I felt Gabe’s fist collide with my face, and I struggled to get away, though I could do nothing about it. Gabe glugged down the last of his beer and smiled at my bloody nose and bruised…well, everything. “Please stop.” I begged, but Gabe only hit me again in response to my plea. I shuddered backward; I wanted to do something, anything, but if you were eight years old too and were trying to get away from a jerk that was three times your size, you had no choice.
My mother would have stopped this if she could, but this always took place when she was at work and couldn’t stop it. Gabe...