Jax's eyes widened as he took a menacing step forward. He searched my face again, analyzing me. "What the hell does that mean?" he ground out, a gravelly tone in his voice sending shivers up my body.
I stepped back quickly and turned as if unaffected. I didn’t answer him because I didn’t really know what it meant. Jay and I were friends, nothing more. I didn’t know if he was better at anything than Jax, other than being my friend.
He was the absolute best at that.
"See you guys later!" I yelled over my shoulder as I bounded down the stairs.
Halfway out the door, Jax yelled from the stairs, "See you on Sophomore Kill Day."
I winced at the reminder.
Jay would protect me. I hoped.
What Jay wouldn't be able to protect me from was walking into my kitchen and seeing my father sitting at the table, glaring at the door.
"Where's Mom?"
"You mean Mother?" he asked, his voice louder than even his normal yelling voice. "I'm asking the questions, Aubrey."
I nodded, frozen in the doorway.
"Close and lock that door. You are letting in the cold."
I turned and did as I was told. I had no choice. Not when I didn't know where my mom was.
As the lock clicked into place, I felt my body start to shake. I couldn't turn back around. I willed myself to pivot, to face my father.
I pled with my self-control, begging it to help me stop shaking, to give me the courage to ask him again where he'd locked Mom up this time.
Control, that little friend of mine, wasn’t needed though. Instead, my father yanked me back by my French braid and spit out, "What the fuck is this? She let your hair grow this long?"
Tears stung my eyes from the hair pulling.
The tears spilled over when he reached for the knife block and slid a large butcher knife from it. The metal glinted in the light. It shined as if it had been sharpened and primed for just this specific moment. When the metal sparkled as it swung toward me, I wondered if blood made it shine more brightly.
I wouldn’t find out that day because my father only sliced it fluidly across my braid.
My hair unraveled and hung shoulder-length. He threw my twelve inches of braid into the trash and the knife into the sink.
The sounds of the metal hitting ceramic and the knife ricocheting forcefully around the sink drew my focus to the sharpness of the blade. How quickly it sliced through every strand of the hair. Gone, it was all gone.
"Don't blubber in my house," my father yelled and slammed his open hand upside the back of my head. I flew forward, seeing black. Just barely, I caught myself on the countertop.
The blade was closer now, my teeth just inches from the side of the sink.
My father, such a smart, successful man. People said we were lucky to have him. He’d saved my mother, Tala, from that home she’d lived in on the reservation.
That home though was my mother’s sanctuary. Father didn’t let her talk much about it but she shared with me how it saved her when her own mother vanished. One night, her mother went to work and the next she was gone like a beautiful star burning out in the galaxy.
"Go clean up your mother. She's in the office," he grumbled as he pulled the keys from his slacks and threw them at me.
I stood there wondering what he would do if I said no. If I didn’t back down and pushed him just a little further.
My father, such a smart man. He never hit us where it would leave a mark for anyone to see.
His eyebrows raised.
My shoulders sank.