Chapter 4 - The Silver Stars
A social worker came. Then another officer. They asked careful questions, not just about what happened, but when it happened and how often. I didn’t know how to explain months of fear without sounding ridiculous, so I told them the truth the only way I knew how. “I counted them,” I said. Everyone in the room looked at me. “Counted what?” the social worker asked. I stared at my hands. “The nights.” When Miranda hurt me, I used to wait until she was downstairs or in the shower. Then I would take one tiny silver star sticker from the pack I used for school binders and press it into the back panel of my closet, down low where no one would see it unless they emptied the whole thing. I didn’t even know why I started. Maybe because she kept calling me dramatic. Maybe because I needed something to tell me I wasn’t imagining it.
Dad and Grandpa drove with the officers back to the house while I stayed at the hospital. Later that afternoon, Dad came back alone and sat beside my bed with his eyes red. He was holding the cardboard sheet from the back of my closet. Forty-seven silver stars. Some were crooked. Some were half peeled at the corners. Every one of them marked a night I thought I had survived by myself. Dad couldn’t speak for a long time. When he finally did, his voice was so broken I almost wished he hadn’t. “I walked past your room every day,” he said. “I asked if you were okay, and you said yes. I believed yes because it was easier than noticing no.” I wanted to hate him then, but hate takes energy, and I had used all mine staying quiet. So I just asked, “Are you going to make me go back?” He looked at me like the question had cut him open. “No,” he said. “Never again.”
