Young Writers Society

The previous day, she was at peace,

but when she went to bed that night, she did not think the next day would change her life forever.

"Nichole! Get down here now!" screamed Nichole's mother, Ashley. When she walked down the stairs, she could see that her little brother had spilled his cereal all over the old, worn out table in their kitchen and it began to drip to the floor.

“Clean it up.”

"Why can't you do it? I'm getting ready for school."

"Because I told you to," Ashley said. She was laying in the living room on the dirty brown couch with a hangover from the previous night. Her mother’s morning hangovers were an almost everyday event in the Williams’ household. Nichole turned around and walked back up the stairs of their two bedroom, broken down apartment. After a not receiving a response or hearing her daughter walk by, Ashley looked up and noticed she had walked back up the stairs. She then followed, glancing at her son Byron who was still sitting at the table with the milk spilled everywhere.

“Byron, get some napkins and clean that up,” she said as she walked towards the stairs. As she walked closer to the room that Nichole and her younger brother share, she had a furious look frozen on her face. She started to yell before she even reached the door.

"Little girl, if you don't go downstairs and clean-"

"You'll what?" Nichole interrupted, "hit me? It’s not like you haven’t done that in a while."

Ashley walked closer to her daughter with her fist clenched to her side. Nichole began to slide down the wall into a squatting position and cover her face with her arms.

"Mommy, you wouldn't hit Nichole would you?"

Byron stood in the door and looked at his sister sitting on the floor underneath his mother. His voice was shaking as he spoke.

Nichole looked at her little brother and stood up quickly, wiping away the tears that had already began to form in her eyes.

"No of course not sweetie, I wouldn't lay one hand on my precious angel," Ashley said as she pat Nichole on the head in a strong and hurtful manner. She walked over to him and placed her hand on his head.

"Why don't you go down stairs and watch cartoons until your sister comes down to take you to the bus stop?"

Byron looked up at his mother’s smiling face then to his sister, who was standing with her back against the wall. She was looking at him as well. He looked back at his mother then walked out the room without a word. While Byron returned down the stairs, it was quiet in the room. Ashley walked over to close the squeaky bedroom door, while Nichole was on the other side of the room but she was now standing in front of her closet. She grabbed her favorite green sweater and turned around to put it on. Her mother was looking at her with her back against the door.

“Are we done? I have to finish getting ready for school,” she walked to her bed to finish packing her bag, “Oh and how can you just lie to Byron like that and say that you have never hit me, when you have been doing it since you met Byron’s pathetic excuse of a father?”

Ashley walked a little closer to her daughter with the same angry look as before. She stopped when she was halfway there and put one of her hands on her stomach while the other covered her mouth. She stood that way for a couple seconds then turned and rushed out the room. When she pulled open the door, Ashley had caused a hole in the wall behind the door the same size as the door knob. Nichole looked at the hole as the bedroom door began to slowly bounce back until it was almost closed. She disregarded her mother’s actions and finished putting her notebooks into her book bag.

While she was putting her book bag on, her mother came into the room holding a bottle of whiskey, looking even more angrier. Ashley cursed at her sixteen-year-old daughter then threw the bottle towards her but since Ashley was already drunk, the bottle missed and it smashed against the wall beside Nicole’s head. She turned to face the spot that the bottle hit. The white wall contrasted with the brownish liquid that began to slowly drip to the floor, and all of the glass had fallen onto Nichole’s dresser. She turned around to face her mother who was standing over her. Before Nichole could move, her mother slapped her across her face. Nichole stood there motionless, holding her cheek, and looking at the bed next to her.

“Don’t you ever say that again!”

The room was quiet; the tears began to run down Nicole’s face.

Meanwhile, Byron was downstairs looking through some old VHS tapes buried away in a cardboard box beside the old box television that was in their living room. The one that stood out the most to him was one that was in a red and green case with a Christmas tree on the front. He sat back and slid the tape from its case. He noticed that the date, December 25th, had been written on it in cursive, and with a heart. Byron turned the television to good enough volume so that he could hear all the joys of Christmas that, he thought, would be on this tape. After pushing the tape into the slot under the screen, he sat on the floor just as it began to play.

Nichole was young. No one was in the picture but Ashley and a young Nichole. It appeared to be Christmas morning and she was happily opening her presents with her mother. A man suddenly came into the room from the kitchen, walking dizzily and holding an empty bottle. He stopped a couple steps away from Ashley and Nichole, then threw the bottle on the ground, smashing it to pieces. Ashley stood up with a worried look on her face. The man had walked over to where the camera had been resting and picked it up, keeping the focus on Ashley and her daughter.

"Hit her," he said forcefully yet quietly. Ashley ignored and continued to look down at her daughter who had just unwrapped a wooden jewelry box. Nichole did not look up at all at her mother as this is not the first time he has made her do this to her daughter.

"Hit her!" the man yelled loudly. There was a moment of silence and then a loud scream. Ashley had slapped Nichole. Nichole was laying on the ground, curled up in a ball, trying to cover her face from what, she knew, was bound to happen next.

The man had rested the camera back down so he could pull Nichole up off the ground. Ashley walked behind the camera, slow and scared.

The words, “Drink this” and “Do it or I will kill you” were being said repeatedly by the man behind the camera, while a young Nichole stood, quivering. After a couple of minutes of silence, Ashley and the man walked back into the view of the camera, except this time they both were stumbling. She began punching her daughter in her stomach while the man pulled the glass vase from the coffee table, and threw it at Nichole's head. On impact, she fell to the floor and did not get up. Then the man pulled Ashley by her hair up the stairs, she was screaming and frantically trying to pry his hands off of her head because she was afraid of what was going to happen next. Nichole still laid on the floor with her eyes closed, covered in blood.

Byron turned off the television and stared at the blank screen, the tears were falling from his cheeks. He had so many questions about what he had just seen. After he ran to the bathroom, he threw up from remembering the sight of his sister lying on the floor with blood coming out of her face from the shards of glass cutting her. He wiped his mouth and ran out of the bathroom to remove the tape from the slot. He now feared his mother.

Byron ran back up the stairs. While passing Ashley's room, he saw that she was asleep and had a half-empty glass bottle in her hand. He went to Nichole's room and saw that she was sitting on her bed, crying. When Nichole saw that Byron had walked in the room, she quickly got up and wiped her face.

"What's wrong with your eye Nichole? " he asked, looking up at his sister, the area around her right eye appeared to be black.

"Oh it's nothing. My makeup just smeared,” she wiped her face again, “Are you ready to go to school?"

Byron looked at the ground.

"Has mommy ever hit you?" he spoke quietly, in fear of his mother hearing him.

Nichole looked at her brother. She walked closer and kneeled down in front of him.

"Why did you ask that?" she asked, beginning to feel a tightness in her chest.

"I saw a video. It was Christmas and this man came from the kitchen and started beating on mommy and you. I saw her hit you Nichole. How could she do that to you? I thought she loved us," he began to cry again, looking into his sister’s eyes.

“She does love-”

Nichole had been interrupted by a duffle bag falling off of her bed.

"What's that?"

"Oh that's nothing," she stood up and picked up the bag, stuffing the clothes back in, “don't worry about it." She zipped up the bag and put it under her bed.

"Were you going somewhere?"

She didn’t respond, she stood up and walked to her dresser, all of the glass had been pushed into the trashcan. She grabbed her makeup, trying not to look at her brother anymore.

"Can I go with you? I don't like it here anymore."

Byron’s question made Nichole look at her brother. She thought if she could manage the words to tell her brother that it would be better to have him stay here and not run away like she is planning to. She thought of the reasons that he needed to stay here and questioned whether or not he should know. Nichole looked over to her bag.

"Why?" she asked her brother.

"I don't like the way mom treats you."

His answer made Nichole freeze. She stood up and went to close the door.

She turned around but kept her back on the door. Byron was sitting on the bed now; Nichole walked to the bed to sit next to him. She looked him in his brown eyes as she spoke to him.

“You can’t go. If you do something really bad will happen to mom, like really bad Byron,” she turned to face her black and green tennis shoes.

“Like what Nichole? Who is going to hurt her?” he asked as he turned to her.

Nichole kept looking at her shoes, “Do you remember living with your dad? When you were younger?” she turned towards him too.

“Yes?”

“Your dad didn’t want you to come over here, to see me or mom. So he kept you away from here as best as he could. Until he-”, Nichole stopped talking and looked at the blue and white clock hanging on the wall.

“Mom is going to wake up again soon,” she stood up panicking, “I need to go.”

“Me too?”

Nichole stopped and turned towards her brother, then kneeled in front of him.

"If you go, you may never come back here. Meaning you may never see mom again." Nichole grabbed her brother's shoulders and looked him in the eyes. "Are you ready for that?"

Byron looked up with a serious expression on his face. "I'm ready."

Nichole walked out the room and peeked into her mother's room. She was still asleep but the bottle had fallen to the floor and the liquid inside spilled out onto the carpet. She ran back to her room and emptied out her brother's book bag.

"Here" She handed it to him. "Put clothes and anything else you need in there. Come downstairs quietly when you are done." Nichole pushed all of the things that fell out of her brother’s book bag, under his bed and walked closer to the door then turned to look at Byron. “How much does he know?” she thought to herself as she crept down the stairs. She walked into the kitchen and packed food and drinks into a smaller bag. She then went into the living room and saw Byron walking down the stairs. As Byron walked through the living room, he noticed something on the coffee table in front of the couch that Ashley had been laying on earlier. He walked over and saw that it was a couple of bills and a cell phone. After picking both of them up, he went into the kitchen to show his sister what he found.

“Look Nichole.”

She looked at him and her eyes got big.

“Where did you find this?” she said, snatching it out of his hands.

He pointed to the table that was clearly visible from the kitchen area.

“This was my phone a couple months ago. Mom had taken it because her phone had been stolen while she was at the club.”

She shoved it into her pocket, looked at her brother in the eyes again, and put her hand on his shoulder.

"Are you sure you want to do this Byron?"

He ignored his sister's question, and walked to the living room towards the front door.

“Do you have everything you need?” she said, stopping him in his tracks.

Byron took off his backpack and searched through it. He stared at the ceiling, looking as if he was looking at some sort of mental list. He made a face of realization then ran back up the stairs. While he was gone, Nichole looked by the door and saw an umbrella, she picked it up and walked to the closet by the front door. She took out a blanket and shoved it in the almost full duffle bag that hung from her shoulder.

“Do I even have everything we need?” she asked aloud.

Just then Byron walked back the stairs with his book bag on his back.

“Is everything okay?”

Nichole blinked repeatedly, coming out of her own thoughts, “Yeah,” she looked at her brother.

“Just thinking if we have everything,” she dropped the bag on the floor and kneeled in front of it.

While Nichole faced the door, shuffling through her bag, Byron walked to the television and picked up the tape. He brushed his finger over the seemingly happy family tape then shoved it into the remaining space in his book bag.

“Was she still asleep?” Nichole asked quietly over her shoulder.

He nodded and opened the door for his sister. Nichole stood and walked outside then Byron followed, quietly closing the door behind them.