Thanks SOOO MUCH!! for the reviews :P
I guess it starts getting a bit more evil here... Please don't kill me (especially since it'll only get worse)!!
Well... ENJOY!!
Chapter 6 – Scars
"So does anyone know the formula for respiration?" Abby was sitting in the back of the biology room. Her first class of the day. She was scribbling down weird patterns on the front of her notebook and not really paying attention. She hadn't slept at all last night and had been dead tired all day. Richard had made her stay at the factory till the middle of the night, where after he had made her clean the apartment since Maggie had left again and of course led out some of his anger on her, making her do things she did not want to think about. She could still feel the pain of the glowing cigarette burning against the skin on the small of her back and her shoulder blade.
"Miss Wyczenski!" Abby's head snapped up as the teacher hit her table with a stick. "Since you're too busy to listen, maybe you should teach the class. Now what's the respiration equation?" Abby bit her lower lip for a few seconds.
"C6H12O6 + 6 O2 → 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + Energy." When no one said anything she looked up to see the teacher looking at her amazed, along with the entire room staring at her.
"Where did you learn that? We haven't gone over that yet!" Abby shrugged her shoulders and looked at her table. "You know, Abby, you should be more active in class. Or at least pretend to be awake. It's not like you don't know your stuff." She went back to the blackboard and started rambling about respiration and photosynthesis, and Abby went back to drawing weird figures and trying not to fall asleep. She still had an entire day in front of her.
Abby walked into her world history class a couple of minutes early. She sat down on a chair in the back corner and dropped her head on her arms, crossed in front of her on the table. Maybe she could get like 1 minute of sleep.
"Mad, tired or just hating the world?" She took a deep breath and waited a few seconds before she turned her head, not even bothering to sit up.
"Kind of a mix." She closed her eyes and slowly sat up, yawning as she stretched her arms.
"I'll go with tired then." He put on one of his killer smiles as he sat down next to her. Normally she wouldn't have been able to resist smiling, but today she was simply just too tired. "Couldn't sleep?" Abby shrugged her shoulders, not knowing what to say. She couldn't really tell him the truth and her mind wasn't working well enough to come up with a good excuse. Luka opened his mouth say something, but was interrupted by the teacher entering the room. She sighed and turned to the blackboard, happy to not having to explain anything to Luka.
She blinked a few times before opening her eyes, trying to adjust to light coming from big screen. Neela stopped shaking her as she sat up, rubbing her eyes.
"Sorry. You fell asleep." Abby looked at the girl sitting next to her and nodded. Neela was nice. She was one of the only people who didn't hate her and she never made fun of her or 'bullied' her. She actually even spoke to her sometimes, voluntarily, and Abby had even been to her house once in 5th grade when they did an English project together. Neela was the school nerd though. She was still only a freshman like Abby, but half of her classes were junior classes, and she was definitely going to graduate early.
"Thank you." They were watching some boring movie in English that Abby didn't even know the title of. The teacher was one of those people who didn't notice anything, so she probably would have been able to get away with sleeping. But they were going to have a test on the movie the day after, and she couldn't afford any more bad grades.
It wasn't that she wasn't smart. She was! She was taking algebra 2 which was a sophomore or higher class. But she never had time to study or do her homework, and she was often missing school because of Richard. But she still managed to keep okay grades.
"You didn't miss much though. Just the two main characters kissing." Abby just replied with a smile and looked at the screen, amazed that the entire class wasn't asleep by now.
Making sure no one were looking at her, she carefully rolled up her sleeve and studied her developing scar. No, it wasn't self-inflicted. Richard had made a 3 inch long cut on her lower right arm with his sharp, cracked nail the weekend before. He had blamed her for it breaking, since it happened while he was trying to tie her up. He really enjoyed humiliating her, so he thought it could be fun to tie her to a pole, naked, in a private room at his factory, while he raped her. She had been half fighting him though, which she apparently shouldn't have done. It had only resulted in him beating her way more than usual and even bringing in some of the other workers. He had never let them touch her, or at least not in that way, but they all knew what he did to her. He was usually bragging about it, so it had probably only turned him on to actually let them watch him doing it.
Abby sighed and closed her eyes. She carefully pushed her sleeve back down and put her thumb through the hole so that her scars and bruises wouldn't be revealed.
Things had gotten worse lately. Or well, Richard had. He made her life a living hell. Maggie's bipolar disorder was getting worse, which caused her to run away more often and she almost always locked herself in her room when she was finally home. Besides from the fact that this made Richard angrier, he also got drunk more often and his business wasn't going as well as usual. And of course all of this backfired at Abby. She couldn't remember when the last time was she went more than four days without being used as an object at which people could release their aggravations on. Or since this was Richard, his 'needs' and 'wants'.
And it was getting hard to handle. Both physically and emotionally. She tried not to let it get to her though, telling herself that she was used to it. And she was. Just not to this extent.
It had been forever since she had cried. She had stopped that a long time ago when she figured out that it didn't help anything, but instead only made it worse. But yesterday she had. She had cried. In front of Richard. She still wasn't sure if it had made him angrier or if he had enjoyed the fact that he had broken her. But one thing she knew for sure was that it killed her on the inside to know that he had. That he had in fact broken her. She had promised herself that she would never let that happen, but she had failed.
She sighed and leaned back in her chair to watch the rest of the movie. Maybe if she really concentrated on it she would be able to shut out all her thoughts and worries and only just watch this stupid movie.
"Hey Abby!" She stopped and turned around to see Luka running after her.
"I thought you were going to work." Luka shrugged.
"I am, but I was gonna ask you something first." Abby bent her head to the side and looked at him confused, waiting for him to ask her. She really just wanted to get home and get some sleep before the others came home.
"Okay?" Luka was fiddling with his fingers, not sure how to ask her.
"Well. I was thinking. What are you doing Saturday?" Abby blinked a couple of times, now even more confused.
"I have to go to work." A piece of her hair that had fallen out of her ponytail was flying around her face in the wind. She quickly removed it when it got stuck on her eyelashes.
"Okay. But maybe I can come pick you up when you get off, and we can go eat somewhere? I mean, if you want to." Abby looked down, but she could still feel Luka's eyes on her. She sure hadn't expected that.
"I don't know." Saturday was Richard's day off, and there was a big football match on TV. If the team he cheered for won, he'd want to 'celebrate' it with her. And if they lost, he would want to let his anger out on her. In either case, she'd lose.
"I know today was probably a really bad day to ask since you are so tired, but I just couldn't wait. And it doesn't have to be a date. It can just be a 'get-to-know-each-other-better' dinner thing." Abby looked up and a little smile formed on her lips. His accent was so strong when he was nervous. It was so cute.
"Well," Maybe she should go. What could happen that would be worse than she had tried before? She'd just get beaten up later in stead of sooner, and probably also a little bit worse, but right now she didn't care. She couldn't handle the thought of being Richard's punching bag all of Saturday, so maybe this would lighten up her weekend just a little bit. "I'd smell awfully bad of McDonalds."
A smile matching Abby's appeared on Luka's face, just bigger. "I don't care about that." He took a step away from her. "But I gotta go to work now. See you in school tomorrow." Abby just nodded as Luka ran away from her and started walking in the other direction.
She took a deep breath and started walking as well, praying that Maggie wasn't home so she could get some sleep.
