Chapter 3

It was all my family needed.

"You see?" my mother screamed, rushing to Molly' s side. "She's violent! Always has been!"

My father' s face was purple with rage. He crossed the room in two strides. The slap was so hard my head snapped to the side, my ear ringing.

"You are a poison in this house!" he roared, his spit flying into my face. "It' s been nothing but trouble since the day we took Molly in! Get out! Get out of my house and never come back!"

He grabbed a half-empty beer bottle from the coffee table and hurled it. I ducked, but it glanced off my temple, opening a cut. Warm blood trickled down my face, mixing with the dried blood from my nosebleed.

Andrew, for a moment, looked horrified. He took a step toward me, pulling a crumpled hundred-dollar bill from his wallet. "Gabby, wait..."

But Molly was faster. She snatched the bill from his hand, her expression turning sickly sweet.

"Andrew, don't," she cooed, tucking the money into her own pocket. "You can't enable her bad behavior. It's for her own good."

I didn' t say another word. I turned, walked out the front door, and didn' t look back. The blood dripped onto the pristine suburban sidewalk. I used the last of my own money, seventy-three dollars I' d earned waiting tables at a diner, to check into a cheap, grimy motel off the I-90. The room smelled of stale cigarettes and bleach. I collapsed onto the lumpy bed, the world spinning.