Chapter 4 Any worse

The tears blurred Juliana's view as she ran blindly from the house. The airy quiet afternoon contrasted sharply with her emotions which were in an upheaval. The streets were empty, maybe because it was a Sunday and most people were indoors enjoying a day of rest except for the people in her own house. Many thoughts slammed against her consciousness at once, similar occasions where she had to listen to her father derail her and rubbish her emotions.

Her father's voice in her subconscious mind reached her again, "You're an ugly, unwanted child." "I'm beautiful, I'm wanted", she whispers through her tears, countering her father's words in her head. "You're the reason why my life is the way it is, the reason for my suffering and poverty. You're a wicked child." Rojo's voice echoed again in her head like when one stands and shouts into a dark tunnel with sounds ricocheting off the tunnel walls. "I'm the architect of my life and no one else's, my other names are solace and wealth. Not suffering" - she swiped angrily at her tears, - "or poverty. But solace and wealth and I am a beautiful child." She chanted it over and over every time she had the thoughts. Her feet hit the ground with a soft thump as she ran and ran, having the burning zeal to put as much distance as she could between herself and the house. She did not stop running until she felt the air draining from her burning lungs and that was when she stopped to take in some air. Her chest heaved up and down as Juliana groped around with her hands on for any low branch or slab she could sit down on until she got herself together. Her father's shouting episodes were becoming louder and more frequent as the days went by. She had known a time when her father only sneered at her as she moved around the house to do chores or prepare for school and other times he acted like she did not exist. He never cared about what she was doing or coping with school, if she had any friends talk more about a boyfriend, she was a teenager after all and some girls in her high school class already had boyfriends who had probably met their fathers. She did not care for boys though but Julianna had nobody, not that she complained so much but it would have been nice to have a sturdy father figure in her life. Someone who would protect her from threats, warn boys he did not like away from her and make life just a little bit easier for her with his presence alone. Instead, her father was comfortable to slowly drink himself to oblivion while conveniently blaming her mother and Julianna for his life woes. Presently, he wasn't comfortable with just getting himself drunk alone and crashing through the house late at night to fall into bed. He started raining down abusive words, damaging words that cut through her fragile heart whenever he felt like it,ike, and even though her mother was trying, Julianna felt sometimes that she did not try enough. Why couldn't she leave him, after all, some single mothers were doing well for themselves and their children with no towering, angry, and hateful father figure rising above them like a dark cloud. Instead, her mother has still chosen to remain with him, enduring his verbal abuse and maybe physical but Julianna was not sure if her father had started hitting her mother. The image alone threatened to send fresh tears running down her cheek and Julianna raised her eyes to look around and distract herself from the disquieting thoughts. From where she sat, she could see the small town's only diner, "Buddy's Diner", her mother swears that it was a happening spot back in the days when many of her friends loved to hang out when school was out. But looking at it now with its missing neon light letter, it showed "Budd" instead of "Buddy" at night when the neon lights glowed. Julianna could not believe her mother's claims with the diner's cheap off-white Formica top tables chipped at the sides, mismatched worn-out tiles, and hard-backed chairs. Julianna had worked in it on one of the summer holidays and for weeks she could not get the smell of fried bacon off her favorite crop top. She had been doing odd jobs since she came of age so she could buy basic things and save up for school since her father became more and more unwilling as the years went by to assist her mother and herself in any capacity at all. But the peanuts she got paid were barely enough and sometimes she just had to depend on people's goodwill to give her jobs around their house and tip her more than work warranted. Across the diner was the gas station and a general store just behind the gas station. If she decided to stand up on a higher slab than the one she was seated on or climbed the tree just in front of her, there was a church with a peaked roof that ended with a cross at the apex just to her right and then Cadez High School, her parent's alma mater, and her current school to her far left. Rojo and Sophia were rarely churchgoers themselves and Julianna thought she was not one another. Cadez was a really small town and if you had serious health emergencies you had to go to the next big town just east of Cadez to get yourself sorted out. Their little town had the proper mix of both young and old but most high school leavers prefer moving to the bigger cities after college and coming back to visit for holidays or just to see their older parents. "Hello, puppet", an annoying chirpy female voice drawled just behind Julianna. Julianna turned her head to see three petite girls all around the same height, two blondes and a dark-haired girl walking towards her and she realized that her day could not have gotten any worse than this.