Chapter 2

Violet

I blinked at my mother because I thought I had misunderstood her. The medication made my head heavy, and pain throbbed behind my eyes whenever I tried to focus.

“Work at the bar?” I asked incredulously.

She clasped her hands. “Only until we can pay the hospital bill. Gary is angry because this has cost us a lot of money.”

Disgust rose in my throat. “He nearly killed me, mom, and you’re worried that he’s angry?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Please don’t talk so loudly.”

I looked toward the closed hospital door and then back at her. She was still afraid someone might hear us, but she was not afraid enough to leave him. She was not even afraid enough to protect me.

“Did you know what he wanted before he spoke to me?” I asked.

She wiped her face and avoided my eyes. That was enough of an answer.

“Mom.”

“He mentioned that you could help at the bar once you turned eighteen,” she admitted. “All you have to do is serve some drinks.”

“He put a dress on the table that covered almost nothing!”

“Come on, Violet. I’ll convince him to—”

“Convince him for what?” I gave a disbelieving laugh, then winced when the movement pulled at my ribs. “He broke my arm because I said no.”

“He was drunk,” she said. My mother looked exhausted. Her hair had not been washed, and the skin beneath her eyes was dark, but why was she advocating Gary? I had spent years believing we were trapped together. I had defended her when Gary insulted her and cleaned her wounds after he hit her. I had imagined that once I was old enough, I would take her away with me.

Now she was asking me to sell myself so she could remain in his house.

“You know what happens upstairs at that bar,” I said. “You’ve seen those girls.”

She began crying, covering her mouth so no one outside would hear. “What do you expect me to do? I can’t afford this hospital bill. I can’t pay the rent alone, and I have nowhere else to go.”

“Leave with me.”

“And go where?”

“I’ve been accepted into colleges. I can work. You can work somewhere else.”

“You’re eighteen, Violet. You don’t understand how the world works.”

I stared at her, shocked by how easily she dismissed me. “So you would rather send me to his bar than leave him.”

She cried, “That isn’t fair.”

“It’s exactly what you’re doing.”

She shook her head and told me she was only trying to keep us safe. I stopped listening. There was nothing safe about Gary’s house or his bar.

Gary visited the next afternoon carrying flowers. He smiled at the nurses and told them I had always been clumsy. According to him, I had fallen down the basement stairs after drinking with friends. My mother had already given the same story to the police.

When we were alone, he placed the flowers beside my bed and leaned close enough for me to smell cigarettes on his clothes.

“You’ve caused enough trouble,” he said quietly. “When the doctors release you, you’ll come home, recover, and start working.”

I turned my face away.

He gripped the rail beside my bed. “This hospital stay has doubled what you owe me. Don’t make me collect it another way.”

I clenched my jaw to stop trembling. If I needed to get out of here, I needed to be complacent with the arrangement.

For the next two weeks, whenever my mother visited, I stopped arguing. I asked her to bring my phone, laptop, and school bag because I needed to withdraw my college applications. She was relieved because she believed the beating had finally taught me to obey.

She brought everything the next morning. What they didn’t know was that my applications had already been submitted online months ago. What I needed was access to my email, admissions portal, identification, and savings.

Late that night, after the nurses finished their rounds, I logged into my North Valley College account. The offer was still there. I had been awarded partial tuition support and a place in the figure-skating program, but the deadline to confirm my admission was in two days.

My finger didn’t even hesitate to press the button. A message appeared confirming that I had accepted the offer.

I covered my mouth and cried quietly. I was not safe yet, and I did not have enough money to pay everything the scholarship did not cover, but for the first time since waking in the hospital, I had done something Gary couldn’t control.

I emailed the admissions office and explained that I was leaving an unsafe home situation and might need to arrive before orientation. I did not describe the bar or the beating. Writing those details made me feel exposed. Plus I was afraid of them asking questions.

A student support coordinator replied the following morning. She said a dorm could be arranged even if I arrived before the official move-in date. I would need to complete my medical forms and meet the skating coach immediately because my scholarship depended on training and competition eligibility.

Even though that condition frightened me, it was a chance I couldn’t waste. My arm was better, my ribs were still healing, and I had not skated in weeks.

I don’t know why, but I healed faster than most people.

I had saved eight hundred and forty dollars from my grocery-store job in an account Gary did not know existed. A bus ticket to North Valley took almost half of it. After paying for food and medication, I would have very little left, but that was nothing against what Gary had planned for me.

The doctors planned to discharge me on Friday morning. My mother told me Gary would arrive at nine.

I planned my escape meticulously because this was the only chance at freedom. The night before my escape, my mother came carrying a paper shopping bag. She placed it on the chair, and the black dress showed through the open top. “Gary thought you might want to try it once your arm heals,” she said.

I looked at her for a long time incredulously. “You can see me wearing that?”

Her face crumpled. “Please Violet, I’m trying to keep us alive.”

She reached for me, but I moved my hand away. For once, she did not argue. After she left, I photographed every bruise that had not faded and uploaded the pictures to a private account. I changed the passwords to my email and college portal, turned off the location settings on my phone, and removed my mother as an emergency contact.

I packed my medication, documents, charger, one change of clothes, and the heart-shaped silver pendant my mother said my biological father had left behind. Inside the pendant something was written in archaic language and it seemed a lot like, ‘Frostborn’.

I could not retrieve my skates from the house. Losing them hurt more than I expected, but I would find another pair. I had one box of black dye left in my school bag. I had bought it weeks ago, the way I always did when the purple started showing at my roots.

At four thirty in the morning, I changed into loose clothes and put on my coat. Walking still made my ribs ache, and the cast made the backpack difficult to carry, but I managed to reach the elevator without anyone stopping me.

A nurse at the front desk was sleeping. I snuck out. Outside, the air was cold and damp. I ordered a taxi to the bus station half expecting Gary’s truck to appear behind us.

I turned off the phone and boarded the bus.

The journey north lasted most of the day and all night. Every stop made me nervous. I woke whenever someone walked down the aisle, certain Gary had found me. My ribs hurt too much to sleep properly, and the pain medication made me nauseous.

By morning, snow covered the ground outside. I pressed my forehead against the window and watched the towns grow smaller as the bus climbed farther north. I had never seen so much snow. For some reason, the cold landscape felt quiet and calm from everything I had escaped.

When I checked my reflection in the dark window, scars showed faintly on my forehead. I pulled my hood over my head before anyone noticed.

The bus reached North Valley late in the afternoon. I stepped onto the pavement with one backpack, a cast, and less than four hundred dollars to my name.

The college campus was huge. Stone buildings stood beneath heavy snow, and a few students crossed the grounds.

I followed the signs toward the admin block, moving slowly because every breath hurt. By the time I reached the front desk, my hands were numb. The woman behind the counter smiled when I gave her my name. When I checked into my dorm an hour later, relief and exhaustion crashed inside me.

Just when I was settling in, I got a call from an unknown number and I picked it up.

“You fucking bitch!” Gary’s roared. “You think you’ve run away? Wait until I find you. And when I find you, I’ll drag you here by your hair and sell you to the highest bidder!”