"Where've you been?" was the first question out of Nadia Andrews' mouth as Charity walked in. She was down on all fours searching for something under the sofa.
"I was over at a friend's," Charity replied. She had stopped at one point and put pressure on the newest cut until it stopped bleeding and her arm was sticky and the blood had ran down to her palm. She tightened it to shield it from her mother. Not like she'd care anyway.
"Where are my cigarettes?" Nadia asked.
"I don't know," Charity replied.
Nadia looked at her. "You took them," she said, her eyes accusing.
Charity looked at her. She shook her head. "I did not!" she said.
Nadia stood up and grabbed Charity's wrist, almost cutting off the circulation. "You took them. WHERE ARE THEY?"
"I don't know," she whispered. "I don't have them." Tears sprang into her brown eyes but she blinked them back. If her mother was going to hit her again crying would only make everything worse.
Nadia slapped Charity across the face. "I know you have them!" she yelled. "Where are they?" She started searching Charity's pockets.
Charity pulled her mother's hand out of her back pocket. "I don't have your damn cigarettes!" she said. She looked at the table an empty carton of empty cigarette packets were on the table. "You smoked them all."
Nadia shook her head. "You have them."
Charity also realized that there was also an empty bottle of vodka on its side and a plastic bag on the table. Charity knew that Nadia's dealer had been there.
"I don't have them, Mom," she said.
Nadia pushed Charity down onto the floor and she fell on a shoe, which was unusual since Nadia never got out of the house to need them and the only shoes she had owned were on her feet at that moment. Nadia kicked Charity in the side. "Get up!" she yelled. "Get up and give me my cigarettes!"
"I don't have them!" she repeated for the millionth time. Charity guessed that she might as well have it tattooed on her forehead because she had been saying that same thing over and over since Nadia started accusing her when she was nine. Her father had left them and went back to his ex-wife, Nadia and Branson Andrews weren't married so he didn't feel tied down to them. But Charity wished that he had taken her with him. But Nadia hadn't always been like this.
Nadia picked Charity up and slammed her into the wall of their trailer. "Go buy some more!" she said.
"I'm only fifteen," Charity replied. "I can't."
Nadia slapped Charity across the face. "I don't care," she said. "You know, Charity, I wouldn't have to do this to you if you hadn't taken my cigarettes."
"But I didn't take them," Charity yelled.
Nadia punched her. "Don't take that tone of voice with me young lady," she replied.
Charity shook her head and pushed past her mother and ran to her bedroom, triple locking the door. Nadia pounded hard on the door. Charity's messenger bag was hanging on her shoulder. She pulled it off and crawled over to her stereo, the only thing she treasured most after the acoustic guitar she had gotten one Christmas when she was eight, before her dad left. She pulled her CD player out of her backpack and touched the button that opened it. She put the Linkin Park CD in it and turned it over to her favorite song, Numb and used them as protection. She always used music to protect her from everything, from her mother to the outside world around the trailer park.
Charity doubled over and started crying.