“Get the fuck out of my house!”

I couldn’t see what was happening, not at first. My vision was still too blurry. Dale was bent over as if in pain, gasping, my stepfather standing over him, fists clenched. I found my voice and screamed. No words, just a scream, as loud and long as I could. The sound got Dale moving and he charged forward like a bull, hitting the stepbeast in the midsection with his head, knocking him backward toward the doorway, where I first noticed my mother standing, frozen in place. Dale simultaneously grabbed the backs of the bigger man’s legs and the stepbeast fell like a tree. Then Dale was on him, pounding him with his fists. I couldn’t see anything but Dale’s back, arms flying, hearing the sound of them both panting like animals as they fought, my stepfather getting his legs up and pushing Dale off.

There was blood on my stepfather’s face, and a look of rage darker than I’d ever seen before. He knocked my mother out of the way and I heard a loud thud and then her scream. Dale was after him again, both of them tussling down the hallway. My mother appeared around the corner, looking into my bedroom from the doorway of their room, her cheek bloody.

“Call 911,” I croaked, flying down the hallway after them, passing her. “Mom! Call 911!”

The stepbeast hit Dale with a hard right cross, hard enough I heard the hit, a sick, meaty, crunchy sound, and it knocked him backward. Dale’s hands wheeled out to catch himself, but the bathroom door behind him was open and he tumbled through it.

“Dale!” I cried, reaching out for him, but my stepfather was there, quickly grabbing the door and locking it from the outside. Those doors weren’t supposed to lock that way, but he’d switched the doorknob around years ago, so he could lock her in whenever he felt it was necessary.

My door and the bathroom worked the same way. You could lock someone in, but you couldn’t lock anyone out.

Dale pounded on the bathroom door, rattling the knob, calling for me, but I couldn’t hear anything but the sound of my stepfather’s footsteps as he raged down the hallway, eyes red and bleary with anger.

“You fucking little whore.” His words spat over me like a rain of bullets. I winced. “In my house. IN MY HOUSE!”

I didn’t say anything. What was there to say? I closed my eyes and waited for it to come. There was no one to save me. I could scream all I wanted, but no one ever came.

“DON’T YOU TOUCH HER!”

THUD

THUD

THUD

Dale was trying to break down the bathroom door.

“Dale, no!” I cried, shrinking against the wall as my stepfather grabbed me by the hair. “Stop! Just stop!”

“Pete…” My mother’s voice, choked, from the floor of their room where she was cradling her busted cheek with her hand. “Don’t…please…”

“Shut up!” He pointed at her, his eyes wild with rage as he slammed my head against the hallway wall again and again, using it as a weapon while he lectured her, until I saw stars. “This little whore needs to be taught a goddamned lesson!”

THUD

THUD

THUD

“GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER!” Dale roared.

The stepbeast ignored the caged tiger in the bathroom, turning his attention to me, his face skewed into a twisted smile as he lifted my face.

“Nice.” He rubbed his thumb through the blood dripping down my chin. “That will make for some good lubrication while you’re sucking my dick, you little whore.”

There was a sound from the bathroom like an oncoming train or a tornado or something even more dangerous. It was an inhuman sound, something from the bowels of the earth, like a demon breaking through to the other side of the world.

THUD

THUD

CRACK!

I heard the door frame giving way, the wood splintering, but I knew it was too late.

I looked up at my stepfather, spitting blood at his face, screaming the words.

“GO TO HELL!”

I knew I was signing my own death warrant, and for once, I really didn’t care. His eyes told me everything I needed to know. This man hated me and was going to kill me. It might be now, it might be someday soon, but it was only a matter of time.

That was when he hit me. His fist connected with my face and my whole cheek lit up. It felt as if the side of my head had exploded. He’d never hit me with a closed fist before, and I had time to marvel at it before he did it again… and again, driving me back into my room. I covered my face with my hands, curling into a ball on the bed, and waited to die.

My mother, screaming, “Stop! Pete, stop it! You’re going to kill her!” was the last thing I heard before everything faded into blackness.

“Your mother called the police?” Aimee squawked.

“Mmm hmm.” I tried to open my eyes again to look at her, but it was just too painful. I could hardly talk, everything felt so swollen.

“But they arrested them both?”

“Water?” It came out “wa-ar” because my consonants still weren’t so great yet. Aimee lifted the cup to my mouth and I sucked on the straw, wincing at the pain—and they had me drugged up pretty good.

“They took them both to jail to sort it out.” John’s voice. I smiled, and that was painful too, but I didn’t care, holding out my hand. I felt his touch, soft and warm, his hand patting mine gently. “They’d both been fighting, and Sara and her mother were passed out cold by then.”

The stepbeast had knocked her out too—that had been her punishment for making the 911 call.

“But Dale’s out now?”

“They kept them overnight and arraigned them, but by that time, Sara’s mom was awake and I had her file a restraining order and make a report with the police, so they let Dale go.”

“Thank God,” Aimee breathed a sigh of relief. “And your dad? They’re keeping him?”

“Until the trial,” John confirmed and I gave a thumbs up with the hand he wasn’t holding. “The prosecutor decided on assault and battery against Sara’s mother, but…”

John’s voice trailed off. I heard him whispering to Aimee, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying. I tried to wave, to get their attention, but my limbs felt so heavy.

“In Sara’s case, they’re looking at attempted murder, since he stabbed her,” John explained.

“He stabbed you?” Aimee gasped.

I just nodded. I couldn’t move the blankets to show her the wound, but I’d had a six inch splintered piece of wood buried in my side. He’d driven it into me, using his fist as a hammer, like a railroad spike.

“Oh Sara. Oh my God. Are you okay? Is she okay?” It was Matt.

“She’s gonna be just fine now, aren’t you, sweetheart?” John, patting my hand again.

I nodded. “Water?”

Someone put the straw to my lips and I sucked gratefully, even if it was painful.

“Listen, I’ll bring your homework from the academy,” Aimee said from the other side of me. She sniffed, like she’d been crying. “We’re not messing up again this year. We’re both going to graduate, you got it?”

I gave her a thumbs up, trying to smile.

“You just get better, okay?” Matt again. Jeez, it sounded like he was crying too. “Too many people spending time in this damned hospital lately.”

“Tired,” I said. The pain was getting better, the morphine the nurse had put into my I.V. line a few minutes ago finally beginning to work.

“Go to sleep, sweetheart.” I felt John’s lips brush the top of my head.

I tried to give him another thumbs up but I was gone again before I could even lift my hand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I woke up screaming and Dale was there, wrapping his arms around me in the suffocating darkness and whispering in my ear. The words didn’t matter, it was his voice, soft and soothing, the feel of his hand on my forehead, stroking my hair.

“Is she okay?” John, stumbling sleepily down the hall, peeking into Dale’s room.

“Fine, Dad, just another bad dream,” he murmured, kissing my cheek, still bruised as a Canadian sunrise, fading to yellow, orange and the lightest of blues.

“G’nite, John,” I called as he closed the door.

“Goodnight, hon. Sweet dreams.”

As long as Dale had his arms around me, as long as he was touching me, I could sleep peacefully, but the moment he was gone, my body slipped into a panic.

“Will you sing to me?” I whispered, pulling his arm around me. “Sing me to sleep.”

Dale did, singing a song he wrote for me, the words meaning even more now that he’d broken down the door and come to my rescue like a knight in shining armor, and I closed my eyes, no longer afraid of the darkness or my dreams. He always made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

“There’s nothin’ more that I can do

There’s nothin’ more that I can say

With your wall of thorns you have barred my way

But I will always come for you

My task is set before me, girl

My mission clear and true

There’ll be black knights and dragons, girl

But I will always come for you…”

I floated in his arms, trying not to think about anything but the man who loved me. Usually it worked, and his voice would lull me back to sleep in his strong embrace, but sometimes I couldn’t turn off my mind and the wheel would turn and turn. I would replay it all in my head and then the tape would continue into every possible future, splitting this way and that, spliced again and again.

John and Dale and Aimee and even the prosecutor, who I’d met with twice, reassured me my stepfather wouldn’t ever have the opportunity to hurt me again. I gave them my Dear Rockstar journals, all of them detailed accounts of what had happened since I was fourteen years old, enough evidence, the prosecutor seemed to think, to put my stepfather away at least for life. New Jersey had the death penalty, and with attempted murder on the list of crimes he was being charged with, it was possible they would sentence him to death.

Not that anything would bring my mother back.

They hadn’t told me for three weeks, until I was out of the hospital and settled. John and Dale had moved all my stuff, my clothes and art supplies, into Dale’s room. I’d asked about my mother—she hadn’t come to see me, and when I’d asked, John mentioned something about a women’s shelter, but when I got home, Dale sat me down on his bed and had finally told me the truth.

I wanted to go see the apartment, even though it was still a crime scene and we weren’t supposed to. I still had a key and I told him I would go myself if he didn’t come with me, so Dale had walked me down the stairs. There was yellow crime tape over the door. Inside, everything was still the same. It smelled like stale cigarettes and beer and the heavy, coppery odor of blood.

The bathroom door still hung off its hinges. My door was open, but theirs was closed. I didn’t open it—she had used my stepfather’s nine millimeter Glock, the one he had held to my head the first time he raped me when I was just fifteen. I don’t know when she discovered it, but she knew, long before I told her. And she pretended not to know, pretended it wasn’t happening, even after that.