Chapter 1 The Static and the Sock
To Leela Marshall, the house at 302 Henry Avenue was not a home. It was a box with four walls and a roof. Just somewhere to lay her head down at night until she got up the courage to leave. She had a duffle bag packed and had told her best friend Ginny Lynn, that if she ever got up the nerve she was leaving and never looking back.
As she sat at the kitchen table, staring at what was left of her sandwich, she thought to herself there has to be more than misery and pain out there. She couldn't live like she was invisible. She had done it her whole life and she was beginning to feel like she was really fading away.
On the other side of the kitchen table sat her mother, Helen. She was drinking again and was already on her third drink of the evening and it had only just started.
Leela could feel the static building in the room. It always did when her mother started her drunken nonsense. It was so bad that she would have rather had the yelling and screaming. She hated when the air felt electrically charged. It always meant something was going to happen, she just never knew what. The glare she was getting from her mother from across the table was doing nothing to defuse the situation.
Helen sat swirling her drink and just staring at Leela. She had never wanted children. She had wanted an escape from her abusive father and she had been looking for a way out of her parents house. That was when Frank Marshall had sauntered into the restaurant where she was a waitress.
It had started out slow, dates and flowers. He was her savior or so she thought. But then Helen had gotten pregnant and Frank did what he thought was the right thing and they rushed to get married. That's when Helen realized she had stepped from the frying pan into the fire.
Frank was not the same man she met after they married. He wasn't the savior she had been looking for. He wanted a spotless house, a hot meal on the table three times a day and he wouldn't let her leave the house. He said she had gotten pregnant now she could stay home and take care of it.
That's when the baby she was carrying had become a lock for Helen and Frank was no longer the savior she had been looking for. He was just a slightly different version of her father. The man she tried to get away from now seemed like a safe haven but her father told her she got herself into the mess she could figure out a way to get out of it.
Leela had heard the story so many times she could repeat it by heart. Her mother had gotten drunk on more than one occasion and spat the story at her. Making her feel as crappy as she did.
Tonight was no exception.
"Would you stop staring at me?" Helen snapped at her, raising her glass to her mouth to take another drink. "You remind me so much of his mother. She was a bossy old cow." She stared at her. Her gaze filled with so much hatred that Leela couldn't help but flinch. "Maybe that's why I hate you so much. You are so much like her. Never could stand her either."
"I'm not staring." Leela said quietly. She sat her sandwich down on her plate. "I'm trying to finish my sandwich so I can go to bed and get out of your hair."
"You do that," Helen slurred. "You are just taking up space." She took another long drink from her glass.
Leela braced for it. For the one comment that hurt the most. The one she couldn't bring herself to become numb to.
"The day I found out I was pregnant; I should have walked right out that door had an abortion and kept on walking. Never looking back." Helen told her. "Thinking if I had his baby it would make Frank a softer man. Boy was that wrong. All it did was trap me and you were the lock on the door."
Leela quit poking at her sandwich. She had heard it all before but tonight felt different. The hairs on her arms started to stand straight up and her head felt all prickly. "We've had this same discussion so many times." She looked up from her sandwich. "If you hated it here so much, why did you never leave? Why stay?"
"How was I supposed to leave? With what money? What life? I gave it all up for you!"
She met Leela's stare. "I should of never have had you."
Leela's whole body shook, followed by the buzz of burning hot light bulbs, then crash. Every light bulb in the kitchen exploded. Everything from the light on the range to the light in the refrigerator. Broken glass rained down from the exploding bulbs. Putting the kitchen in the dark.
Helen didn't even flinch. She just held up her glass, smiled, looked at it and then took a drink.
"What the f*ck is going on in here?" Frank Marshall yelled as he came down the hallway. "God, I just replaced all these bulbs!" His gaze went straight to Leela. She was trying her best to hold back the tears that blurred her vision.
"Why don't you ask your daughter? It's always your daughter." Helen mumbled into the dark.
Frank looked from his wife to his daughter and shook his head. "Deal with YOUR D*MN DAUGHTER!" He stomped back down the hallway toward his bedroom. "I have to work in the morning," he sounded tired, fed up and just done. "And for God's sake clean up that mess." He entered the bedroom and slammed the door.
The house was quiet. Leela wiped a tear from her face. She decided then that this was the last time she would do this. The last time her parents would put her through the emotional turmoil.
"Well, Leela he said deal with you," Helen grabbed her bottle and glass. "But honestly, you're old enough to take care of yourself. So, do whatever you got to do. I'm done." She stood up from the table and without another word, walked out of the room.
Leela sat in the dark, surrounded by the broken glass. She knew that she had caused the shattered light bulbs, she just didn't know why or how.
She made her way to her bedroom. She sat on her bed and waited.
As soon as she heard her mother's snoring, she got up from the bed and grabbed her purse and what little else she wanted from this place, none of it from her parents. She took only what she had bought for herself.
She bent over and reached underneath her mattress. At first, she didn't find what she was looking for, then her hand found the sock she had been stuffing with her tips from the waitress job she had at the very diner her mother had said she was waitressing at when Frank came waltzing in and swept her off her feet.
She took one last look around. She wasn't sad. Not really. It never really been a home anyway, just a place to lay her head and to take the blame for everything wrong in Frank and Helen's life.
Leela made her way down the hall, making sure not to step on any loose boards. She knew where all the squeaky boards were and made her way around them. She didn't want to explain to them where she was going or why. She didn't want them to know anything until she was miles away.
She made her way to her car. A rusty Toyota Corola that she had scrimped and saved for and bought all on her own. The only thing she had she could truly call her own.
She sat staring at the house one last time. She had packed a duffle bag and kept it in the trunk. This day hadn't been an if it came it was when it came. She knew days ago that this was coming.
She started the car and backed out of the driveway. She didn't even look in the rearview mirror as she drove away. She knew she wouldn't see anything but an dark house and bad memories.
When she reached the end of the street, she turned out onto the main road. She had no idea where she was headed. She just knew she had to get away. She didn't know a soul outside of the town.
But as she held onto the steering wheel, she knew without a doubt that she wanted to go west. No not wanted to, needed to. She didn't bother to question the feeling. She didn't have any other plan so she hit the gas and let the feeling guide her into the unknown.
