Chapter Four

The next few days were a haze to Raven Roth. Each night she would arrive home to find that her house was empty, a phenomenon that concerned her more than her father actually being present. The emptiness of the house was disquieting, and she always found herself looking over her shoulder, expecting every shadow to strike her, every movement to bring her an unreasonable amount of pain. She moved from room to room like a sullen ghost, keeping the door to her room shut at all times.

That Friday, her fears were realized. The girl lay sleeping on her bed, her face buried in her calculus book where she'd fallen asleep studying, when a horrible voice hissed in her ear the words "Get up."

Raven bolted upright only to find her father standing there looking at her with the usual hatred in his face, a paper in his hand. "Do you know what I found in my mailbox this morning?" He asked her. The smell coming off him was a dangerous mix of gin and some form of tonic, the smell of bars and desolate hotel rooms. Mentally, she cringed; last time he'd been gone for days on a drinking binge, she had not been able to make it to school the next day. She felt her eyes widen against her will.

"Answer me," hissed the Monster.

"I don't, sir."

"College applications. About eighteen of them." He reached into the pocket of his horribly matted jeans and produced a wad of mail, brightly colored envelopes that seemed to shimmer in the distinctly low light from Raven's desk lamp. "Why the hell would you be receiving college applications, eh?"

"They just send them to students," she whispered weakly. The truth was that she had requested every single one of those applications; she had been intending to fill them out and mail them without her father's knowledge.

"So you have no interest in them?" He asked, his breath smelling faintly as he leaned down to be on her level, his horrible eyes glaring into hers. "You are sure you know where your place is?"

Raven longed to speak. A thousand words fluttered about in her brain, all of them clamoring to escape. Part of her wanted to demand the letters, part of her wanted to defy his wishes, and part of her wanted to run. She could tell that no matter what her answer was, this was going to end in pain. Instead, although it ate at the feeling of freedom inside of her, she nodded and braced herself for the blow.

He struck her and she fell, a crumpled heap, on the floor. She did not resist. Nothing seemed worth resisting for. The Monster stood over her with a look of disgust on his face, looking down at her tiny form as it was tangled in the sheets.

"I will personally make sure," he hissed terribly at her, "That if you ever try to leave the way she did, I'll break you the same way I broke her."

Raven nodded as the blood began to gush from her cheek from the fall. The Monster turned to leave, and every muscle in her body seized up with a terrible pain, a sort of realization that shook her to her core: He was trying to take away her escape. As he walked away from her, still grumbling about her worthlessness, she felt the tears start to well up as she realized how badly she needed that escape. Seventeen years into her life, she was beginning to crack.

It hurt to breathe.

For some reason, her mind flashed back to school that day...

"Raven?" Garfield asked her, sitting across from her at the lunch table. It had been days since he asked about the back of her hand. "Where's your lunch?"

Her stomach fluttered in an annoying way. Lately, that flutter had been ever-present when he spoke to her. Part of it was nerves, which coursed through her at the thought that he might have realized something was going on, but for the most part it seemed to just be Beast Boy; he was, after all, a caring soul in his own warped little way, she reasoned.

"Forgot it," she said in a loose voice, pretending to stare at her physics notebook.

"Can I get you something?" He asked inquisitively, looking at her over the top of her book while making a horrific face. She wanted to laugh at him, but bit her tongue and instead grimaced. Everyone else was watching the exchange between the two with interest and curiosity; they rarely spoke only directly to each other. Victor's face appeared knowing, but Raven assumed she could have imagined it. Lately she seemed to have a growing paranoia that any one of her friends could catch on to the hell she lived in.

She refused to put them through that, and the thought hardened her.

"No," she said flatly, with the same irritated tone.

"I just worry about you," Garfield said suddenly, causing everyone else to turn to the pair of them and watch in quizzical interest. "You never eat, you never smile, and you've been acting all weird since this year started."

"I have not," she replied defensively. "Anyway, aren't you supposed to be studying for the physics test so you don't fail?"

Beast Boy's eyes widened in panic and he fished his book from his bag, the moment forgotten. Raven sighed and ignored it too.

All at once, Raven realized the pieces of her life were cracking. Her friends were on the verge of finding out that something was wrong with her, her father was purposely destroying her future, and lately, she'd been unable to find any kind of reason to get out of bed.

Things looked hopeless.

For some reason, then, Garfield floated into her mind, accompanied by a single thought:

Maybe this isn't so hopeless after all.

She picked herself up off the floor, then, and dusted her jeans off. She suddenly remembered; tomorrow was the day she was supposed to meet Kori for coffee and English homework. Sighing, wondering how she was going to slip away from The Monster, she stretched out, feeling that every inch of her body was bruised.

Garfield was driven from her mind, then, but it would not be long before he drifted back in; quite possibly, next time, in a bigger way.