“I’m going to kill him,” she says, her small hands forming fists. “I’m going to kill him—”
“Ella, don’t be silly,” I say, and walk away.
“One day,” she says, chasing after me, her eyes bright with tears. “If he doesn’t stop hurting you, I swear I’ll do it. You’ll see.”
I laugh.
“It’s not funny!” she cries.
I turn to face her. “No one can kill my dad. He’s unkillable.” “No one is unkillable,” she says.
I ignore her.
“Why doesn’t your mum do anything?” she says, and she grabs my arm. When I meet her eyes she looks different. Scared.
“Why doesn’t anyone stop him?”
The wounds on my back are no longer fresh, but, somehow, they still hurt. Ella is the only person who knows about these scars, knows what my dad started doing to me on my birthday two years ago. Last year, when all the families came to visit us in California, Ella had barged into my room, wanting to know where Emmaline and Nazeera had gone off to, and she’d caught me staring at my back in the mirror.
I begged her not to say anything, not to tell anyone what she saw, and she started crying and said that we had to tell someone, that she was going to tell her mom and I said, “If you tell your mom I’ll only get into more trouble. Please don’t say anything, okay? He won’t do it again.”
But he did do it again.
And this time he was angrier. He told me I was seven years old now, and that I was too old to cry.
“We have to do something,” she says, and her voice shakes a little. Another tear steals down the side of her face and, quickly, she wipes it away. “We have to tell someone.”
“Stop,” I say. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” “But—”
“Ella. Please.”
“No, we have t—”
“Ella,” I say, cutting her off. “I think there’s something wrong with my mom.”
Her face falls. Her anger fades. “What?”
I’d been terrified, for weeks, to say the words out loud, to make my fears real. Even now, I feel my heart pick up.
“What do you mean?” she says. “What’s wrong with her?” “She’s . . . sick.”
Ella blinks at me. Confused. “If she’s sick we can fix her. My mum and dad can fix her. They’re so smart; they can fix anything. I’m sure they can fix your mum, too.”
I’m shaking my head, my heart racing now, pounding in my ears. “No, Ella, you don’t understand— I think—”
“What?” She takes my hand. Squeezes. “What is it?” “I think my dad is killing her.”
