Chapter 2
Gabby's POV***
I continue to run away from that creep from group, the pavement stabbing through the thin soles of my too small sneakers and into my skin. Luckily, I have lots of experience running so I am quite fast. I continue walking until a black undercover police car pulls up behind me, and the girl, Callie, hops out of the passenger seat. Great.
"What do you want?" I ask her, slowly walking backwards, for some reason this girl scares me.
"I'm just here to give you a ride home. Tijuana is like five miles from here, my brother can drive you home," she says with a small smile.
"I told you I was fine. Leave me alone."
"I just want to drive you home, Gabby."
"Don't you know that's how people get kidnapped?"
"Come on Gabby, just let me drive you home." She glances down at her watch again, a look of fear clouds her eyes again.
"I have to go." She says quickly, and takes off down the street.
By the time I got home, my feet were bleeding and my heart was pounding out of my chest. I silently open the door, hoping that Vince was still in his hangover from last night. When I walk in, the familiar smell of alcohol and smoke hit me like a brick wall. Silently, I creep over to the stairs, trying not wake my foster father wherever he was. As I reach the top of the stairs and turn left toward my small, walk in closet sized room, a hand grips my ratty hair and yanks it back, I yelp out in pain, each little strand of hair ripping from my scalp as Vince yanks back harder.
"Where the hell have you been?" he growls, his alcohol breath suffocating me as I struggle to make him loosen his grip on my hair.
"I had group, I told you before I left!" I scream at him, tears starting to run down my face.
"You didn't tell me nothin' you pathetic little brat!"
I start feeling blood run down my head where the hair is being ripped out. My brother, Aaron told me never to beg for mercy, that begging was a weakness- but ever since what happened, I can't help it. "Please! Just leave me alone!" I plead, trying to hold back cries of pain.
To my surprise, Vince releases my hair, "Sure, anything for you sweetie," he smiles at my slyly, I start to walk back to my room when Vince kicks me sharply in the back.
"AH!" I scream in agony as I land on my wrist. I roll onto my stomach as Vince brings his foot down powerfully grinds his steel toed boot into my face.
"Next time you leave this house without permission, there will be hell to pay." He whispers into my ear, I whimper, curling into a ball, and cry myself to sleep.
Callie's POV***
"Callie, it's not your fault," Brandon consoles me in the car when we pull up to the house.
"Yes it is, I shouldn't have let her go home."
"There is nothing you could've done, Cal."
"Yes there was! I could've made her get into the car with me!"
"And what good would that have done?"
"Her being safe!"
"Safe from what?!" I suddenly realize that he had no clue why I was freaking out.
"Mom didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what? All she said that I had to drive you and a friend someplace."
"She was a girl from group. When a foster kid has to get home that fast, it usually doesn't end well."
