Something Girl Read Online Free PDF

and grabbed all the words out of my mouth. My dad started coming toward me and everything went into slow motion. I tried to run into the kitchen, but every step seemed to take five minutes. So I grabbed a chair and pulled it in front of me. My dad picked it up and threw it across the room. Then he grabbed my arm.
    “Stupid,” he hissed. “No good. Nothing.”
    He started punching me, and I tried to cover myself with my other arm. But my dad pushed my face into the wall so I couldn’t see what was coming next. Then he started kicking my legs and back. I felt like my gut was coming right out of me, as if I was turning into mush. I tried to pull free, but I couldn’t. All I could think about was getting away away away.
    Suddenly, inside my head, I saw the fort Jujube and I had built. I saw myself crawling inside the fort and trying to hide. I saw Jujube coming to find me and talking about aliens. “Aliens, aliens, aliens,” I heard her say, over and over in my head.
    Finally my dad stopped. He stood over me for a minute, breathing heavily. Then he turned and walked away. I heard him go upstairs, then back down again and out the front door. I don’t know why he stopped when he did. Maybe he just got tired.
    I was lying on the floor, next to the wall. It took a while to start moving. I wanted to get out of there in case my dad came back, but my legs wouldn’t move. Each time I tried, a bright pain shot up my back. It was so bad I almost screamed, and once my head went black for a second. But after a while I just made myself. I got to my knees. Then I stood up. Then I walked to the downstairs bathroom and took a bunch of aspirin — around ten, I think. When I checked in the mirror, myface looked okay. My dad hardly ever hit me where people could see it.
    The painkillers helped, but I still had to move slowly. I walked out the back door, carefully, like an old lady. Then I got out my bike. Getting onto it was hard, but then I could coast. I used back alleys so I didn’t have to ride over curbs. When I got to the fort, I wheeled the bike into the trees and left it. I didn’t lock it. I wasn’t sure I could stand up that long.
    I crawled into the fort and covered myself with a blanket. Then I lay there and tried not to moan. The pain was so big, it felt like it was everywhere. So I thought of a game I played when I was small. The game went like this — when my dad hit me, I would think of the pain as heat instead of hurt. Then I tried thinking of the pain as a nice heat, like a fireplace. I really had to think hard while I was getting hit, but I could usually make it work. Once I even laughed while my dad was hitting me, because it didn’t hurt. I only did that once, because then he hit extra hard.
    But tonight the game didn’t work. The aspirin I had taken was wearing off, and the pain was getting bigger. Through the fort’s door, I could see stars coming out, shining like far-off spaceships. But they were just stars. There weren’t any aliens coming to save me from this pain.
    Jujube’s voice started up again in my head. You just let it happen , she said. Why don’t you want it to stop? Why don’t you tell someone?
    What’s to tell? I thought. I don’t want people to know my secret. I’m so dumb my dad has to hit me. Stupid, no good, nothing girl .
    My back was hurting so much I had to lie with my knees up in the air. It had never been this bad before, and I was scared like crazy. I was beginning to think I could never make my dad love me. Sometime he might really kill me, like in the stories I heard on the news. I couldn’t figure out what to do, so I started to cry. The tears kept running down my neckand into my ears, but I couldn’t turn my head because it hurt too much.
    I think I passed out for a while because the next thing I knew, Jujube was there. She was sitting beside me in the dark, humming softly so she wouldn’t wake me up.

Chapter Eight
    Moonlight was shining through the door of the fort. It