The morning and afternoon on the day after their 17th birthday were both uneventful. It was a Sunday. Keith went to the store and Jane went to the roller rink. Keith had to clean up a display of soda that had fallen over and Jane had to get Gregory moved to a different seating area when he wouldn't leave her alone about how smooth her skin looked. Jane's shift was over at six p.m. - she stayed until nine-thirty. She had grabbed a burger on the way home and ate it as she walked, arriving at her house a little after ten.

She entered to find her father watching television, a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

"Hi," Jane said.

"Mmm." It was all he responded with. Better than the usual response of nothing at all, she figured.

"How was your day?" She asked, moving towards the hallway to head back to her bedroom. She stopped at the mouth of the corridor and looked back to her father, waiting for a response. She still said a few words to him here and there. As far as she knew, Keith never said a thing to him.

"I thought I told you not to put that shit on your face," he ignored her question completely and stared at her through the smoke from his cigarette with narrowed eyes.

It took Jane a moment to realize what he was talking about. "It's chapstick."

"I don't care what the hell it is. Take it off, y'tramp."

Turning away from him, Jane vanished into the hallway and entered her room, quickly shutting the door behind her. She dropped her skates on the floor and sat down on her bed, her gaze drifting towards the window to the street that ran past the front of their house. She could feel tears forming in her eyes - tears built up from the frustration she felt towards everything - Gregory, her father, the lack of anything in her life except work. She knew those tears were for her brother too. All day, her mind had kept returning to that thing on Keith's back... it had to be a bruise. A new one. Why didn't he tell her? Why couldn't their father just break more damn knick-knacks in the living room instead of taking out whatever was in his head on Keith?

Jane quickly wiped the tears away before they could fall. Crying wouldn't help anything. It felt like it was all she could do at this moment though; she was weak, powerless. She briefly wondered how different everything would be if their mother was still alive.

Dropping her chin to her chest, Jane caught sight of the shoes Keith had given her the day before. Within moments she had them on and was digging out the banged up portable CD player she took with her to work sometimes. Pretty much everyone she knew had MP3 players, but the CD player still worked and Jane had a hard time letting it go. She stood in front of her window, curtains open, streetlights streaming in and the door shut behind her. Inhaling deeply, her eyes drifted up to the crescent moon outside momentarily before shutting. She thought of their mother again.

With the new shoes on her feet and the headphones over her ears, Jane did something she hadn't done in years. She danced.

...

Keith could see the glow of the television through the living room window curtains as he walked up to the house. That was nothing new. When he slipped in and didn't see the top of his father's head poking over the back of the couch though, now that struck him as a little odd. He leaned over the couch, expecting to see his father sprawled out, asleep. But no. Nothing. The couch was bare.

He started to move towards the back hallway. Maybe he was in the bathr—

Keith's breath caught in his throat as he rounded the couch and the hallway came into his line of sight.

His father was on the ground, legs and arms splayed out. There was blood seeping from the side of his head. From his ear, or a cut maybe, Keith couldn't tell. Beside him, the heavy ceramic ashtray he used when he smoked. There were cigarette butts around his form; the trash littered against the dirty carpet like someone had placed them there specifically for decoration.

"Janey?" Keith yelled.

Nothing.

"Janey?"

Bounding over the body and down the hallway, Keith gave a passing glance to the bathroom and found nothing before stopping at the door to his sister's room. It was open. He froze at the entrance. He could see her, seated on the side of her bed with her back to him, staring out the window. Her hair, usually in a bun or a clip, was down and tangled, the ends reaching the small of her back. Keith could hear something in the silence. It took him a few moments to notice her headphones and her CD player on the ground, still blaring something he couldn't make out or recognize without the headphones on.

"What happened?" He murmured, passing through the doorframe into her room. He moved quietly across the carpet, stepping over the CD player as he made his way to her bed, to her. He stood beside where she sat for a few moments before he knelt down in front of her. He noticed she was wearing the shoes he gave her.

"Janey..."

He also noticed that her hair was hanging in front of her face and she had an arm around her stomach and a hand at her neck.

"Keith..." It came out in sort of an exhaled whisper, but he was just relieved to hear her say anything at all.

Reaching up, he pushed the hair from her face and almost shot to his feet at what he saw behind the curtain of dirty blonde he had shifted aside. His sister's lip was swollen. When he grabbed her hand from her neck and wrapped her fingers in his, he grew even angrier. Her neck. There were marks on it, red marks. Were those... handprints? And a cut on the left side?

He heard her choke back a sob and didn't hesitate pulling her down from where she sat on the bed to the floor, wrapping his arms around her. Her hair tickled his nose, but he was too distracted to care - staring across the surface of the bed to the open doorway, out into the hall where their father happened to be passed out. For different reasons than usual, this time. He could hear a ringing in his ears, along with the tinny sounds still emanating from the headphones and his sister's quiet cries. He could feel a rage bubbling up inside of him, along with his sister's racing heartbeat against his chest. As much as he wanted to tuck her into her bed and call the cops, he knew that would just lead to them getting placed into a foster home for a year - if the cops would even take their side. Their father was a master storyteller with friends on the town's tiny police force. They were drinking buddies of his.

Keith moved his sister back, letting her rest against the bed. He gingerly swept her hair from her face.

"What happened?"

"I was... I was just dancing. In here. That's it. He came in and chased me down the hall, throwing stuff and screaming... and... he..." She weakly motioned to her face and neck. "I grabbed his ashtray... and..."

"You bashed him over the head with it."

"Oops," she said, dryly.

That was the sister he knew and loved.

"Is he..." Keith trailed off.

"He's still alive."

His mind began racing around the options they suddenly had. He laid out scenarios, trying to figure out what would be the best for them at this point. They just turned seventeen. They were almost adults. Almost. But they wouldn't be recognized as such according to the law. Especially in a town like theirs.

"You need to pack anything up you want to bring with you. We're leaving this shithole forever. And we're leaving right now."

Keith stood and crossed the hall to his own room, glancing at his still-unconscious father on the way. He had felt a pang of sorrow for his father when he first saw what had happened, fearing maybe someone had broken into the house, but when he saw Jane and realized what had transpired, anything he felt had dissipated. He regretted that feeling even more when he entered his bedroom and took his work shirt off, peering over his shoulder at his bruised back in the mirror on top of the dresser.

He wasted no time grabbing a duffle bag and throwing clothes into it. He was going through the assortment of books, trinkets and change on top of his dresser when he felt a presence behind him. His shoulders tensed, but they quickly relaxed when he saw his sister in the mirror. She had set her bag of items to bring on his bed and was now standing behind him, peering downwards at his skin.

Keith felt her fingertips tracing the bruise down his back and turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were wide, her hair was still tangled around her shoulders and her other hand was at her neck, fingers absently grazing her collarbone.

Taking the hand from her neck, he pulled the band from around her wrist and brushed her hair out of her face, slipping around behind her to put her hair into as clean a bun as he could manage. He looked at her in the mirror ahead of them. Her lip looked a little less swollen, but her neck was still red, the skin around the cut puckered and raw. It relaxed him the smallest bit though, to actually see her face again.

"Come on, Janey. Let's go."