Apartment 15. Olivia Holton. Abused

I've always wondered how many times a day on average does a typical sixteen-year-old think about running away from home. It must be a relatively high number, right? Because sixteen is just smack in the perfect middle of that coming-of-age phase, where we feel our lives suck and that there must be more to it than just… whatever it is is going for us.

I often imagine what it would be like if I DID run away from my life. Would it be as perfect as I imagine it? Hitchhiking with strangers who just happen to be drop-dead-gorgeously hot and driving a sexy matte black Camaro. Sleeping under the stars on the edge of a serene lake. Or even in a hammock between two coconut trees by the beach.

Is that simply too good to be true?

I feel like it might be. Don't those things only happen in movies?

Oh well, so what if they only happen in movies. S'not like I'm not allowed to imagine my life to be more than this filthy apartment, living with my filthy brother. Who is a drunk, might I add.

I guide the only makeup that my mother has left me—a thin black pencil eyeliner—over the skin on my upper thighs. It's a small canvas. All skin and bone. But the stark contrast of the black ink against my pale skin is… captivating.

I jump what must feel like fifteen meters in the air when a familiar heavy object is thrown against my bedroom door. The dark eyeliner in my hand falls to the ground. I try to ignore the intruder and bend down to pick up the fallen object.

I hear muffled screaming from the other side of the door. Then the door handle rattles.

"What the fuck, Liv?" Andrew shouts as he slams a hand against the wooden door loudly, again and again. "How many fuckin' times do I have to tell you to not lock your damn door?"

Ignoring him, I keep guiding the pencil until several black lines appear on my pale skin. My hand tremors synchronously with the tremors of my bedroom door with each of Andrew's blows.

"Open the damn door, Liv!"

A messy sketch of a feather starts to form the more I carve at my skin.

"Are you kidding me right now?"

With a few more strokes, the single feather turns into a wing.

"I'll burn down this damn building if you don't come out, Livvy!"

The heavy object from before returns at full force. Then a loud thump of a boot against the linoleum floor. Just as I suspect, the familiar object thrown against my door must be my brother's metal-tipped boot. The sound comes back to reverberate throughout the whole apartment but I do not flinch. I've come a long way from that flinching weak girl from a year ago. With her, I could only see a frightful coward who did nothing but feel sorry for herself.

Now? I stare at myself in the mirror and only see hatred in my eyes. Hatred for what I see in my own reflection. Hatred for the world. Just hatred.

"Right this second! You hear me?" the slurred screaming continues. After a while, the banging on my door halts.

Only one constant in my life now: my brother, Andrew, will always be drunk each evening he comes home from work. I am not even sure if work is what he comes home from. All I know is he would not be able to afford this apartment if it was not for my many part-time jobs.

I don't even go to school anymore. There is just not enough hours in the day to bus tables at Mickey's Diner, wash dishes at the fancy French restaurant two blocks away (which has a name I just cannot recall for the life of me), and then stock the shelves at the Chinese Minimart next door to this apartment building. The Minimart is the easiest job with the most pay, but I am guessing it is because the owner is aware of my situation.

Those jobs take up the hours when I should be at school. Of course, no one really cares that I have not been able to attend school for the last few years. Even my own brother doesn't seem to mind. Although Andrew doesn't seem to mind about anything these days, it seems.

Only Aunt Bo would care if she found out—which, she won't because I have the schedule all planned out.

Aunt Bo is who I am meant to live with after our parents passed away. You could say she is my legal guardian, though legal is not a word she particularly abides by, judging by the multiple speeding tickets and DUIs and whatnots. In any case, because of her status as the sister of the deceased mother, my guardianship landed in her incapable and, perhaps, unwelcome hands.

At the time leading up to our parents' untimely demise, my brother had not yet picked up his now most loyal companion: liquor. In fact, he had just moved out of our family home in Westington to attend Dartham University, which, at the time, had offered him a full-ride scholarship. It may be difficult even for me to believe but Andrew was such an accomplished student during his high school days. One would even say he had his whole life ahead of him.

So when that email arrived of him asking me to live with him instead of with Aunt Bo, I was thrilled. Because, even though I was going through the darkest days of my life, I was sure I was going to be just fine. How could I not be? I had my brother to take care of me. Little did I know…

After a week of living with Aunt Bo, I moved in with Andrew into the apartment he was then co-renting with a friend. His friend moved out, of course, and then it was just me and him. For a few months, despite having just lost our parents, everything was going well. Andrew was perfectly nice to me, and he took care of me as any brother should his baby sister.

Aunt Bo, despite utterly disliking the idea, had agreed only with the promise that we let her visit every month and that my brother keeps his promise of paying the bills and feeding me. But I guess promises are meant to be broken, as the latter was pulverised into dust within the first few months. As sudden as our parents' death, Andrew took a special liking to alcohol, having been introduced while tending a bar during one of his night jobs, and from there everything just sort of... changed.

He stopped being the Andrew of my childhood and became 'Drew', the drunk abusive man who shares my apartment.

The first time Drew left me in the apartment to get drunk, he was gone for three days. It was the most scared I have ever been in my whole life, even more scared than right after I was orphaned and alone. Because, for the first time in my life, I felt my safety was threatened, and death felt so close I could almost feel it. I felt it in the pit of my stomach, excruciating pain that made me want to cry out for help, and I've never been one to cry.

In consequence of that, I was determined to survive on my own. Because I realised I cannot rely on my unreliable brother anymore, else we both starve. It became my number one priority to make sure the promises that I have made is kept unbroken where my aunt is concerned. The outcome? Well, a boatload of effort on my part to hide the proofs that Andrew has become a useless drunk in addition to a little bit of concealing when it comes to my narrowing hips and thinning limbs.

If you ask me why I even bother, why I don't just pack up and move back in with Aunt Bo, I couldn't tell you the answer. I wouldn't have anything to say except maybe to ask you whether you have lost your own parents. Because then perhaps you might understand.

I would love nothing more than to let go of the worries that grip me on a daily basis, the worry that one day I'll come home with a letter of eviction taped on the front door of our apartment, the worry that I get a phone call from the police one day informing me that they've found my brother's cold body in a dumpster. These things are like a constant buzz at the back of my mind. But when I begin to even think about deserting him, the Andrew of my childhood, I know I would not be able to. Because I know, just like me, he's hurting inside.

So I made a promise to myself early on, when things started to get difficult, that I would not desert him. No matter if he deserted me first, I would simply hold on to the sliver of hope that my old brother will come back. Despite years of what feels like endless torture, I would forgive him eventually.