"CHOOSE, MOM," Joey said. "Him or us?"
Numb to the bone, I sat on the rickety chair at our kitchen table, pressing a towel to my cheek, and I was holding my breath for two reasons. The first was that my father was less than five feet away from me, and that alone had shut my body down. The second was that I couldn't breathe from the pain. I threw the blood-soaked towel onto the table and turned to the side to try to rest my ribs against the back of the chair, but all I managed to do was cry out in agony as a wave of pain tore through my body. It was as if my flesh had been dipped in gasoline and set on fire. Every inch of my body burned, screamed in protest whenever I tried to take a deeper breath. I was in bad shape, I realized. Something was very wrong with me, and yet I still stayed exactly where I was, exactly where Joey had put me, with not a drop of resistance left in me.
This isn't good. This isn't good at all, Shannon. I couldn't stand to hear my little brothers sobbing, huddled behind Joey. But I couldn't look at them. If I did, I knew I would break. So instead, I focused all my attention on Joey, drew strength from his own courage as he stared hard at our parents and demanded more. As if he was trying to save us from a life none of us had any chance of escaping.
"If you could just calm down for a moment, Joey—" Mom started to say, but my brother didn't let her finish. Furious now, Joey erupted like a volcano where he stood, in the middle of our wrecked kitchen. "Don't you dare try to sweet-talk your way out of this, damn it!" He pointed accusingly at our mother and growled, "For once in your damn life, do the right thing and throw him out." I could hear the desperation in his voice, the last sparks of faith in her fading quickly as he begged her to listen. Mom sat on the kitchen floor, her gaze shifting from one to the other, but she didn't move toward us. No, she stayed right where she was. By his side.
