Chapter Two

Eventually, I found out what Dom had done. He’d beaten the man who caused the accident that killed Mr. Toretto, taken a ¾” torque wrench to the man’s face and nearly killed him. I still can’t say I blame him, couldn’t even if he had meant to do it.

Dom had just turned eighteen, so he was tried as an adult, sentenced to five years at Lompoc Prison. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him. They wouldn’t let me into the courtroom without parental supervision, and there was no way in hell my mom would agree to let me go. “I always told you to stay away from those Torettos,” she said with a smug grin on her face, even though she’d done nothing of the sort.

After that, my life went completely to shit. Mr. Toretto, Dom and Mia, all gone. And things kept getting worse. My mom let some new asshole move in right before school started. Steve. He was an even bigger jerk than Ray, if that was possible. He never had a job, drank all the time, smacked my mom around just because he could. She said he loved her, like that made it all okay or something. And, as if he weren’t hanging all over my mom every second she was home, practically fucking her in the middle of the living room, Steve would give me the dirtiest looks, like he was undressing me with his eyes and just waiting for the chance to do it for real. I was worried, but Vince told me everything would be okay, that he would look after me and make sure I was all right. I was shocked as hell when he told me that. I always thought he saw me as just an annoying little girl who constantly tagged after him and Dom. I guess he liked me, at least a little bit. Or maybe he just felt sorry for me.

But three months later, Vince was gone too. He got pissed off thinking about Mr. Toretto and Dom, got drunk, stole a car, wrecked the car. Luckily for him, he was still seventeen, or he probably would have ended up at Lompoc with Dom. Maybe he would have preferred that to juvie, though. Luckily for me, the last thing Vince did before he got locked up was put a deadbolt on my bedroom door.

I started staying away from my house again, trying to avoid Steve, but I didn’t really have anywhere to go. At first, I had school during the day so I only had to stay away until he got drunk enough to pass out at night. But then Vince left right before Christmas break, and during vacation I had to avoid Steve all the time. I tried staying at Dom’s house, but I just couldn’t do it. The emptiness just freaked me out. I started hearing things, imagining I saw Mr. Toretto walking out to the garage to work on a car. I had constant nightmares - dreams of car crashes and fires, with Mr. Toretto’s voice telling me that if only I had gone to the race that day, things would have been different, or that if I’d only tried to find Dom after the accident, I could have kept him from going to jail. Heavy shit like that.

After I couldn’t handle staying at the house anymore, I started to go to Hollywood Blvd. I would stay out all night on the streets, just watching people. After a day or two, I started hanging out with this small group of girls who worked the boulevard to pay for their drug addictions. One of them, Angel, had lived two houses down from me, used to baby-sit me when I was little. Strangely enough, I felt comfortable, safe, out on the streets with those girls. I was almost happy again. Eventually, though, my mom noticed that I wasn’t coming home at all. We got into a huge fight one night when I stopped by to get some clean clothes. I told her I was staying away because Steve freaked me out and I didn’t like being alone with him. She actually seemed to believe me, which completely surprised me. She said she’d keep an eye on Steve, make sure he didn’t bother me. I spent that night at home, for the first time in nearly two weeks. I thought everything would be okay as long as I could make it through the three days until school started again. I should have known better.

The next morning, I slept in until ten. My mom had promised me that Steve would be out of the house, that I wouldn’t have to worry about him. She had left for work hours ago, but I didn’t mind being alone in the house as long as Steve wasn’t around. Plus, I had the deadbolt on my door to protect me. That day turned out to be one of the worst in my entire life. I still can’t believe how dumb I was to trust my mom when she said everything would be okay. Like she’d ever kept her word before…

My mom, being the woman she was, thought all she had to do was tell Steve to stay away from the house for a while and he would do it. She was incredibly naïve, sometimes. Or maybe just dumb. Or maybe she just decided that Steve was more important to her than I was. Anyways, while I was in the shower that morning, Steve came back to the house. He didn’t even have to break in or anything, he still had his key. At the time, I didn’t really know what was happening. One minute I was washing my hair, and the next I was trying to hide behind the shower curtain, with Steve all up in my face.

“Don’t you dare scream, you good for nothing bitch,” he yelled at me, and I remember thinking I was going to die. “You’ve been holding out on me too long, you little slut,” he growled, and reached to grab the shower curtain away from me. He pulled me out of the shower stall so I was standing naked in front of him, trying as hard as I could to just disappear. I was frozen, I couldn’t even move, let alone try to get away from him. “You’d better do exactly what I tell you,” he said, and then ordered me down on the floor.

I guess I didn’t respond fast enough, because the next thing I knew he was slapping me across the face over and over again. I still have a tiny scar on my forehead, right at my hairline, where one of his gold rings cut me. A souvenir of the occasion, I guess you could call it. Mia tells me all the time that no one can see it, but I still know it’s there. Obviously she does, too, or she wouldn’t remember to mention its supposed invisibility. Dom sees the scar more often than either one of us, but he never says anything about it. Every time he brushes my hair away from my face, though, I can feel him tense up with anger. We don’t talk about it, but I know he feels guilty for not being around to protect me. That’s okay, though. I managed to protect myself just fine.

Steve pushed me down, and I remember blood running down my face, and I started making these whimpering sounds, deep in my throat, and I was so disgusted with myself because I sounded like such a baby. I didn’t even recognize my own voice. I said no, so low I could barely hear it. I screamed, once, and then he kicked me in the side, knocked all the air out of me. I don’t know quite how I did it, but as he started to reach down to undo his pants, I pulled myself up and punched him in the balls. He ended up on the floor and I ran out of the bathroom, racing for the safety of my bedroom. I slammed the door shut, locked it, got dressed as fast as I could, grabbed some stuff out of my drawers, threw it into my backpack, and climbed out the window. I didn’t even know where I was going, I just ran.

I ended up back on the streets with Angel. I still have to laugh to think that at thirteen years old, I was safer hanging out with prostitutes while they walked the street than I was in my own home. I have to laugh because if I didn’t, I would start screaming, and I don’t know if I would be able to stop.

Eventually, my aunt came and took me to live with her. I guess my mom had told social services that I’d gone to stay with my aunt for a while, but forgot to tell her that. So she got worried when a social worker came over to check up on me and she had to fake like she knew what the guy was talking about. She started looking for me that same night, found me a few days later, and brought me home with her. I still hung out with Angel and the rest of the hookers on Hollywood all the time, though. I just didn’t give a shit about what might happen to me.