The minutes turned to hours as I watched the sun slowly creep over the mountains out my bedroom window. I was exhausted, but determined not to sleep. My body was on alert to everything around me, refusing to let me close my eyes, even for a second. Things could not be expected when you closed your eyes, and I had to be aware of everything at all times right now. The only thought that had been crossing my mind the last four hours had been me praying silently to myself that he didn’t come back for a second round.

Hours passed, and I continued to lay there on my bed, body still tense. Even the slightest creak from outside my locked bedroom door or the wind rustling the trees outside, sent me into panic mode. I felt like I was losing it as I listened to the tick tock of my watch somewhere in one of the still unpacked boxes cluttering my room.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Ever so faint, but just audible enough my oversensitive hearing could pick it up.

Then a new noise caught my attention. Upstairs the sound of my father’s alarm clock cut through the near silence, sending me jolting my body upright out of bed. I listened intently, as the alarm clock suddenly stopped, and footsteps came from upstairs. I strained to hear what he was doing. Walking around his room for a few steps, then descending the first set of stairs. Please don’t keep going, I begged him silently. The footsteps paused and I held my breath. They continued again, but not down the stairs descending to my room. I let out a sigh of relief as I heard the front door open and close, my father’s car beep signaling it has been unlocked, and then the sound of him driving off to another twelve hour work day.

I slowly crawled to the end of my bunk bed. Soreness ached in my muscles as I climbed down the top bunk of my bed, to the floor. My fingers fumbled with the lock on my door, shaking terribly as I messed with it. After getting it open, I slowly crept into my bathroom across the hall from my room.

In the mirror, I ran a brush through my hair, wincing with every sweep through it, though there were no tangles. I set the brush down and stared at the reflection of my face looking back at me. Only the last time I saw this face it looked different.

I sighed and opened my makeup bag sitting on the counter and pulled out my almost empty bottle of cover up. I made a mental note to go and buy more later, though I wished I didn’t even need it.
After a full hour, slowly, but surely, the purple and the black faded away. All that was left behind was a girl who was starting to get tired of covering up for her father’s drunken mistakes. Though form the outside, people couldn’t see that. They’d see a smiling sixteen year old girl, who was maybe just a little clumsy sometimes.