Chapter 4 - Shock

We didn't go inside right away. I sat beside Ian on the front steps, a cigarette trembling in my fingers as I took in my surroundings. I knew the neighborhood. We weren't exceptionally far from Iggy's side of town. I'd been down the street a couple times since moving back to Chicago, but never really bothered to take in the houses, the various faces that passed. I knew Kev and V lived two houses down, having been patched up by V a handful of times when I was trying to avoid the state. Such was doomed to happen when you're fucking around with the likes of the Milkovich clan. She was more reasonable than handing a couple grand over to the ER for the same treatment.

Ian seemed to sense that I was not in the mood to talk, because he didn't say anything for a long time. So long that by the time I looked up from the spot across the street that I had spaced out on, my fingers felt like ice cubes. I quickly twisted them into my sleeves to keep them from trembling from the icy chill that had set in.

"We can go inside, whenever you're ready," he said softly, catching my movements from the corner of his eye. "It's freezing out here."
"I…" I couldn't find words. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Monica, our mother, couldn't have been bothered to ever look for me. I couldn't understand why I had to be child she chose to give away. Sure, she abandoned all of her kids, but she loved them enough to keep them together. Why was I any different? Why did I get tossed aside like yesterday's trash?
"Hey," Ian tilted my head so I was looking at him. For a moment, I didn't understand his actions, but then I realized that tears were falling from my eyes again. I blinked them away and nodded hesitantly. My broken hand hurt from how cold it was outside.

Once inside, Ian offered to loan me something clean so I could wash the dirt and the night before away. I nodded, not really saying anything, as he ran upstairs to find me a clean towel and something to change into. When he returned, he found me studying the family photo that was hung on the far wall. All six kids were in the picture. Fiona was in the middle, a huge smile on her face. From how young everyone looked, I could tell the photo was taken shortly after Liam was born.

"He's black," I said softly, tracing my fingers over the youngest child's peaceful face in the picture. "Monica's too?"
"And Frank's," Ian said softly. "Guess we have all kinds of genes mixed in us."
"Huh," I murmured. Everyone looked so happy in the photo, like they were truly loved and cared for, despite knowing what I did, they all looked so happy.

I turned away from the photo as memories of my own childhood flooded me. I nodded my thanks as Ian pointed the way to the bathroom, handing me the bundle of clothes in the process. I dropped my bag at the foot of the stairs, only stopping long enough to retrieve the essentials. It'd been a week since I showered, since I tried to avoid Iggy more than usual once I got released from jail. I only stopped by when I knew he wasn't in a mood, and only ever stayed long enough to shower and swap out my clothes. He still had what little I owned in his closet.

I studied myself in the mirror as soon as I locked the door behind me, my eyes tracing my tired, worn features. I looked a lot older than eighteen. My greenish eyes were dim, the usual lust for life long since lost. My red hair looked awful, greasy and matted in places, thanks to the thick curls that hadn't been untangled in days. I noticed that despite my best efforts, I had lost a lot of weight since leaving jail, my collar bone now visible where once it wasn't. I sighed heavily and set to untangling the worse of the curls before adjusting the water to an appropriate temperature.

It didn't take long to wash the dirt and grime from my skin, my fingers working the knots from my hair as I let the warm water ease the tension in my shoulders and back. I felt like crap, but I knew that was all part of getting sober – I'd gone through similar whenever they switched my meds. After I was sure I was clean, I turned the water off, though I made no move to leave the steamy shower. Instead, I slowly sat down, letting the steamy air surround me in a foggy haze. I closed my eyes, tears silently falling as I found myself slipping back into the darkness, the dark memories of my past filling my mind.

"You were so colicky as a baby, you cried for hours and hours and never stopped," Angela, my foster mother, said tiredly. "You were such an angry baby, Billy and I considered sending you away so many times, but we never wanted to give up on you, no matter how tiresome it was.

We were sitting in the living room, a huge box of photos spread out around us. We were looking at my baby pictures.

"Even when you got older, you were a terror," she said softly. I was just shy of 6. "You constantly hit, bit, screamed…you ruined Billy's best guitar, he was furious.
"I remember," I said softly, sad tears rolling down my cheeks. "He hit me for it."
"You're right," she nodded, her thin lips pressed into a thin line. "You deserved it. That guitar was worth so much money, you can't even begin to understand it."
"I was three…" I mused.
"You deserved it, Gracelyn Nikole, no matter what you think," she said sternly. I shrank back. She was right.
"I'm sorry," I said softly.
"No you aren't," she said, her tone calm. "You're never sorry."

I didn't have words for that…I wasn't old enough to understand that that was the start of a downhill spiral.

I was seven the first time they sent me back to my case worker, tired of my outbursts and inability to stay out of trouble. After working hard to sway them, they took me back for a short time, but things were different. Billy had become so used to my temper, that whenever he even thought I was considering doing something foolish, he would grab me by my hair and throw me down the basement stairs, locking me there for hours at a time. Angela made no moves to help me. This continued until I finally lost my shit at school, beat the shit out of a kid who insisted on calling me Orphan Annie, and got charged with assault at the lovely age of ten.

After a six month stint in Cook County Juvenile Detention Center, I was sent to a group home until I was 12, before I was fostered by the Andersons…

"You will do as I say, when I say it, do you understand?" Timothy Anderson, a burly, drunk man with a temper worse than mine would growl on a daily basis. He nor his wife, Jasmine, cared that I was resenting them for moving me almost two hours away from Chicago, to a place even worse than the darkest corners of Canaryville. Rockford was terrifying and quickly, it turned me hard. I learned to fight, to defend myself, and to run with the wrong crowd, which often landed me in the local jail.

"I swear to god, don't you appreciate anything we've done for you?" Jasmine screamed after she picked me up at the station for the hundredth time. I was fourteen and running out of chances. This time the charges were for petty larceny and underage drinking.

"It's not like you care," I scoffed as I walked up to her car. "You're only in it for the check."
"No one wants you, you sorry, ungrateful brat! No wonder Timmy beats the fuck out of you, maybe he can scare you straight!" She growled. She shoved me into the car, her hands coming up to my throat. "You're lucky we need the money, otherwise I'd fucking kill you myself."
"No you wouldn't," I growled. "You'd have that sorry excuse of a son do it for you." That earned me a swift slap to the mouth and a long walk home.

"Gracelyn, your options are group or back in Juvie, you know this," Gloria, my caseworker, explains as she looked over my file. "Your foster family is concerned after your recent…um, escapade," she continued.
"Your point?" I scoffed. I was nursing a broken arm and two black eyes. I may or may not had instigated a fight outside of O'Krafty's, a run down, hole in the wall bar known for serving underage drinkers.
"You already know they want to send you back, Gracelyn, c'mon, give me something here," she sighed. "You're failing in school, your record is longer than anyone I've ever had to place before…are you trying to get thrown in the home? You know what that's like," she said softly. "Your pediatrician thinks you need to be evaluated."
"For what?" I growled. I wasn't in the mood for any of this.
"Well for starters, to see where you are, mentally speaking. You're smart. You used to pull straight A's, then you started getting into fights, now you're risking real time, Grace. You're almost fifteen, if you keep going at this rate, you'll be serving a life sentence before you even age out."
"What do you mean by mentally?" I growled. Anger bubbled in my chest.
"Angela mentioned that you've been all over the place. If you aren't angry and running off somewhere, you're locked in your room and won't come out for days, these are serious observations, Grace," she said softly. She was a nice enough woman, when she wasn't chastising me for my life choices.
"What are you getting at?" I was growing tired of the conversation.
"I can keep you out of Juvie, if you let us put you on 72 hour hold. They'll evaluate you and figure out the best course of action from there," she said, her tone suddenly stern.
"The crazy house? No fucking way!"
"Grace, it's your best shot. You're looking at some serious time this time," she said softly. "You nearly killed that girl. And for what? Because she said something you didn't like? Grace, I know you, I've been here since day one, you need to listen to me, something isn't right…."

72 hours later, I was leaving the psych ward with a new diagnosis, a slew of medications, and a very foggy, obedient mind.

And that was when life decided to fuck me over all over again.

I could feel my entire body trembling as I tried to rise to my feet to no avail. I knew I had to get dressed and compose myself. I wasn't somewhere I was familiar with, I was with people I had only met the day prior, I wasn't safe. My anxiety crept up on me, causing my hands to tremble even worse.

On the other side of the door, I could hear someone calling my name, loud thuds beating on the door, but my mind didn't make head or tail of why or what was happening.

Suddenly, I felt the heat of rage flow through my veins. I rose quickly, the towel barely wrapped around me as I looked in the mirror. I could feel my blood boiling, my heart racing in my chest. Without thinking, my fist came up, connecting with the mirror. Between the shattering of the glass and the sting as it tore into my already broken hand, my senses returned to normal, my breathing slowly settling, the ugly cloud of darkness seeming to lift.

"Grace!" Ian's panicked voice screamed through the door now. A moment later, I could hear a new voice and a new set of concerned taps on the door.
"Grace, c'mon, open up," a woman's voice begged. I looked at the damage I had done before slowly inching towards the door, a downcast look on my face as I met two pairs of concerned eyes.

"Jesus, what happened?" Fiona asked, stepping into the bathroom, making quick work of the broken glass on the floor. "Ian, get her hand, she's bleeding all over the damn place."

After several long, trying minutes, Ian managed to patch up my hand as best he could, though he kept trying to insist that I go to the ER both for stitches, and to have my hand x-rayed. I turned him down until he finally let it go, realizing that there was no winning the argument. Now fully clothed and seated in the kitchen, I tried to find words, but my voice didn't want to work.

"What happened?" Fiona tried for the hundredth time. "Ian said you were in there for so long, he thought you passed out or something," she went on. "You scared him pretty bad."

As much as I wanted to open up to her, I couldn't. My mind was fogged and the pain in my hand was increasing with every passing moment. I considered listening to Ian and getting it checked out, but I knew then I'd have to explain what happened and while no one was the victim of my rage, it could still look bad if my PO caught wind of it. Besides, I didn't have money for gas, much less for another emergency room bill.

"Hey? Grace, you good?" Fiona asked, lightly touching my uninjured hand. I flinched back from her touch, feeling cornered all of a sudden. Fiona's brow furrowed as she studied me, her eyes taking in my features. "It's okay," Fiona said softly, reaching to take my hand again. Suddenly, my vision blurred as I pushed away from the table, my hands beginning to tremble. "Ian," I vaguely heard Fiona call out. I turned towards the door, feeling like a caged animal, my mind racing.

I was about to pull open the door when a strong set of hands came down on my shoulders, not in a violent way, with just enough force to keep me grounded.

"Gracie," Ian's voice came softly, his breath in my ears. "C'mon, you're safe here." I looked up at the brother, the twin brother, I never knew I had, trying to find comfort in his words, but I couldn't. I suddenly thought back to the first guy I had sex with, and how this situation, all of it, made me feel the same. Naked, vulnerable, and feeling anything but safe.

"I can't believe I was your first," he breathed heavily, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he reached out and grabbed his pack of cigarettes off the nightstand. He lit one, before offering me one, something I'd not been expecting. I took it, my fingers trembling. I sat up, pulling the thin sheet tightly around my body, aware that his eyes were still tracing my bare skin.
"You fuck like a girl," I muttered drying, earning a soft chuckle from the gruff, bitter man besides me.
"You would know, huh?" he teased. I glared at him, wondering why in the world I had agreed to sleep with him. "You used me just as much as I used you," he reminded me. He wasn't wrong. I was trying to get back at his brother for cheating on me just because I wouldn't put out. I sighed and raked my hands through my hair, trying to untangle the mess of ginger locks that had become an even more tangled mess.
"You sure I was your first?" he asked again, his eyebrows quirking, as if he thought I made the whole thing up.
"Yes, you fucking asshat," I spat angrily. I rose then, quickly pulling on my clothes, refusing to look at him.
"Shit, sorry," he mumbled. He wasn't used to girls reacting like that. Shit, he wasn't used to whoring around with his brother's girlfriends either. It definitely didn't help that she was what, fourteen? His brother shouldn't have been fucking around with her anyway. He was too old for her. Yet somehow those two ended up together. He, on the other hand, was too old for her too, but only by a couple years, not by half a decade gap. Sure, his brother was a fucking moron with the IQ of a squirrel, but that didn't make it right. He was 21 and definitely shouldn't have been fucking around with a damn kid.
"Fuck you," she scoffed. She grabbed her bag and shook her head. He could see she was hurting. She was a damn foster kid, always being bounced around. Somehow his sister found her one day and brought her home like a stray dog. Ever since, she came around whenever she got tossed from one home to the next. That was how she got involved with their messed up family in the first place. All those thoughts ran through his mind as he watched her leave.

"You fucked my brother?" he growled, slamming her against the wall. "You fucking dirty as skank!"
"Back off," I growled, shoving him back, completely unaware that he was nearly double my size. "You fucking cheated on me!"
"You wouldn't fuck me, swore up and down you were a fucking virgin, then you turn around and fuck my brother? You fucking slut! Get the fuck out of here!" he pushed me again, his eyes ablaze with anger.
"C'mon…don't be like this," I begged. I didn't want to go back to my foster home. The bus ride there would be tiring enough, much less than punishment I was sure to be dealt once I came back. Running away wasn't something Timothy and Jasmine took lightly.
"Get. The. Fuck. Out!" he screamed. I knew better than to fight with him when he was like this. As I stepped out onto the rickety porch, I could see his brother watching me from the living room, a troubled expression on his face.

"I'm gonna teach you what happens when ignorant, bitchy little girls run away," Timothy growled, his hands tightening their grip around my shoulders. I didn't fight him. There was no point. With a swift kick to the back of my knees and a calculated shove, I landed painfully on the bathroom floor, my head connecting with the porcelain tub with a soft thud. I saw stars as he hauled me up again, this time by my hair. Another blow, this time my vision went dark. I welcomed the silence. It made everything feel safe.

I couldn't move. Ian's grip on my shoulders, though gentle, kept me frozen in place, my heart racing in my chest. I felt my hands ball into fists against my control and in one swift movement, before my brain could register what was happening, I punched him square in the nose.

I heard the bone crack as his hands dropped to his side, his face pinched with pain and desperation. I didn't hesitate a second time. I ripped open the door, ignoring Fiona's panicked cries as I took off running, with no particular destination in mind.

I ran until my heart felt like it was going to explode, my vision blurring from the adrenaline that coursed through my veins. I doubled over, coughing painfully, the cold air making it even harder to breathe.

"Grace? Jesus Christ, what did you do?" a voice called out behind her. I spun around, unaware that I was standing outside of Brad's motorcycle repair shop. I vaguely registered Lip walking towards me, whipping his hands on a dirty rag, his face twisting with worry. "Grace?"

I felt my body sway, the weight of the day finally winning out. I tried to brace myself as my knees gave way, but it was futile. Before I could react, I felt myself fall, before the darkness took over, allowing my mind the moments it needed for the shock to wear off.