I knew that my father would be angry. He always was after I'd run away from home. He said that I was too ungrateful for my own good, and that someday I'd pay the price. But I never listened to him. It was hard to tell when he was really himself to tell the truth. Half the time he was drunk, and even when he wasn't, he still had no idea what he was talking about. It was never a good time for him. He was always going off at one person or another.
But that was why Mum had left. Left Tracy and I alone with The Monster. Even now, two years after she had walked out on us, I was only seven years old. I was still a young child, yet I was being forced to play the parent role for my even younger sister. My life really sucked.
So I would run away. It was the only way I knew how to escape the violence that had ruled my life since the moment I was born. Born to parents who had never wanted a child. That was why my father had called me Nobody. That was my official name. It was on my birth certificate and everything. Nobody Hertwith. Simple and plain as that. I had never tolls anyone my real name before. It broke my heart to say it aloud. So instead, I called myself Zero. After all, nobody meant nothing, and nothing was zero. I was Nobody. I was Nothing. I was Zero.
I always tried to sneak into the house without my father noticing. But even in his more intoxicated periods, my father would always hear me. Then he would hit me 'till I bled, and showered me with insults until my heart broke.
Tonight was no different to any other night.
"So, miss good for nothing Nobody, fancied a late night stroll?" my father's huge body sneered down upon me. His red face and the smell of beer on his breath told me that he'd been drinking again.
"Leave me alone!" I yelled at him, trying to work up some false courage that we both knew that I didn't have. He merely laughed and stepped to the side, revealing the body of my younger sister, lying on the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that she was breathing shallowly.
"You monster," I whispered to my father. I darted around him picked up Tracy from the floor and ran out the door.
The only place I could think to go was the hospital. I knew Tracy would be safe there, and that they would make her better. I laid her down on the footpath and wrote her a note. I hastily described everything that had happened, and gave her my mobile number so that she could contact me when she was well again. I knew that, being only three years old, she would not be able to understand, but I had hoped she would read the letter when she was older.
I left her with the note just inside the emergency department. I hoped that they would notice her soon and that she would be okay. As I walked away from the hospital, I knew that my sister and I had parted ways.
The final question was where I was going to live. I had nowhere to go. I was just a lonely six-year-old with a broken heart and a lost dream. I knew that their were only two places left in the world where I could possibly go- back home to my dad's, or all the way to my mum's house.