Beyond Broken

The sound of crushing beer cans hinted at the mood of my…. my house. I wanted to call it my home. But it wasn’t that. My dad’s house wasn’t a home at all. Just four walls with windows. Moss trailed the old rickety planks on the outside. Inside held old, hand me down furniture. It was a three-bedroom house on the outskirts of Riverwood, PA. Nestled on the far corner of our two-acre property.The property where my father’s house sat once belonged to my grandfather. The house too. And when he passed away, he left it to me. But that didn’t sit well with my father.He couldn’t understand why he’d been passed over. He thought that he should be the one to get the land and the house. But my grandfather had other plans.After he realized he’d been left nothing, it didn’t take long for my father to jump into a downward spiral, dragging me for the ride. In spite of my grandfather’s wishes, Rick, my father, stopped upkeeping the house and the land. He no longer mowed the once beautiful lawn or tr

I awoke early the next day. I took a shower, got dressed, and headed out the door. The path to the edge of my property was a long dirt road. And at the end of that road was the garage my father held dearly. I passed by and noticed something different out front this morning.A shiny black motorcycle. It stuck out to me because it was probably the newest machine out there. All the other bikes brought to the garage were almost always older and dirtier. Though it was semi-normal to see a nice vehicle come through his garage, it still shocked me to know people trusted Rick with anything. Let alone something as beautiful as this bike.Seeing it brought back memories of a ride I took with a boy I was once good friends. His father brought him a bike at the tender age of fifteen. He rode it to school every day. One day he gave me a ride home. I remember feeling the wind curving around my body. I was free for all of ten minutes.A reminder of how chained I was to this house snatched me from my

So much for having a good day. Between Angel and Lucas, I had no idea how I would survive the next few months of school. What started off as an amazing day of hopeful job opportunities and a full belly of delectable muffins, turned into a nightmare.Lucas didn’t like me because I was one of the only girls to deny him. I didn’t let him kiss me and turned down his offer of a date. Since then, I became enemy number one. He made the guys think I was a prune and refused to put out. Deemed unapproachable by the end of my sophomore year.Lucas was one of the only people still talking to me by the tenth grade. He was the guy with the cool dad who thought it was okay to buy him a motorcycle. He was the guy who gave me that ten-minute ride. But everything changed after that day between us and now he was the one constantly leading the attacks against me. Angel, on the other hand, hated me, and I could never understand that. She and Lucas dated on and off for the past year, so it’s not like I ke

My eyes searched the many vehicles for the nice black motorcycle I saw when I left for school earlier that day.It had moved since I last saw it. No longer right up front, but off to the side with the other finished cars and bikes. Rick once told me that a row of finished cars represented his money. When the owner came to collect, so would he.The motorcycle was black all over except for a silver plate that read Kawasaki and the grey letters on the side that read Ninja. It stood apart from the other bikes on account of how clean and new it looked.Rick was a good mechanic, but the rumors of his beer-filled life got around and the expensive vehicles stopped coming. Who would trust a drunk mechanic with such a possession?I ran my finger across the beautiful bike as I imagined being free once again. And without any thought, I threw my legs over the leather seat to straddle it. The machine was cold and dead between my legs. I’d worn some blue jean shorts and a black screen-t with some bl

The guy before me couldn’t have been more than a few years older than me. And yet, at that moment, he made me feel like a little girl who just stole a cookie. I panicked. “You’re bike?”“Yes. The black bike that you just crashed.” He reminded me.“Where is she!” Rick’s voice boomed through the halls of the hospital. I didn’t have to guess that he was angry. Everyone on this floor knew he was angry.I squeezed my eyes together. There was no way this could end well. Soon I would be trapped in a room with some random guy and my raging, probably drunk father.“Sir. Can you please keep it down?” I heard a woman say from the hall.“There the little brat is.” Rick stumped inside my room. He commenced yelling. “Do you know how much trouble you are in? And the damage you caused? I am not paying for this. Do you hear me?” He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not paying for this.”I kept my eyes closed and prayed he would stay by the door. That he wouldn’t come near me. And also, that he would calm down.