The Escape
The floorboards in the hallway groaned.
I froze, holding my breath until my lungs burned. My fingers remained wrapped around the strap of the old school backpack resting on my mattress. Inside were two pairs of jeans, three shirts, eighty-four dollars in crumpled tips from my diner shifts, and the only photo I had left of my dad.
Please go to sleep, I prayed into the dark. Please just pass out.
Down the hall, a glass shattered against the wall, followed by the slurred, venomous screech of my mother’s voice. “Rose! Get out here! You think you can just hide from me?”
A cold shiver raced down my spine. The bruising on my shoulder from last week hadn’t even faded yet. If she found the packed bag, I wouldn’t survive the night. Seventeen years of walking on eggshells, seventeen years of being her punching bag—it had to end tonight.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t make a sound.
With shaking hands, I quietly zipped the bag, muffled the sound with my palm, and slid it onto my shoulders. The window was my only option. I pushed the ancient wooden frame upward, grinding my teeth as it resisted, letting out a sharp, terrifying scrape.
“Rose?!”
Heavy, uneven footsteps stomped toward my door.
Panic exploded in my chest. I scrambled onto the windowsill. The freezing October air slapped my face, but I barely felt it. My room was on the second floor, but a thick tree branch stretched just three feet from the glass.
The doorknob rattled violently.
“Open this door, you ungrateful little—”
I didn’t wait to hear the rest. I lunged forward into the dark, my fingers scraping against the rough bark of the tree. I caught the branch, pain flaring through my arms as my legs swung into the empty air. Behind me, my bedroom door slammed open, crashing against the wall.
“What are you doing?!” my mother roared, stumbling toward the window.
Adrenaline floods my system and before I know what I'm doing, I let go.
I hit the ground hard, rolling onto the damp grass. The fall knocked the wind out of me and left me gasping. Above me, my mother leaned out the window and threw her broken beer bottle down at me.
I scrambled to my feet before it could hit me. I tried to ignore the pain in my ankle from the fall. I didn’t look back. I sprinted as fast as I could, bursting through the backyard and into the blinding rain of the main road.
I was free. But as the dark, empty highway stretched out ahead of me with nowhere to go, a terrifying realization set in.
I was free. I could do anything I wanted. but how was I going to survive?
