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Chapter I: Frozen Death

Here it is, folks! Chapter I of The Guardians. Just a warning, there is some adult content in this first chapter, I’ll try to keep it to a minimum as time goes on. I’ll make sure to leave warnings, though. I hope you enjoy, and expect some short drabbles or one-shots between chapters! Feedback is always helpful! THANKS!

Word count: 6,430 most of my chapters are 10,000+ words wtf

"Elizabeth Lynn Parris." The scolding voice of my father sent fear to rack my spine. My limbs froze and became stiff as if I were being cast in a mold that was unbreakable. I felt my face pale from the strident sound, the coolness in the back of my head increasing as the man closed the distance to stand in front of me. "Where the hell have you been?"

I froze, eyes unmoving from his face. The graying hair I hoped I'd never see again was combed down in an ugly combover, while those piercing eyes that saw right into my soul were narrowed and filled with hatred. My breathing became shuddered. My lungs seemed to close right there and I found myself struggling to breathe. The asthma that I've suffered with for sixteen years sent shockwaves of worry and pain in my chest, mixing in with the sheer horror that displayed itself proudly on my face.

It wasn't my fault my father abused me when I was a teenager, whether it was sexual or not. It was his fault for doing those things to me when I was thirteen, and the haunting years of going through that made me swear to never find a boyfriend or even a male friend. The fear that they would do the same to me was too much. "I . . . I . . ." Words were hard to come by with my fingertips touching in front of my chest.

My father's hand slapped me in the cheek. I cried out at the sting of it, and his hands wrapped themselves in my camouflaged jacket, bringing my face close to his. "No more excuses, you little—where were you, and you better tell the fucking truth!" he screeched, his breath reeking of booze. I shuddered and nearly gagged, but I shoved it down for that could bring on a lifetime of abuse.

The disgusting leather couch stopped me from backing up. The peeling wallpaper was littered with cobwebs that blew in the air conditioning when it turned on. The sound was rattling-sound, like a hunk of metal was trapped in the vents. My heart pounded whenever it turned on. It always seemed that Dad was in the worst of his moods whenever the air conditioner turned on. The shattered television screen across from me reflected my father storming closer, and I tried dodging a swing to no avail.

Just then his face contorted to the image that was scorched into my brain forever. His eyes were completely gone, with the thin blood vessels dripping small droplets from the sockets. His beard was gone, as was his entire jaw. All that hung was his top row of teeth with blood staining the yellow bone. His sliced throat spurt blood on my neck and chest, sending a scream to tear free from my otherwise tightening lungs. His fleshy fingers melted away to mere bones, the cartilage and nerves bending as he pushed me away. I fell over the armrest and fell into the couch sideways, and all I could do was stare.

"You did this to me," Dad said in a brittle tone, his eyelids folding down to look at his hands. The bones curled when his hands clenched to fists, and rage took over his face. "You did this to me! I thought you learned your lesson, but what the hell do I care. You know what comes next, sweetheart."

My head shook excessively and whimpers left my parted lips. I crawled backwards on the couch as my dad stormed over to me and grabbed my arm. "No!" I screamed, tears flowing and sobs filling the empty house. "Let me go! Please!" Dad flung me back on the couch effortlessly.

Despite his drunken state, Dad was strong. I remembered hearing that he was a wrestling champion in 1988 when he was in high school, just ten years before I was born. He even went to Purdue University with a full ride thanks to a wrestling scholarship. Today his toned biceps bored their strength on my body despite me being in fights most of my life in school. It was the only place I could take my anger out on my father, and it was my only destination to be free from the abuse.

I didn't know what I did that made him start the "lessons." Perhaps it was after my mother's passing a few years ago from a morphine overdose. She wasn't addicted or suicidal, which is what stumped me the day Mom was found dead in bed. My gut always told me my father killed my mother, but the words that wanted to break free and enter the world would always cower in the back of my mind, worrying that if I said them, I'd be so mentally and physically beaten that those words would never come out.

The lifelong abuse was only starting as my father slammed his sudden skin-bound hand over my lips. His free hand grabbed my wrists and held them to my stomach with unbelievable strength. His fingers squeezed my cheekbones as I sobbed and screamed into his hand, feet kicking his. His barked laughter dismissed the struggles as foolish and useless. All I could do was stare.

"Lessons are to be learned, Elizabeth," he growled and slammed his fist on my temple when he let go of my hands. Lessons. That's what he called the abuse. At first it was just the beatings for no good reason, especially when he was drunk. He'd come home drunker than an alcoholic on New Year's, and I could clearly remember the front door slamming with such force it sent my blood chilling to the bone. "Lessons are taught. You are to be taught."

I felt the skin split where his knuckles connected, those eyeball-less sockets growing a small flame, mocking a hollowed candle. His voice was seemingly disembodied, however my eyes widened when the lower part of his skull began reconstructing itself. The jaw grew back little by little, with the teeth rising from his chin. His tongue flapped up next, and then it was his beard that grew back at lightning speed. "Tonight's gonna be fun, I can guarantee you." His gruff voice was filled greed and horrifying lust.

I managed to slide my upper lip over his hand and sink my teeth into his finger. I bit down until I tasted blood. The act sent a feeling of triumph to run through me as Dad brought his hand to his chest, cradling the bitten part. I smiled and lurched forward to stand, however a scream echoed in the entire house when my father grabbed a beer bottle from the end table and smashed it against my head. My abuser and the living room exploded to darkness.

Coldness was what woke me up first. My chin was hard against my collarbone, and my temple throbbed from the beer bottle. My eyelids pried open on their own accord, and the bathtub I sat in was covered in my blood from previous abuse. The distinct smell of my father in the room made my head perk up over the edge and stare at him, my eyes flicking to the wicked smile on his face as he stood from the stool he sat in. "Hey, sweetheart," he purred and knelt at the bathtub.

I attempted to say a word. Any word, for that matter, that would make him falter and think about what he's doing to his daughter. My lips refused to move, and Dad's thumb caressed the wrinkled piece of duct tape he slapped on my mouth during my brief awakening just minutes before I slipped into unconsciousness again. Tears pricked my eyes, and my body realized the soreness in my biceps and lady parts. I glanced between my legs, and let out a strangled sob at what my mind directly told me.

Handcuffs clanked against the faucet of the bathtub, with rust chipping off when I twisted my wrists. My shoulders ached from being positioned upward for the amount of time I was chained to the bathtub.

"You comfy?" Dad asked, lifting his leg and stepping inside the tub. He had some room to sit down completely. My bare legs—underwear and all—were brought up to my chest, my bra being the only thing that protected my dignity from my father. I mumbled curses and pleas, however all Dad did was smile softly and crawl his way over, his arms bracing on my thighs. His gray eyes flashed with greed, and his hand cradled my jaw as he pressed his lips to the duct tape. His clothes were radiating with sweat.

A hard and pounding knock thundered on their front door.

I let out a croaked scream and tried lifting myself higher than the rim of the tub, but a strong blow to my cheek made a weak groan leave my covered lips. Dad's hand pressed on the tape and a finger lifted to his pursed lips. "You need to be quiet, sweetheart," he whispered. Another knock slammed on the door, and his hands wrapped around my neck. Mangled and muffled croaks left my arid throat. The airflow in my windpipe began fading as my legs tried kicking his to get him off me. My fingers and hands twitched with the effort that fought the blast of coolness in the back of my head. It was the oxygen being cut off to and from my brain. The natural drive to live was completely shut down at that point. The only instinct that was churning away was the will to die.

Dying would get me away from him, right?

I felt my eyelids growing heavy the longer Dad's hands stayed wrung around my neck. My groans of protest grew quieter as the seconds crawled menacingly along; I could swear a clock was ticking in my head. The feeble and useless kicking ceased almost instantly, my toes twitching as I felt the long awaited cloak of darkness draping over me.

A door was slammed open outside the bathroom. I could hear voices, distinct tones shouting orders and voices over walkie-talkies. Dad looked up towards the door and ducked lower into the tub, one of his hands reaching up and holding my nose shut to make me die or pass out faster. My eyelids began fluttering, and I felt my eyes rolling into the back of my head when the bathroom door was kicked off its hinges.

A gunshot rang out in the bathroom. In the small space only big enough to hold a broken window, a single grimy bathtub, a sink and a semi-functional toilet, the gunshot sounded more like a bomb going off. The bathtub vibrated from the aftershock, and I ducked down as far as I could go in case of any more shots, however it was only the single bullet that hit my father. The death grip on my neck was lifted, and my lungs relished in the receival of oxygen. Mangled gasps emitted from my taped lips. A sob burst from my throat and was absorbed by the duct tape, my arms trembling in their achy place behind my head.

"Freeze!" a man shouted from the doorway. I was too busy taking in nose-fulls of air to sit up and see who it was, but my heart was beating fast with both adrenaline and relief that someone was actually saving me from another lesson. My shoulders shook with exhaustion as I sobbed into the duct tape across my mouth, and I stared wide-eyed at the police officer that hurled my father off of me and onto the tile floor.

Handcuffs were taking out of his belt. I screamed at him to stop, but I was pleased to see him cuffing my father and not my ankles. My eyes stared at my savior, who briefly disappeared from my point of view inside the bathtub. I heard the teeth being tightened on Dad's wrists, and a sigh left the officer. He walked back to the tub and knelt down, his fingers softly and slowly prying the tape off my mouth. "Hey, sweetie," he said calmly as he took his own handcuff keys and unlocked my bonds.

The second I was free and able to speak again, I crawled to the other side of the bathtub on my hands and knees. I brought my knees to my chest, and hugged my shins, my skinnier than normal body trying to cover every inch of my otherwise naked counterparts. I rested my chin on my kneecaps, and looked up at the officer. "C-can you help me?" I croaked, my voice croaky from lack of use besides screaming and crying.

The officer's dark eyes softened with sorrow. I noticed the slight change of his behavior from how he stood; cautiously and carefully as if I would spring toward him and slash his throat open or something. His positioning of his legs also told me he was skeptical of me. Who finds a teenage girl chained in a bathtub with nothing on but her bra with duct tape over her mouth, while her father raped her while she was unconscious? I could tell this police officer was off duty by the way his hands were on his hips as if this were nothing but a routine call. Who called him? I wondered, and heard the ceramic tub squeak deeply as the officer stepped inside and sat, positioning his body like mine. He lowered his knees a bit, and simply stared at me.

"I'm Tony Angeli. I'm from the New Hope police station, and I was heading back when I got a call from an anonymous person saying there was a commotion in your house? Is . . . is this going on regularly?"

All I did was stare back at the man. I poked my head up and looked at my handcuffed father, his back facing me. I could tell he was talking to himself by how his head twitched to the left like he were shaking something off, like a comment or something. Suddenly his head craned and those piercing eyes stared at me.

"You're dead. You hear me, Elizabeth? Say one word and I'll shoot you! You hear me? DEAD!" he screeched and began writhing in the handcuffs. His back arched and bent at unnatural angles, which sent a shriek from my throat. I scrambled back towards the furthest end of the tub from the limited amount of space I had, however my hand slipped on a more recent patch of blood that had to be from my leg that Dad had cut a few months ago with his razor blades.

I felt Tony's hands on my forearms. My skin expected the painful slap of his hand or the strong punch to my cheek. Most of my face was already bruised, with one of my eyes beginning to swell from Dad's various punches to my face. I wasn't exactly beautiful, in all fairness. Only a handful of boys from Silver Oak had asked me out during my first year of high school, but now that I was a sophomore, the only thing I cared about was getting scholarship money so I could get away from here. I was already a champion on the dance team, and not to mention one of the greatest forensics speakers Silver Oak has ever had.

Nobody at school knew about the abuse. I'd come to school with a split lip or a swollen eye and say I got in a fight over the weekend. A few teachers had questioned me about my lack of good grades that they knew I was capable of. "I'm just tired of everything," I'd tell them in a monotonous voice. It was a long shot—a shot in the dark, honestly—but it was the only response that didn't need that much explanation. Some teachers asked about my family, and how things were at home. "Things are fine. I'm just not getting enough sleep."

My many weeks of sleepless nights left me turning into an insomniac, where the only thing that occupied my exhausted brain was what my father would do to me next. I had nightmares during the nights where I could actually close my eyes and not worry about a hood flying over my head when I was eleven. The distorted image of my father without his jaw and the whole nine that I had seen before disturbed me the most. I had no idea where the image at come from, and I had suspected I made it up one night during one lesson.

The floor and walls of the bathtub disappeared as Tony lifted me out of it with ease, taking off his thick jacket and wrapping it around me, zipping it up to my collarbone. My feet stayed glued to the cracked tile floor when the officer put me down, my eyes unmoving to my father's slumped figure. I couldn't tell if he was breathing, but the wicked thought that he was dead sent giddiness to overtake me. I didn't need to feel the seemingly reassuring pat on my shoulder from Tony that it was alright to move. I found my body yanking away from the officer's touch, with tears stinging my eyes again.

It was at this point in my miserable life that I expected the scolding that I knew would come from my father. I waited for him to start screaming in that loud voice that emotionally scarred me when I was little. I wanted to scream at him to stop, be quiet and leave me alone. Those words haunted me like the deep scars that crisscrossed my back like trophies. I could still feel the glass slicing into the skin, tearing away the flesh that was covered in bruises and lumps from past abuse.

This single, haunting moment in my life sent me staring at the police officer. Despite my soreness between my legs, I managed to take a step forward. I was raised to be submissive in the eyes of a man from the verbal abuse my father threw at me. Each step I took I found myself slowly spiraling back into that place I created when I wanted to get away from it all. I didn't have a name for it, however I found myself referring it as Nothing. The place was simply filled with nothing, and it was somewhere that I went to when I wanted to feel nothing; no pain, no voices screaming at me to obey and be a good girl.

I went back to Nothing, and found myself standing in an open field somewhere in what I was confident was Wyoming. A plain white dress replaced the jacket, and a light breeze fluttered the skirt behind me. My dark hair flew back behind my shoulders, and it was there that I could smile without pain being behind it. Smiling behind that wall of bruises and bloodshed was what I did when people, strangers, talked to me. Smiling at home was never a good thing. Dad tried his damnedest to diminish every ounce of happiness that I had.

There were times when I thought back on my family before the abuse. The memories were fragments in my mind, but the thoughts of painlessness and hearing the words, "I love you," seemed to be too much for me to handle. Sometimes I'd break through the cobwebs in my mind and actually see how I was treated before I was six years old. My mother, whose name had long disappeared from me, would fret about my safety when I was playing in our backyard of our then house in Bristol.

"Don't have too much fun," my mother would say with a smile. It was one of the things I remembered my mom saying to me. I hardly had a mental picture of what she looked like. All I remembered was what she smelled like. It was a combination of lotus flowers and what reminded me of a fresh spring morning. At times I could remember what Mom felt like, however it fled my mind seconds later.

The thoughts and feelings I had towards my father were flowing through my head like a wildfire. My sore legs finally stopped in front of Tony, where I felt him squatting so he was eye level with me. I stared at him for what felt like the longest time, simply taking him in like an animal watches its prey. He couldn't be more than thirty-five. A shallow patch of dark whiskers covered his entire jaw and part of his upper lip. I looked at him intently, my hands lifting and burrowing themselves inside the pockets. It always felt like I had to do something with me hands. It didn't help that I was supposed to obey a man's orders, not retaliate or rebel like the lessons I was taught.

I wanted to fight back. I wanted to beat the living hell out of my father, but my hands couldn't bring themselves to harm him when he could kill me.

One minute I felt myself giving in to the things I was given, the things that had been done to me for ten years. I allowed my head to hang and rest against my collarbone, and I felt myself falling to my knees with tears streaming down my face.

The next minute I felt arms being wrapped around me. My body stiffened, the tightness being so foreign to me. Never in my life had I been hugged like this, with this much affection and sorrow. The only hugs my mother gave me were quick ones when I was off to work. Dad never hugged me, not in my life. For a sixteen-year-old who has never been hugged for longer than two seconds, the hug Tony gave me almost made me scream and shove him away.

Tony pushed himself away from me and squatted with a faint smile. I still stared at him, but the tightness from the hug still encased me in a shell of wonder. "You . . . you hugged me. Why?" I asked, and the small chuckle that left Tony almost made me take a step back in fear. Men were dominating. That chuckle made me tense even more than the hug. I waited for him to lash out, his hand to strike me down and tell me to do as he says. My foot shifted backwards a bit, and I pressed my hands to my chest.

The small peck of a kiss on the top of my head made me shudder.

"I'm sorry you've been going through this. You remind me of my daughter, Alyssa. She's tough, like you. She's around your age, too. Hold up, how old are you?"

I blinked and felt a tear slip down my cheek. "S-sixteen," I answered.

The officer's amused expression faded. His face softened with sorrow again. There was that emotion: sorrow. I didn't understand what it meant exactly. A sixteen-year-old girl not knowing what it meant to be sorry for someone seemed to shock Tony. His eyebrows rose a bit, causing three small wrinkles to fold on his forehead. "I'm not here to hurt you. You know that, right?" he said, reaching out to take my hand. I pulled it out of his reach. I watched him take his police badge off his uniform and reached out to give it to me. "We don't hurt people. We help them. Have you heard of officers hurting people?"

I shook my head. "No, s-sir," I muttered politely. Wiping a tear that threatened to spill over, I sniffed. "Frankly, every person I've been in contact with has hurt me. I can't trust anybody. You . . . you'll hurt me like everyone else. They always do."

"'They'?" Tony repeated with curiosity in his voice. The tone made me take another step back. If it weren't for my keen sense of hearing, I would've mistaken the curiosity for greed. Men were all the same. They were obsessed people with one thing on their mind: domination. Since the beginning of time, men have been idolized more than women, and the it was the women that were taught into submission in the presence of a man. "Who's they?

I laced my fingers together and covered my chest slightly. I tried to make it was nonchalant as possible, but Tony noticed and took a step back with his hands up, adding an "It's okay," look on his face. I felt connected to this man, my savior. It wasn't one of those connections like being soul-bound like in romance novels. I didn't feel attracted to Tony, I had seen the wedding ring on his ring finger when he picked me up out of the tub. There was an aura about Tony that made trust spark within me. Lies were common with me, and the pain I'd suffered through had made trust completely dissipate between everyone I knew.

I looked up at Tony. "Men. They only want domination. My mother taught me that . . . but he made sure she didn't tell me anything else," I said, and closed my eyes when Dad coughed behind me. I expected his ice-cold hand to wrap around my ankle and drag me down back to hell. I wasn't a religious person; my family was brought up as atheists.

But I truly believed my father was a demon, sent from the Devil himself to torture me for pleasure.

Tony motioned towards the door. He didn't say anything about my comment. I didn't know if it was sexist, but from the paled expression the officer gave me, I immediately felt . . . regretful. This feeling was foreign to me, too. Dad had told me that he regretted nothing as he beat me or forced me to do things no teenage girl should do to a man that old. I shuddered and watched Tony leave the bathroom after saying with a smile, "Let's get you out of here, shall we?"

I sent a glance to my unmoving father. I could see his back rising and falling to my disappointment. I looked at the doorway that once contained my savior. A flutter of my heart made me take a nervous gulp of air. I was free. Truly and utterly free from Dad. A smile couldn't help but crawl to my lips as I walked out of the bathroom. Tony stood where the bloodied, shattered beer bottle lay on the floor. The massive cut on my head throbbed now that I thought about it, and my hand went up and touched it. Flesh and muscle squished beneath my fingers, and the tips dripped with blood when I looked at it.

Tony's eyes scanned my living room. I could tell he couldn't believe what he saw, but I simply shrugged when he inhaled to ask about the broken beer bottles or the coffee table stained with my blood.

A flush of embarrassment made my cheeks warm. I glanced down at my legs, still bare from what my dad did to me. I tapped Tony's hand, which made him stop and look at me. I pointed towards the short hallway that led to my bedroom and then stuck a finger at my legs. Tony nodded and waited as I ran to my room.

It wasn't really haunting to go back into my room. It was the only place that I could go to get away from my father. As I passed the door frame, my eye caught where Dad had broken my door plenty of times when he was . . . needy, let's say. A shudder ran through me as the dresser drawer that held my underwear and pants was chipping when I brushed it off. I rummaged through until I found some athletic boyshorts and sweatpants. I threw them on with soreness still between my legs, but managed to get them on regardless of the throbbing pain. I grabbed my phone, charger and favorite pillows and blanket, and finally ran back out to Tony after grabbing my inhaler.

When he and I walked out of the front door and down the steps, a police car was parked in the gravel driveway. Its sirens were silent, but the lights were sending hues of red, white and blue on my house and the grass that wasn't already dead.

It's been awhile since I'd been outside; at least seventeen hours. It was a Friday afternoon, so I wasn't expected to go to school tomorrow, however I was caught once or twice trying to sneak into the school to some of my teachers' surprise. My grades weren't that great either.

Tony shielded his eyes with his hand. The afternoon sun was setting, to my shock, and I decided to stick close to my savior. One police officer got out of her car and left the radio on with a classic rock song playing softly. She was taller than Tony, which meant she was much taller than her. Her blond hair was streaked with hues of brown cutting in the swept locks that spiraled up in a ponytail, and her piercing green eyes were mesmerizing. I found her quite good-looking despite the seeming twenty year age difference.

"Thanks for coming, Kylie," Tony said and shook his partner's hand, I guessed.

Kylie looked at me with a smile. "Hi," she said. I moved closer to Tony. She reminded me of my mother. I watched Tony's partner squat and take my hand, her thumb running over the calloused skin. "You're safe with us. What's your name, sweetheart?" There was that word: sweetheart. I whimpered a bit and ducked behind Tony like a scared child. I felt ridiculous doing so, but that damned word would haunt me for the rest of my miserable life.

"Her name's Elizabeth," Tony stated, his voice strictly business.

I closed my eyes and let out a low groan. "Eliza," I whispered to myself. When silence ensued amongst the two officers, I raised my voice a bit. "I go by Eliza." When my eyelids opened, I saw an innocent look on Kylie's face.

At first I shook with fear. This look the woman was giving me made my breath shudder and my chest start to close. What if these people are fake? What if they were sent by my father or some of his cruel friends? The only friends he had were in prison. I hadn't heard of the things they did, or if it was targeted on only women or teenage girls such as myself. At this point I'd believe anything about these two police officers, whether they were real officers or not.

Kylie nodded sincerely. She straightened to her full height, stretching her arms well above her head with a sigh. "Let's get you to the station and we can figure out what to do from there, okay? How long has it been since you've eaten?"

I had to think about it. Sometimes my body was too focused on when the next beating would be and ignore my hunger. My water intake was completely fine; it was food that I craved then and there. My hand lifted to my stomach, and I could feel it growl beneath my palm. I let out a shuddered breath and shook my head. "I don't remember," I said with tears pricking my eyes once more. "Probably not for a week. I can't really afford lunch at school."

A soft gasp left Tony's partner. Her hand reached out and took mine, leading me towards the police car. "There's a Dairy Queen on the way back," she commented as she ducked in the driver's seat and shut the door with a slight slam. Tony decided to sit in the back with me, which made me more uncomfortable than ever.

Cold fear racked up and down my spine. I didn't know if I should open the door to my left and run back into my house. Sixteen years of stolen childhood was spent in that house. I was once happy in that damned house despite the abuse. For the first six years of my life I was happy. My father was already an alcoholic, however my mother brought the happiness out of both her husband and child. I set my stuff between me and Tony, and with a shaken sigh, shut the door to the back seats.

As the car backed out of the driveway, I couldn't help but stare at my house as they drove away. I grabbed my pillow and hugged it to my chest. I felt Tony's eyes on me as they drove through endless plains and farmland just waiting to be harvested. I didn't know very many of my neighbors, then again my family wasn't a very social type of people. Even I didn't have that many friends both at home or in school. The only people I got along with were the outcasts.

I couldn't help but shake in my seat. I remembered to put the seatbelt on, and when it clicked, I squeezed my eyes shut when I felt the cold metal of Dad's belt slamming into my back. I thought I heard it snap behind me, but I took a moment to breathe in the coffee that stenched the car. I frantically reached in my pile of things for my inhaler and brought it to my lips when I found it. I pressed on the cylinder and took a deep inhale, sighing with relief as I felt my lungs relaxing.

The radio in the front of the car shrieked and a voice spoke. I couldn't remember what the voice said, but I remembered tuning it out as best I could by humming Halestorm's "American Boys". For some reason that song always calmed me down when I was nervous or scared. An acquaintance made me listen to the band and I couldn't stop after that.

Endless countryside grew boring after thirty minutes. There were a few times in that long car ride to Phoenixville, probably, that I saw horses grazing in their paddocks, and it was during those times where my heart skipped a beat. Horses have always fascinated me at a young age. To me they were powerful creatures bred with the element of beauty crossed in their genes. Since a young age I'd wanted to own one and become a successful breeder, and probably a side job as a journalist.

I rested my head against the window with my knuckles on my cheek. A sigh left my nose and left a cloud on the window. I brushed it with my fingertip and rubbed it around the skin, and soon the small stain on the window faded as the car's engine revved. My eyes scanned the intricate grids of farmland, each row of corn making me hungrier by the minute. I counted the amount of trees that I felt like I passed more than twice, and when that failed, I counted how many horses I saw. It was mid-afternoon, so by at least two-thirty, I had a total of sixty horses. Philadelphia likes horses, I thought with a small chuckle.

The cruiser stopped at the promised restaurant fifteen minutes later. It was a long time since I ate at Dairy Queen, so I was grateful for Kylie to get me some food out of the goodness of her heart. My own heart swelled when I received the chicken basket complete with fries and Texas toast. I had insisted to have soda, but it was in both Kylie and Tony's best opinion that I have milk instead. For all they knew, they said, your father could've starved you.

They got me there.

By the time I got there, I was eating the last bite of my chicken tender. I swallowed it quickly and gathered my things from next to me and nearly toppled out of the car into the parking lot, curses flying from my mouth. Kylie raised an eyebrow at the choice of profanity, and seemed somewhat impressed by my expensive vocabulary. I flashed a smile at the officer.

"Whoa," I muttered when I looked at the police station. It was more of five giant squares than a building, however the lush and pretty landscaping made it stand out somehow. Beige bricks made up most of the building with a much darker tone made up the entrance of the police station. Small shrubs and plants lined beneath the windows settled into the beige brick, and I caught my reflection in a few of the windows. It was there that I got a good look at myself. I hugged Tony's jacket tighter around my chest as if there was someone watching me behind the glass. I let my hand squeak around the bollard light that lined the sidewalk and guarded the station from getaway cars, it seemed like.

After a moment of silence as the three walked, I asked, "Is anybody going to pick up my father?"

A soft sigh left Kylie. "I dispatched an officer over there. I'm the captain of Whiteheart, the name of this station. Tony, here, is the lieutenant."

I nodded and smiled. The doors opened on their own, to my surprise, and a blast of cool air sent the long dark hair flying past my shoulders. I couldn't remember when my last haircut was.

Officers in uniform milled about the foyer of the police station. Elevators dinged nearby, and doors slammed all around me. With each slam a jolt of fear ran up and down my spine as I felt warmth on my back. I knew it was Tony by the soft pat on my shoulder. There was that contact again that I hasn't experienced before. I shuddered at the contact, and felt my bare feet sliding on the shiny floor. I began walking in front of Tony, and found myself shuffling into a room that looked an awfully lot like an interrogation room.

I forgot how I got there, but I settled into the single table and chair in the center of the room. The chair creaked beneath my weight, and I jumped at the slight slam Tony's hand made as he grabbed another chair leaning against the wall and tossed it across from me. He settled down into the chair and smiled meekly at me.

"So," he began with a wider smile than before, "can you tell me when all this happened?”