THIEF: Part 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

think you can lead me on then throw me in jail?”  I barely felt the next punch, though I’d have a black eye the next morning; I couldn’t feel anything anymore.  My brain and body disconnected themselves.
                  When he left my room, I got up and pushed my bureau in front of the door.  I knew he could still get in, but it was all I could think to do.  I sat on the floor of my closet, in the dark, and held a pair of scissors like a knife.
                  I waited.
                  Part of me wanted him to come back in, just so I could summon the courage to push the scissors into his eyes.
                  Instead, I heard silence.  The occasional pop and hiss of a new beer, or the clink of ice cubes in my mom’s whiskey tumblers.  Canned laughter rumbled up from the television downstairs.
                  At dawn, my mom came home.  She and Gordon made their peace.
                  I didn’t come out of my room till I saw Gordon’s car crawling out of the driveway.  Mom smiled and handed me some orange juice, but when I entered the kitchen, my bathrobe pulled tightly around my body, she gasped.
                  “What happened to your eye, baby girl?” she wailed.  She grabbed my face with both hands.  “Did you fall?”
                  This was the first time I would feel it: the truth, bubbling in my stomach, crouching in my throat.  It was almost so easy to let it out, but I just couldn’t.
                  She should know, I thought, suddenly angry.  She should be able to tell right now, without me having to tell her.
                  “Yeah,” I mumbled.  “I fell.”
                  Mom sighed.  “Let’s get some ice on it, try and stop the swelling.”
                  For the next two weeks, I stayed in my room.  I didn’t go to school, I didn’t eat.  I drank just enough milk and water to survive, though part of me didn’t want to.
                  Slowly, my fear calcified to pure anger.  Gordon was walking around my house, eating my food, watching my television with my mother.  He kept up his life as a man; he moved on.
                  But he’s not a man, I told myself.  He was a monster.
                  The morning I turned sixteen, Mom was frosting a cake.  Red velvet: my favorite.
                  “Hey, baby girl,” she smiled.  “You feeling better?  I hope you can at least manage some cake.”  She kissed my forehead.  Swiped some frosting on my nose.
                  She should be able to tell.
                  “Mom,” I blurted, my anger finally strong enough to get the words out of my throat, “I have something to tell you.”  I made it a point to look her in the eye.  “It’s about Gordon.”
                 
     
    “Oh, my God.”  Silas can’t stop shaking his head.  When my story’s over, he looks away for a minute.  I see him wipe his eyes with the back of his hand.  “And your mom didn’t believe you?  After all that?”
                  “It was obvious,” I agreed, “but that’s my mom, for you.  She only believed what she wanted to.”  I sink into the couch, the weight of the truth finally off my chest.  The effort of speaking has exhausted me.  “She wanted me to ‘talk it out with Gordon,’ thought maybe it was a misunderstanding.  I refused, of course, and she brought it up to Gordon, who fed her some bullshit about me coming on to him.”  I laugh coldly.  “Right.  Like I’d ever come on to that pile of shit.”
                  Silas is quiet a minute, composing himself.  He takes a sip of my tea, now cold, and coughs.  “Did you go to the police?”
                  “I didn’t have any proof by that point, or at least I thought I didn’t—I didn’t