otherwise he’ll break you,” he warned. He didn’t know that Damien couldn’t break me, because I was already broken.

  Fortunately, I had nothing to say about Damien Knight. I just shrugged my shoulders again. Thankfully, Chris took the hint and dropped the subject.

  He spent the rest of lunch babbling on about nothing. I had never met anyone that could talk so much about nothing significant. Most people would have found it annoying, but I enjoyed it. He held the entire conversation and I never felt obligated to give any input at all.

  The main reason I never spoke was because I was shy, and I didn’t want to build any type of friendship with him. I decided that I would let him talk, and I would enjoy the conversation, even if it was one-sided, but when lunch ended I wouldn’t let this to happen again.

  The bell rang. We both got to our feet and began dusting the grass off of our clothes. I pulled my schedule out of my bag to see which class I had next. While looking at the paper, Chris broke into my thoughts. “Where is your next class?” he asked, peering over my shoulder while I was trying to find it on the map. I pointed to a box on the map that read ‘room 19A.’

  “Come on, I’ll walk you to class,” Chris said and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I stiffened when I felt the dull pain radiate through my back. His touch had pressed into the bruises on my upper back.

  “Sorry,” he muttered and let his arm drop away from me. “You don’t like to be touched, do you?”

  He waited for me to answer his question, but I ignored him and started to walk back into the school building. He caught up with me and showed me to my next class. I walked into the class and I didn’t look back to see if he’d left or not. I never had friends because I was good at keeping people at bay. I could tell from the little time I had spent with Chris that he was not going to give up that easily; but I had more to lose, and there was no way I was going to let him in.

  I sat down in the seat nearest to the windows and gazed out at the scenery below. The sun shone brightly down on the trees surrounding the class. The teacher appeared in the front of the class to begin the lesson. For the rest of the day I kept to myself and tried to blend into the background. It worked well, because no one tried to talk to me or look at me. I didn’t see Chris or Damien again either. I walked out of the school and to the bus stop. I stood, gazing at the ground until the bus appeared, which did not take long.

  The nervous knots in my stomach grew larger the closer I got to home. I wondered if Grant had gone to work today, because if he hadn’t, he’d be home when I got there. That never en
ded well for me.

  I held my breath as I quietly opened the front door. Peeking inside, I could see that the living room was empty. I slipped through the door and turned and closed it. There was a faint click as the door closed.

  The house was quiet. I walked quickly to my room. Once I got to the safety of my room, I closed my door. I walked over to my bed and dropped my school bag next to it. I needed to have a quick shower. I always made sure I showered when I got home because if things got out of hand later I didn’t have to worry about going to school feeling dirty.

  I collected my pajamas and snuck quietly into the bathroom situated across from my bedroom. Inside the bathroom, I didn’t waste any time. I switched the shower on and stripped naked. In five minutes I was done. I rinsed the soap from my body and switched the shower off. I dried myself quickly and put my pajamas on. After dressing, I slipped out of the bathroom and back into my bedroom. The house was still quiet.

  My next task was to get my homework done. An hour later I was finished and I began to relax a little. I lay down on my bed and thought about my dad. I thought about him every single day. Not only did I miss him, but he was a reminder of happier times, of when I’d been loved. Sometimes, I dreamed of when I was little, before Grant had come into my life. A time when I felt safe and I didn’t live in constant fear.

  I realized it was time to start supper. I hated leaving the sanctuary of my room, but I had to cook, because if I didn’t have supper ready by the time Grant got home in the evenings I was guaranteed a beating.

  I got up and left the safety of my room to go to the kitchen to start cooking. I searched the cupboards for something I could make, but there weren’t a lot of options. I settled on some pasta with meat sauce. I glanced up at the old clock fixed on the kitchen wall. Grant would be home in thirty minutes. I was extremely glad that the pasta wouldn’t take that long to make.

  Unfortunately, the only thing we never ran out of in this house was alcohol. My mom’s drinking problem had worsened over the years. She was drunk almost ninety percent of the time. I didn’t see her often because she spent all of her time in her room drinking herself into a stupor. The only time I would see her was when I went into her room to change her bed linen. I did all the chores in the house. I cleaned the house and did the laundry. Luckily, we had a washing machine, so I didn’t have to wash everything by hand.

  Ten minutes after I had finished making supper, I was busy dishing up the food, and I heard the front door open. I couldn’t help the nervous twist inside my stomach at the sound of Grant entering into the flat. I stood still. My breath instantly hitched in my throat when Grant walked through the kitchen doorway. His brown hair looked greasy and in need of a wash. He glared at me and his dark-brown eyes pierced mine. I waited for the inevitable. Then his gaze swung to his plate of food on the kitchen counter.

  He walked to his plate of food and picked it up. He made a stop at the fridge to get a beer and then he threw me a glare before he disappeared out of the kitchen. I immediately grabbed my plate of food and went straight to my room. I ate my food quickly until my stomach was full. It was not often that I ate three meals in one day. Most days I was lucky to get one.

  I switched off my bedroom light and lay down on my mattress. I couldn’t help but think about Chris. I had never met anyone like him before. I couldn’t allow us to be friends. However, if my situation were different, he was the type of person I would want to be friends with. In the short time I had known him, he had shown me more kindness than anyone else in recent memory ever had.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Haven

  The next morning, I woke with a start. I was drenched in sweat and breathing hard. The brightness of the sun that streamed through the curtains lifted the dark memories. Nightmares had caused me to toss and turn for most of the night. I’d been dreaming about Grant. I tried to take a deep breath to calm my erratic breathing. My heart was still pounding in my chest. I sat up and rubbed my hands over my face, trying to shake off the remainder of the nightmare. I buried the memories of my nightmare deep inside.

  That night, I’d dreamed of the first time Grant had hit me. I was ten at the time, and it was a couple of months after he had moved in with us. It was not the severity of beating that had made me suppress the memory. It was the fact that it had been the first time he had ever hit me, and the first time I’d seen the evil inside him. It had happened over something trivial. I’d knocked over a glass of juice onto the carpet. He’d stood over me while I’d tried to clean it up. When I’d looked up at him, his jaw had twitched as he’d fisted both of his hands. I hadn’t seen it coming. He had hit my face. I’d looked up at him in stunned shock, holding on to my aching cheek when I saw the face of evil for the very first time.

  During that time, I’d been trying to deal with the loss of my father and being ignored by my mother while she dealt with her grief. I’d held so much hope that Grant would be able to make everything right. Up until that point I’d trusted him, and I’d thought he’d be able to fix my broken family.

  I realized that day that he had every intention of breaking me. And over the years, he had. I was broken. Even if I did escape from his brutality, the physical pain would stop, but the emotional pain would live with me forever.

  I drew in another ragged breath to calm down my pounding heart, and I reached under my mattress. I pulled out an old photo. The emotions that flooded through me every time I looked at the photo were overwhelming. It was a photo of my father and me. It had been taken a few months before he had died. In the photo, I was so happy as my father had held me lovingly in his arms. We were both smiling as we looked into the camera. I still missed him, and what he’d symbolized. He was last person who’d loved me, and when I looked at the photo I could remember what it felt like. When I was tempted to give up, I would look at the photo and remember that feeling. It would give me the strength to get through another day. Someday I would find someone to love me again, and for that reason I couldn’t give up.

  After I calmed down, I leaned over to return the photo to its hiding place under my bed. I got up and got dressed. I stopped abruptly when I heard a noise in the apartment. With my ear against my bedroom door, I listened, but it was quiet. A feeling of dread began to build up inside of me. My mom rarely came out of her room, so that meant that Grant was the one downstairs making the noise I was hearing. I would have to go past him to get out of the house.

  I prayed that he was not in a foul mood today so that I wouldn’t have a couple of fists flying my way. I wanted to stay hidden safely in my room, but I couldn’t miss my second day of school. A nervous knot joined the dread inside me when I left my bedroom and headed to the bathroom. I hastily brushed my hair and my teeth before I walked into the living room.

  Immediately, I knew that the noises were coming from the kitchen. I anxiously clutched the strap of my school bag tighter as I entered the living room. I held my breath when I got closer to the kitchen.

  Suddenly, the noise stopped. I took a tentative step and peered through the kitchen doorway. My eyes settled on the source of the noise, and it was my mom searching through the cupboards. I sighed with relief when I walked into the kitchen. My mom didn’t notice that I was in the kitchen while she continued her search through the cupboards.

  "What are you looking for?" I asked her. I knew her well enough to know that she was looking for alcohol or cigarettes, her two vices.

  "Wine," she muttered as she continued to search.

  I walked to the cupboard where the wine was and got a bottle out. I handed it to her. She was probably drunk already, and that was why she couldn’t find what she needed. As she turned to take the bottle from me I got a strong whiff of alcohol. No matter how many times I saw her in this state, it still shocked me. My beautiful, loving mother had disintegrated into the complete stranger standing in front of me.

  Once, she’d been beautiful. Her dark-blond hair had once been smooth and silky, but was now greasy and messy. Her once flawless
skin was hollow and wrinkled. Her toffee-colored eyes had once sparkled with promise; now they were a dull brown color, and glazed over with the effects of the alcohol. She looked ten years older than she actually was. The alcohol was literally sucking the life right out of her. She didn’t look at me or say anything. She just left the kitchen with the bottle of wine tightly clutched in her hand. Her indifference hurt me more than the physical abuse. I gulped down the emotion it pulled from me and grabbed some bread and shoved it into my bag.

  The bus ride to school was uneventful. When I got to school, I walked inside. I made a quick stop at my locker to get the books I needed. There was still time for me to eat my breakfast before school started, so I looked for a quiet place where I could eat my bread without prying eyes.

  I found a quiet spot in between two school buildings. I sat down and ate the bread I’d shoved in my bag earlier. One thing I had promised myself was that when I finally escaped the clutches of evil I would never eat plain bread again. I tried to disappear into the background, but I got some curious looks from some of the students when I made my way to my first class of the day. I had nearly made it to my classroom when I spotted Damien out of the corner of my eye.

  He had some cheerleader pushed up against the locker and their hands were all over each other. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the two of them. I’d never seen two people go at it like that out in the open for everyone to see. I thought about what Chris had told me. From the physical evidence in front of me, I knew what Chris had told me about Damien Knight was true.

  Not that it really mattered. I didn’t know Damien Knight and I didn’t want to know him. I pulled my gaze from him and the cheerleader, and continued to my class while I ignored everyone around me. During class, I concentrated on the teacher in front of me. But when I was in my second class of the day I felt the heat of a gaze. Glancing out the corner of my eye, I saw Damien a couple of tables away from me. He was openly staring at me. I had no idea why, but I wished he’d stop.