Anywhere But Here

I was only nine when I first heard the sirens. They never came around here. It was always too peaceful for that. So it wasn’t until they left that I knew the reason they were there.

I was behind my older sister when she opened the door for the officers. I couldn’t understand why my sister was crying or why officer Perry had to comfort her, but I could tell something was wrong.

“Mom!” I called to her, not knowing where she could be. “Why are the police here?!” I yelled, hearing no reply in return. “Mom! Mom, Emmy’s crying! Mom!” I tried to run upstairs to the bathroom where she spent most of her time, but Emily and Perry stopped me by tugging me back downstairs. I turned towards my sister and I sobbed more. “Where’s mom??” I screamed at her in distress.

“Sh, sh, it’s going to be okay,” Emmy said, holding me comfortingly. “This’ll all be over soon. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” She wouldn’t let me turn towards the stairs anymore.

Since I looked up to her, I believed that everything was going to be alright. “W-why are the police here?” I ask, scared of their tasers and guns.

“It’ll be okay,” she said again, ignoring my question. “Sh, sh.” I was getting really annoyed by the way she dodged question after question.

“Tell me what’s going to happen to mom!” I yell at her, struggling in her arms. Perry ran upstairs when a glass shattered in the bathroom. Em wasn’t letting me go, but I still fought on and on. I eventually heard a scream of frustration coming from the upstairs bathroom, causing shivers to run down my spine. I spun in Emmy’s arms, facing the stairwell as two more officers rushed to Perry’s assistance, holding a bleeding, struggling, banshee of a woman to the ground. Another officer ran up the stairs and searched the bathroom, tossing everything and making a mess, trying to find something. They came out with glass pipes and little pale green-brown balls that had the fragrance of pepper, which burned my nose. As the officer left the scene with the pepper balls, I watched as the woman still struggled and I struggled in my sister’s arms more and more.

“Let me see my daughter!” She screamed. “Let me see my daughter!” She kept repeating the same thing, calling the officers every foul name in the book.

“Why are they arresting her, Em?!” She ignores me again, hatred in her eyes as she stared my mother dead in the eye, allowing the officers to beat her to a pulp and take her into custody when she was subdued without even a flinch. Emily was now bonding me in a chokehold, not choking me, but holding me firmly in her much stronger arms. “Let me go!” I cried out, stamping on her foot. She did, holding her foot in agony as I ran towards the car in which my mother was being taken. My sister tried to stop me, but I shrugged her off, my body slamming against the side door of the car. I started banging on the window, yelling for my mom.

“Mom! Please don’t let them take you! Please!”

Perry rolled down the window as I sat there, sobbing. My mother was beautiful for her age. She was 40, but she looked like she was in her twenties. She seemed to stop aging around then, anyways. But that’s what happens when you’re a model before you’re thirty, I guess. She was a brunette and she had chocolate brown eyes which sparkled in the moonlight. Even covered in bruises she was pretty. Her voice was probably the softest I’ve heard.

“Taylor, look at me,” my mother said, disoriented. She had barely just regained consciousness. I looked up, afraid to see her eyes as she was taken from me. “I know this might be hard for you to understand, but I’ve made some bad choices since your father died. I got involved with the wrong people and did horrible things with them. That’s why I spend most of my time in the bathroom or my room, and why I’m always coughing. I wonder explain why I was right now, but I will explain everything you want to know when I’m back, okay?” I nod, wiping my tears. “I love you, sweetheart.” She was crying. “Mommy loves you.”

I cried more, terrified to be without her. Emmy wasn’t scary, but I haven’t been alone while awake with her before. My mom never left the house unless it was to leave for “business” meetings late at night. Sometimes I woke up and saw mom sobbing on the ground, holding her arms and shivering. Sometimes she had little bags of white powder in her arms. There were always men over, but I didn’t understand why had multiple men in her room at a time. They would always leave right after the noises and bed creaks would end. They never stayed the night. If mom was happy, then so was I, so I never questioned her. “I-I love you, too, mommy,” I said, holding her hand.

Perry didn’t seem to want to stop us, but then he did when Em came over to us. “Emily,” my mom said, something in her tone changed, but I couldn’t figure it out, “I want you to protect your sister until I’m back. You understand?”

Emily glanced down at me with what seemed to be fire behind hazel eyes. I shivered in fear, gasping a little. “Yes, mother. I understand.” She looks up at our mom and smiles a little. “I love you, mom.”

My mom’s expression darkened, and weirdly she didn’t reply, like she did to me. She looks towards the front of the car and leans forward to get closer to the front window. “Get me out of here, Perry. I want to finish my sentence already.” I wasn’t ready to leave her, but Emily dragged me inside anyways, locking the door.

Perry nodded and got into the car, quickly driving off. That was the last time I saw my mom that night.

**Chapter Break**

I was allowed to watch tv to distract myself from the memories of seeing my mother beaten by Perry and his friends, but it didn’t get rid of the visions. I couldn’t get them out of my head and it was hurting my head. “Emmy,” I said, looking over to her. She was reading something I couldn’t see very well in the dark, but it looked like a magazine. I walked over to her and saw what I would never want to see again. The women were obviously beautiful, but I’d never seen so much of their body and it scared me. How could my sister be looking at that and like it??

Shocked, I turned around, closing my eyes before I finished my sentence. “C-can I have some water? My head and throat hurt.” I got the courage to turn and face my sister, whose eyes were dilated and red.

“No,” she said with a shocking amount of authority. “You don’t need water. You need to turn off that damn tv and go to bed!” She had started to yell, calling me terrible names I would never repeat to anyone, and blaming me for mom getting arrested. The way she said it though made me think she enjoyed that mom was away now.

I bolted to my room, terrified, confused about what I did, and locked the door. I hid under my covers, breathing heavily. Sobbing in my hands, I noticed that the downstairs noise seemed to quiet down.

**Chapter Break**

Over the next few days, Emily spent a lot of her time in her room, making low, questionable noises. When I would walk near her room some of these times, I would always hear a buzzing noise and her voices coming from there. She would swear and call out someone’s name. I think it was Jayden.

I was smart enough never to be seen listening to her conversation with an imaginary man she always loved swearing at, laughing, and telling him to go faster. At whatever he was doing to her. When she would leave the room, her hair was always a mess and she looked like she wasn’t aware of where she was. But I never questioned her. Sometimes, she would have a man over, the real Jayden, and they would always sneak back into the room. The noises never sounded as loud as they did when he was there. It was gross, and I didn’t think I would get it out of my head.

While Jayden and Emily were in her room, I would sneak out of mine and go downstairs to make myself some food. Emily never fed me, so I had to take her phone and look up how to cook food. I burnt it a lot of the time, but eventually I figured it out.

It wasn’t too long before Emily caught on, and I got in trouble. She would smack me and throw me against the wall, hitting my stomach and legs as I cried for help. She called it “tough love” and I believed her. I deserved it, didn’t I?

I would’ve been so happy if my mom came through the door and stopped her as she hurt me, but no savior came. Who got mom in trouble? Where did mom go? I was about to find out…