Start A War

Prologue

Bliss

I was always hungry. 

Some days it wasn’t so bad, and the gnawing feeling in the depths of my stomach could be ignored while I watched cartoons on the tiny TV in our trailer. Some days the bugs that bit at my skinny legs and crawled through my matted hair were more annoying than the ache of an empty tummy. 

But some days, normally the ones where Axel hadn’t come by for a while, the hunger was all I could focus on. It took over everything else and couldn’t be held off with water or cartoons or staring out the trailer window at other kids walking to and from school. 

Those were the days I searched the trailer cupboards silently, even though I knew they were all bare. 

Those were the days I crawled around the floor, trying to hold in my whimpers because what good would crying do? Better to just search the cracked linoleum for any scrap that might have been dropped from a previous meal when Mom or Jerry had been feeling generous. 

Those were good times. When Jerry came home, his eyes clear instead of their usual red. When Mom wasn’t passed out in her bedroom, and Axel wasn’t at school or working. When the smell of fried chicken with mashed potato and gravy permeated the air, covering up the rotting stench of mold and dirt and body odor.

I lived for those days, when the four of us gathered at the table, and for a moment, I could pretend we were a real family. 

Even at five, I knew not all families were like ours. Some were happy. Some had food all the time. Some had parents who loved them and took care of them. The moms brushed their daughter’s hair and kissed their chubby cheeks and told them they loved them. 

Across the trailer, my mother lay spread-eagled across her unmade bed, her hair a knotted, matted mess around her head. I knew better than to interrupt her when she was sleeping. 

I knew better than to hope she’d care that I was starving. 

I tried to sleep, even though darkness had only just fallen and I wasn’t tired. At least when I was asleep, the pain all went away. 

I might have drifted off but it didn’t last long. Jerry’s boots pounded on the metal steps, waking me instantly. He jerked open the trailer door, letting it swing back with a crack that was loud enough to wake the entire park. 

“Kim! You fucking ho. Where the hell are you?”

I curled slowly, tucking my knees to my chest, trying to make myself small. 

Even though he wasn’t looking for me, I knew that tone in his voice. It was only a matter of time before his rage would extend to me too. 

I slipped beneath the pile of dirty blankets on my bed and hoped if I stayed still enough, he wouldn’t notice my breathing. I left only the tiniest of gaps so I could peer out, because it would not be smart to take my eyes off Jerry when he was like this. 

He stormed into my mother’s bedroom, his chest heaving with rage, spit collecting at the corner of his mouth. “Kim! Is this where you’ve been all day, you lousy bitch?”

She didn’t move from the bed. 

The urge to be helpful came over me, ready to offer up information on Mom’s whereabouts. Not that there was really much to tell. Because she had been there on her bed, ever since she’d stumbled in early this morning.

“Tired, Jerry,” she mumbled. “Leave me alone.”

For a big man, Jerry could move fast when he wanted to. His fingers speared into her dirty dark hair and yanked her head back. 

The scream she let out cut right through me, locking up all my muscles. 

“You’re tired?” he yelled. “You’re tired? You’ve done nothing but sleep all day, you lazy cow. While I worked to pay your goddamn bills.”

“I worked last night!”

He let out a harsh laugh. “Bullshit. Where’s your money then?”

She struggled to her feet, but her eyes were more focused than I’d seen them in days. She glared at him with sparks of anger dancing in her gaze. “It’s my money, and I ain’t giving it to you.”

He let out a roar of anger as he slammed her up against a wall. “I own you, bitch! Anything you earn is my money. Did you forget that? Did you forget that your dirty, used-up cunt always belongs to me, no matter how many men pound it? Do I need to remind you?”

The crack of his hand across her face and her responding cry had me closing up the gap in the blankets so I didn’t have to watch anymore. I plugged my fingers in my ears, but there was no keeping out the sounds from my mother’s bedroom. 

When the blanket ripped off me, it wasn’t a surprise. 

I didn’t even scream. I just squeezed my eyes shut tighter. 

He pulled my hand away from my ears, and I knew better than to fight. 

“Hey, Bliss. Do you want some Goldfish crackers?”

My eyes flew open. 

Axel’s gentle face loomed over me, a lighthouse in a stormy sea. 

Those words…they meant one thing every time. He thought I didn’t know but I did. Whenever Axel asked me if I wanted Goldfish crackers, it meant, You’re in danger, you need to go hide.

I threw myself at him, my little arms hugging his neck and holding on tightly. 

He squeezed me back, scooping me up and clutching me to his chest. “Come on,” he whispered. “Let’s get you out of here.”

We slipped past Jerry and Mom in the bedroom, and I tried not to see what he was doing to her. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before, but I shuddered at the dead look in her eyes as she watched us over Jerry’s shoulder. 

It was like she didn’t see us. 

Like we didn’t exist. 

Or like she just didn’t care. 

I turned away. I’d be back here tomorrow, and nothing would have changed. But for tonight, I’d been granted a reprieve in the form of my big brother and my favorite snack. 

Axel carried me down the stairs and into the cool night air. Darkness wrapped around us, but a circle of glowing orange-red light pierced through the dim. I eyed it until we got closer and then realized it was the end of a cigarette. 

“Jesus, fuck,” Nash gritted out, dropping the smoke to the ground and stepping on it. “They’re really going at it tonight. I could hear every word from all the way out here.”

Axel kept walking, jerking his head for his best friend to follow. “Fucking prick. One day, I’m going to take a baseball bat to his ugly head.”

Nash shook his head as we moved through the darkness. “The guy has a hundred pounds and six inches on you. He’d snap you before you even got to swing.”

Axel didn’t say anything. We all knew Nash was right.

A gangly teenager had no hope against a fully grown man. Especially not one as drunk and mean as Jerry. 

Nash peered over at me, wrapped around Axel like a koala. “You okay, Bliss?”

“Hungry.” That seemed the easiest emotion to pin down when so many worse ones coursed through my body. 

Nash reached over and patted my back. “She’s skin and bones. Fucking hell. We need to get her out of here. Not just for a night. Permanently.”

“I know,” Axel ground out. “I’m trying to talk to her dad.”

“He still got that big place in Providence?”

“Last I heard.”

Nash took a hard drag on his smoke, keeping it in his lungs for a moment before blowing it out with a sigh. “Jerry won’t let her go without a fight. You know he’s looking at her like she’ll be a paycheck in a few years. We gotta get her dad to take her.”

Axel pinned him with a glare. “I fucking know, okay? I know!”

Nash’s mouth pulled into a grim line as he watched over me. But when he took in my big eyes, his expression softened. “Sorry it took us so long to come back this time. But we gotcha two boxes of Goldfish, Blissy girl. And candy too.”

I picked my head up off Axel’s shoulder. “Twizzlers?”

Axel chuckled. “Of course. They’re your favorite.”

Nash nodded in agreement. 

I grinned at him, letting the promise of a belly full of my two favorite things wipe out the memories of my mother’s face and Jerry’s anger. 

Everything was better when Axel and Nash were around. 

We trudged through the woods around the trailer park, going deep enough that the lights no longer touched the darkness, and both boys turned on the flashlights on their cell phones. 

Eventually, their lights bounced over a small green tent, mostly hidden in the thick woods. Some leaves had accumulated on the tough green canvas since we’d last been here, but neither boy brushed them off. Axel dropped me to my feet and told me to wait while the two of them checked the ropes and pegs. 

“It’s held up okay.” Axel stomped a boot down on one of the pegs, pressing it back into the dirt. 

Nash tugged on a rope, tightening it. “She’s a good secret fort. The guy did say it was ex-army. Built to last.”

“He wasn’t wrong. It ain’t pretty, but it’s strong.”

“It is pretty,” I disagreed, finally speaking up. I tugged at the zipper and let myself inside. “It’s the best home I have.”

Axel swore low under his breath. “That’s so fucking tragic I could cry.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but I squealed with excitement over the pink Barbie sleeping bag, nestled between two much larger blue bags. I turned to Nash, eyeing the backpack he carried, as he crawled inside the tent with Axel close behind him. 

I held my hands out expectantly for my treats, saliva filling my mouth at the thought of the deliciousness he held in that bag. 

Axel laughed at my impatience. “Where’s your manners, kid? You need to say the magic password to get those candies.”

I frowned, racking my brain for a password. “Sandwiches?”

Nash and Axel burst into laughter while they settled on their sleeping bags. 

Axel ruffled my hair. “Okay, I was going for please, but sandwiches is a good password too. We’ll work on your manners when you’ve got a full belly.”

Then the two of them pulled out more junk food than I’d ever seen. I was so hungry I would have eaten anything, but they had all my favorite things, and I wolfed down the Goldfish crackers so fast Nash had to thump me on the back when I choked on them. 

I didn’t care. I grinned at him and went straight back to shoving more in my mouth, desperate to get as much in as I could. 

The two of them let me eat, never asking me to share. And when I was finally done, the food washed down with root beer, Axel held up one corner of the little pink sleeping bag he’d found for me. 

I snuggled in. 

The tent was really too small for two tall boys, but neither complained. We lay there in the darkness, the boys talking quietly over my head while I watched them. 

And when Jerry’s deep, angry voice called my name from somewhere in the distance, I only snuggled in farther, safe and hidden between the only two people in my life who actually cared about me.