Valiant

“Rae,” I say again, reaching down and stroking a piece of fiery red hair from the side of her face so I can see her.

She rolls to her back, hands clutching her stomach, and looks up at me with tired, bloodshot eyes.

“What?” she snaps.

I stare at her. She looks just like him. Only his hair was browner. Hers is red. Their eyes, though. Exactly the same piercing green that seem to penetrate your soul. I rub my hands over my thighs, trying to practice patience for the girl who is, currently, ruining my life. I know I shouldn’t say things like that, but it’s honestly how I feel most of the time.

I’m trying my hardest. I really am.

“You left the food out, again,” I point out. “I’m working two jobs, Rae. I can’t afford it.”

“You can afford it,” she mutters. “You always replace it.”

I do always replace it.

But it isn’t for her.

My eyes move to her rounded belly. No. It isn’t for her, but for the tiny baby no doubt struggling to survive inside her seventeen-year-old frame. A baby I convinced her to keep, in some futile attempt to get her clean and on the right track.

It didn’t work. She’s clean, at least, I think she is – but she certainly isn’t on the right track and I fear that as soon as the baby is born, she’ll spiral back down that ugly path.

I live with that guilt every day, so I do the only thing I can—I take care of her, I take her of her in hopes that she will give birth to a healthy baby that can make someone happy. A family that can’t have children. Anyone but her.

“I replace it because I’m trying to take care of you,” I mumble, running my hands through my hair. “You’re not making it easy.”

“I never asked you to take care of me,” she hisses, pinning me with those eyes.

“No, Rae, you didn’t. But I chose to, to get you away from your brother, I chose to help you. The least you could do is go easy on me.”

Pain flashes in her eyes, the only subject guaranteed to make her show any kind of emotion but anger. She and York were close; both of them having grown up in foster care together. When I met York, Rae was a sweet, happy girl. Then something changed. He started working long hours, he was tired all the time, and he turned to drugs to get him through. Then, before I knew it, his young, fragile sister was doing the same.

I watched them slip away. Everything good about them crushed into nothing.

I’ll never stop hearing her cries as he dragged her down the hallway by her hair in one of his drug-induced rages, or how she’d cry for me when he threw me against walls. Eventually, though, she stopped caring. She stopped caring because she too became clouded by the dark, dangerous world of drugs.

When I ran, I took her with me.

If it wasn’t for her baby, I don’t think I would have been able to convince her to stay with me.

But in a moment of weakness and fear, she agreed.

Now she’s making my life a living hell, but even during all of it, she’ll never leave me. She’ll never reveal our location. She’ll never tell him where we are.

Because he scares her as much, if not more, than he scares me.

“You always use that against me,” she growls, the pain disappearing and her angry, bitter attitude taking its place.

She stands, clutching her stomach and turns to me, glaring.

I want to throttle her. “Don’t glare at me, I’m trying to help you. Why can’t you see that?”

“You’re just using it against me at every chance you get. You wanted me here. I didn’t force you to bring me.”

I stare at her. Be calm. Don’t get angry. It’ll only make things worse.

“Just put the things away when you’re finished with them, and it wouldn’t kill you to do some washing up,” I say in the kindest tone I can muster up right now.

“Do you see this?” she snaps, pointing to her stomach. “I can’t sleep, I can’t move, I can’t do anything. Stop pressuring me. You’re no better than him sometimes!”

With that, she turns and waddles off down the hall.

I sigh and my shoulders slump. The same thing. Every. Day.

One day it’ll get easier, until then ...

I look at the mess, and then I start cleaning it up.

~*~*~*~

“You need to get rid of her,” my best friend, Shania, says, her voice soft, yet firm.

“We have this conversation every day, Shan; I can’t get rid of her.”

“There are shelters, places for girls like her to go. You don’t owe her anything, hell, you certainly don’t owe him anything. What if she gives away your location? What if he finds you again and—”

I stare at her and see the pain in her face. She’s terrified for me. She knows what I went through with York. She was the person I called when he beat me nearly to death. She was the one by my side when I changed my name and got the hell out of there. She moved her life to come and be by my side. No matter the risk. I constantly live with the fear that York will find me through her, but he only met her once, and I was sure never to tell him much about her.

It’s worth the risk.

I can’t do it without her.

“He won’t find me, and once she has that baby, I will get her the help she needs. But right now, it’s hard. I don’t want that child to be born in some shelter or on a street. If she isn’t with me, she’ll get back on the drugs, and I’ve fought way too hard to keep her off them.”

“I know.” Shan sighs. “I know, but she’s wearing you down. She’s making your life so much harder. You’re suffering enough as it is. You’re working two jobs. You’re struggling, Mad ...”

I shoot her a look. “You can’t call me Madison anymore. It’s Baylee now. Please, please try and stop calling me Maddie.”

She rubs her forehead, and her black hair falls over her hand. “You’re Maddie to me, you’ve always been Maddie to me. It’s so hard to call you Baylee, but I’ll get used to it.”

I smile warmly at her. “I know.”

“Listen,” she says, perking up a little, “I’m going out tonight for a friend’s birthday party at a local bar. You should come with me. I know you don’t get out much, but you have a night off and you deserve it, Baylee. You really do.”

I study her, and her blue eyes are pleading with me to accept her offer. A huge part of me wants to. I don’t know how to have fun anymore. God, I don’t even know the meaning of the word. Rae and my work—it’s all I know now.