Jake Felor paced his dark room. It was past eleven and nearing midnight; his sisters still weren’t home.

It was mid-September, just a few weeks into the school year. Lindsey said they had gone to study with another girl from school; she had a test in science coming up this week and Klair wanted to come along. Jake had checked with their teachers to confirm. Everything had seemed to be reliable so he’d walked the girls to their study session and talked to the parents to make sure one of them could get his girls back home safely.

Looking out of his window he saw an empty street, trash littering the surface like the seeds on a strawberry. The streetlight cast a faint glow around the cracked cement, showing just enough that onlookers wished the light was broken.

He was taking three tests the next day and by the looks of it, he would fall asleep for at least one. Where were they? How many times did they have to be told to be home on time?

The girls looked up to Jake; both were proud of their big brother for graduating high school this upcoming school year and both wanted to follow in his footsteps. In a grimy place like this, finishing high school was the equivalent of making it into an Ivy school.

Two figures slowly limped into his field of vision. Not again. Barely containing his rage, he ran out of his room to them, skipping two steps of stairs at a time, almost twisting his ankle on the landing. Why did this always happen? No matter how hard he tried to live a normal life, he always ended up with the burden of taking care of his family. It seemed as if there was no escape.

Grabbing a blanket off of his mother, who was passed out on the couch in the living room, he threw open the front door and ran to the girls. They were holding back tears, or maybe they didn’t have any left, when they saw Jake running towards them any façade of strength cracked.

“Jake!” What was supposed to be a relieved yell was barely a whisper from young Klair.

“Jake… I’m…I’m so sorry.” The whimper from Lindsey broke Jake’s heart. He knew he shouldn’t be mad; he should be sympathetic, but this wasn’t the first time this had happened.

“Inside, inside now. Come on.” He pulled Klair into his arms and wrapped a blanket around Lindsey, supporting her as they made it inside. He kicked the door closed and did his best to prevent the girls from seeing their mother in her vegetative state as he led them into the kitchen.

A framed picture sat in the middle of the kitchen table. It was the three of them, smiling and laughing. Lindsey had grown out her bangs and had an auburn color that went well with her hazel eyes, just a shade apart from Jake’s. Even though Klair usually liked to copy her older sister, she had decided to keep her bangs, her curly blonde hair usually falling into her mint blue eyes. When she laughed Jake thought she looked like an angel, a beautiful little angel. Jake remembered that day. They hadn’t had a camera, but Jake had mentioned how they couldn’t afford luxuries such as professional family photos at work once. The next day his boss told him to bring in Lindsey and Klair for a picture, even printing and framing it for free. The girls had been so excited. They had never had a professional photo taken; well, as professional as Walmart got anyway. Helping Klair sit down jolted him back to the grim reality, such a polar opposite from the joyful picture. Her short, curly blonde hair fell into her pale face.

“Tell me what happened.” He tried to control his anger and use the softest voice he could. This wasn’t their fault, they were the victims. Victims of a wrong life. He just had to believe they were victims, if not, then what else was this? Some sort of cosmic joke?

As he put on the kettle for hot tea and got the medical kit, Lindsey admitted they had decided to walk home, against Jake’s advice. It was one of those rare, sunny days. The van had come out of nowhere, so unexpected that Lindsey and Klair hadn’t had time to run for cover.

Klair started crying. Lindsey apologized again. Their mother started snoring on the couch.

“Listen to me. It’s not your fault; this is not because of you, Klair.” He wiped away her tears.

“Lindsey,” he touched the bruise on her cheek. “The world is a bad place right now, but you are good people. You’re good girls. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you, I’m sorry I can’t keep you safe every minute of every single day, but you girls need to start listening. I told you not to walk home. I warned you! I won’t be around forever to take care of bruises. Someday you’ll leave this place; you’ll have a better life. Right now we have to put one foot in front of the other. You have to stay strong.”

They both nodded. They believed him. He wished he could believe himself.

As he brought the girls tea with generic painkillers and patched up their cuts, he felt hopeless. Not just for their sake, but for his. Their parents had fallen into debt with the local loan sharks and the kids were the ones who paid the price. Most of his classmates were talking about college; he couldn’t bring himself to look at the schools in his area. There was no point; he would never get away form this. It was the third time this month they had been taken from right under his nose. It was nightmare replaying over and over again. When he was finally done with bandaging both of them they looked as if they were war victims, bandages covering most of their bodies. How many more times would this go on? He couldn’t keep holding his family together; they were going to unravel.

He carried each of them up individually to their room. Even though Lindsey said she could walk he could see her wincing with every step and ignored her protests as he carried her up the stairs. He waited outside their room while they changed into pajamas and then tucked them into the bed they shared. Klair was asleep within seconds, but Lindsey called out to him.
“Jake…will this really end? Is there really something better? How could we leave mom and dad?”

Jake looked at his sister. She looked athletic, but she had never done a sport in her short life. Lindsey was the one who usually sat at home reading while Klair loved to go outside and socialize, as much as a sixth grader could socialize, that is. He forced a small smile.

“There is a better place out there, Lin, and you’re going to get there, okay? Let the adults worry about that; just go to sleep, sweetheart. I love you girls more than anything else in this world.”

He kissed Lindsey on the forehead and made sure the window was shut tight, blinds closed. He didn’t close the door, just in case they had nightmares. Making his way downstairs, he had to keep himself from punching the walls. His sisters kept getting into trouble, their father was still recovering, and their mother was nothing resembling a parental figure. And of course he was left to deal with everything.

As Jake walked into the kitchen to clean up, his mother stumbled in. The light was weak, focused mostly on the side Jake was cleaning; it cast stark shadows between them. Suddenly, Jake couldn’t hold in his emotion, he had been holding everything in his whole life.

“I can’t do this forever you know. It’s not my job to be the parent; I have a life too.”

Looking exhausted, his mother sank into a chair at the kitchen table, immersed in grey shadows. The kitchen island counter that separated them seemed to separate not just two people, but two different worlds.

“Jake. You can’t leave. You know you can’t leave. What, you’re just going to give up on your family? So your father is sick, so your sisters get bullied, but we get by. Where are you going to go? You can’t be naïve enough to think a Walmart paycheck will support you.”

“It’s not just bullying and he’s not just sick. It’s not just some rough patch. You’re falling off the edge. I’ve been finding bottles of liquor in the garbage. They’re all empty. It’s no wonder we’re having trouble paying the mortgage.”

His mother’s face turned serious. “You have no idea what it’s been like. This hasn’t been easy on me, either. You don’t have to worry about me; I can handle a drink once in a while.”

“It’s not once in a while! It’s every other night. I’ll make my way, I’ll get a second job, but I’m sick and tired of taking care of every person in this household. I’m sorry, but this is my decision.”

A silence settled over the room. Jake hadn’t planned to say those things. He hadn’t planned to announce abandoning his family, but the words couldn’t be taken back now. As the seconds stretched by, the decision seemed less the result of an impulsive argument and more a plan for his future. It wasn’t stable, it was far from ideal, but it was his. He would finally be able to focus on his life.

Turning away he went to grab his ragged old backpack from freshmen year and packed the essentials he would need. There wasn’t much to take, seeing as there wasn’t much he owned. The necessities included the picture from the kitchen table, from a happier time, a time that was now impossible to return to Jake realized.

“Jake!” His mother had realized this wasn’t just an argument; he was being serious. “Jake you can’t leave!” Her voice was desperate, tears threatening to spill down her cheeks.

“Shh! You’ll wake Klair and Lin.” Jake was worried he’d lose bravery if he had to look his sisters in the eyes and tell them he was leaving.

“They’re all you care about? Aren’t you worried about me? I can’t do this Jake, I’ve barely been able to hang on with you here. If you leave, that’s it. Nothing is going to stay stable, this house will fall apart. Please Jake. Please, don’t do this.”

Jake took a deep breath. It was now or never, he realized. This was it, the turning point, the climax. “The house won’t fall apart. You’re still a parent, just like you were a parent before all this. You raised me didn’t you? When survival is the only option you have left, you survive. You, this house, will survive.”

He was about to leave when he noticed there was another picture he should take with him. This one was in the living room, he cringed as he took a step inside, knowing his mother was watching him. It was a black and white photograph from before. In it his father had his arm around his mother, who was pregnant with Klair and Jake, six, was standing in front of them with his arm around Lindsey who was just two. They were all smiling; none of them had any idea what nightmare awaited them. The sickness, the drinking.

There was a sort of calm that settled in Jake. He didn’t hate his parents; they had fallen to the temptation of escape. He hated the means of escape, the providers of it, but not the victims. It seemed as if his whole family was made up of victims. Almost ready to leave Jake went up to his mother and kissed her on the forehead. Slowly he walked to his father, careful not to wake him. He was laying in a hospital bed, hooked up to different tubes and medicines. His skin looked translucent, as if the person had been in it was slowly fading away. He kissed his father on the forehead and pulled the blanket up to his shoulders. It was his final goodbye.

“Jake, you can’t go! Okay, I’ll admit I haven’t been the best parent, but you can’t leave, your sisters need you. We need you. You can’t just abandon your family.”

“I’m not...I’m not abandoning you. This doesn’t have to be goodbye forever, but it does have to be goodbye for now.”

Jake Felor closed the door of his house that day and started walking away from it all, and he didn’t look back.