Knight in Shining Armor 2

"Nice place you got here," he said facetiously. He was standing there wearing long denim shorts with a plain white T-shirt that hugged his figure quite nicely.

Then Danny heard glass and wood breaking in the house. She stood there horrified. Shaking. Why?! Danny thought.

Then one of his friends came out. The guy was shorter than Peter by a couple of inches. He had orange-reddish hair. To go with the Irish look the guy had deep green eyes with a few scattered freckles. He wore denim pants and a plain red T-shirt with a New York Yankees hat.

Peter’s friend said, "This place is crap. You want a try at breaking something in the house, Pete?"

"Yea, watch her,"

"No prob,"

Peter’s friend, Frank, walked towards Danny. She stood there horrified. She knew what Frank had in mind and she wanted to run away but her body didn’t seem to want to move it stood frozen in place.

"Frank!" Peter shouted, "Let’s go.

"Thanks for the sandwich," Frank said, winking.

When they left Danny stood there numb for a minute then remembered the water. Turning it off, she headed inside to see the damage. Everything was a mess.

She was numb with shock but Danny was still capable of cleaning it up. Running to the closet, she grabbed a broom and a mop. Going to the kitchen first, Danny swept everything out the door then she mopped. Leaving the mop outside to dry she rushed to the living room.

It was harder to clean up the living room than the kitchen because of all the wood chips on the ground, but she managed. She cleaned the main rooms that her father would enter, skipping her room to do it later. When she was done, with the rooms her father mostly went to, she stared at her work. The house looked empty.

Sighing, she promised herself to deal with the furniture later. Then she went outside to finish with the laundry. When she was done she heard her father come in and took in the words Frank had said to her, " ‘thanks for the sandwich,’ "

She panicked. Then heard her father shouting out her name. He wasn’t drunk.

She went inside and took her punishment, quietly.

Later, at night, after she had put ointment on herself, as best as she could, she finished hanging the laundry outside. Her father had passed out on the living room floor and she went back inside to clean her room.

When she opened her door she found pictures of her mother ripped up. It was then that the tears started falling. Her twin bed was overturned and her clothing was everywhere.

She didn’t sleep that night and neither did she go to school, work, and to volunteer the next day.

It was Friday and Danny was so happy she sang as she prepared her father’s supper.

Her father left early for work, like usual, so she was so glad to get the mornings all to herself, especially after incidents like the day before yesterday.

Yesterday, she had bought a make up kit to hide the bruising on her cheek. She didn’t like people staring at her, and she didn’t like people talking more about her than they were.

She was also happy because her birthday was but a week away. To think she was all but going to be an adult in one week, she grinned to herself.

After making her father’s supper, she headed out the door, her books in her arms.

She walked a block to the bus stop, wearing a loose wool sweater and an old pair of skinny jeans she had picked up at a thrift store. When she reached the bus stop, still in her cherry mood, she saw Peter show up.

Suddenly, it was hard to swallow. The bus came and she hugged her books closer to herself.

The bus groaned to a stop, opening its squeaky door. Stepping on, Danny put her money in the slot and sat down in the far back, ignoring Peter, who sat in front of her.

She shifted her attention to the window, staring at the beauty that laid out before it. Her mind drifted once again. It drifted to places where grand castles stood, trapping a beautiful princess inside of it waiting for a knight in shining armor to come and save her.

Peter stared at Danny, her blues eyes glazed with a happy look that he had never seen her look before. He felt kind of guilty about what happened two days ago but he couldn’t quite bring up an apology, especially how she froze this morning when she saw him.

Danny snapped out of her thoughts when she felt someone staring at her. Staring straight ahead, her gaze met Peter’s, she blushed then turned her head away.

No one knew, but secretly she had a crush on Peter, but then again sometimes he frightened her that she didn’t know why she liked him at all. It was probably just his looks, Danny had thought.

Then, as she stared out the window she saw a woman. Pale, slender, and beautiful. Mom, Danny thought, then, mom!?

Signaling for the bus to stop, which stopped a few blocks away from the figure of what looked like her mom, she didn’t realize Peter had gotten off too.

She ran back a few blocks waiting to see if the woman she saw was real or not.

What the hell!? Peter thought when he saw Danny getting up. This isn’t the school. Then he decided to follow her to see what she was up to. He hadn’t expected her to run. What is she looking for? Peter thought wildly.

He saw her shudder as she turned to look at every direction. Then she looked at Peter and her eyes got real huge. Her hand flew to her heart and she dropped to her knees.

What the hell is going on? Peter demanded.

Danny didn’t see her anywhere. She looked every which way to see if maybe she had taken a different route when all of a sudden her breathing grew heavier. Then she was falling, her last image was of Peter and then everything went black.

Danny woke to the sound of a monitor beeping continuously. Funny, Danny thought. I would have thought that I had died.

Groggily, she reached for something, but she couldn’t recall what when she saw Peter’s face.

He had been staring at her ever since she had woken up, even before that. She had scared the crap out of him when she went down like that, as if she was dead.

Luckily a nice couple was able to give them a ride to the hospital.

He used to think that Danny was a nerd who lived in a world like nothing bad happened and was someone who was tough. She was tough, but when they put her on the bed in her gown he had seen the welts and scars. Some of them looked new. It looked like her whole body was covered except for her head and hands.

Then when the doctor came out to ask if she had any family, Peter shrugged thinking that if she did then they were one happy family. The doctor also asked him if he knew anything about the welts and scar, Peter shook his head.

Going in to see her, Peter stared at her, dreaming peacefully. A huge pang of guilt hit him and he touched a hand to her face, where a bruise lingered.

A couple days later, as Peter held her hand for the first time, he saw the first response of Danny waking up. Then her eyes drifted and she looked lost.

The first thing that she saw, whom she thought was not likely to show up, was Peter. She wanted to sit up but she was still a little weak and settled back into the darkness.

On her birthday, Danny woke up to see Peter again and sighed deeply.

"You going to stay awake this time?" Peter asked. He looked sleepy and his blond hair was ruffled. Bags had crept under his eyes and he still looked good to Danny.

He was wearing long gray sweatpants with a black muscle shirt. It showed off some of his chest, and Danny blushed at the sight. He had his diamond earring back on his left ear. Which meant that he was single again. I guess he and Katie broke up, Danny thought.

Pushing that thought out of her mind, Danny sat up. "What day is it?" she asked, choking it out as it hurt for her to talk.

"The thirteenth of May," Peter said. He saw Danny’s eyes widen.

"That fast?" Peter thought he heard her mumble.

Danny grabbed the tubes stuck onto her and pulled them off. The monitor stopped beating.

"Where are my clothes?" Danny asked, oblivious to the fact that her arms were showing and her shins.

"Danny?" Peter said, not sure how to start. "Your dad abuses you, doesn’t he?"

Her head snapped up from where she was trying to look for her clothes. She stared at him. Then she realized her arms were showing and that he had seen them.

"I don’ know what you mean?" Danny lied.

"Dammit, Danny! Don’t you lie to me! The doctors had seen them all so I’m not the only one who suspects this,"

"What’s there to tell you, Peter? That I’m poor as hell? That it’s not my fault my father beats my up because I can’t do things right? That I have to be cursed with this heart condition?" Danny demanded, tears streaming. "You never cared if I had any feelings and now that you realize I do you want to learn all about me? I never wanted to be close to people for a reason, so that they didn’t have to bother with dealing with me. It would hurt too much to like them back because I don’t deserve that friendship."

"You shouldn’t be out of bed," Peter said, just for something to talk about, as she sobbed. "The doctors said that you’re to die unless you get a heart transplant. "

"I’d take that chance of dying, Peter. This world is better off without me anyway," Danny said spotting clothes on a chair. Wiping her tears away, Danny grabbed her clothes and went to go get change, the only problem was that Peter was there, and she didn’t want to go out into the bathroom.

Peter sensed her problem and turned around. "You know the doctors won’t let you go

when—" Peter was cut off by a yelp. Turning around, Peter saw a yellow liquid oozing out of Danny’s back. Danny was continuously trying to push the sweater down, but it kept pushing against and oozing welt.

On instinct, he went up to her and touched her back, lightly. Danny nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt a warm hand touch her naked back.

"There’s stuff leaking out," Peter said. Danny panicked, taking her head out of the sweater.

"Wipe it. Get it off. Hurry before a doc—" The door opened and the doctor came in, clipboard in hand, staring as the liquid ran down Danny’s back.