Free Ain't No Sunshine by Leslie Dubois

but I knew I had to somehow show what I felt for Ruthie.
    Before I knew what was happening, my feet carried me over to them. I stood there with my fists tightened and my jaw clenched, too conflicted to know what to actually say. I couldn't really kick Bruce's ass for touching my girl. No one knew she was my girl. I think it was time I changed that.
    "Hey, man," Bruce said after a few minutes of me just standing there awkwardly. "What's up?" He held his hand out for me to give him "five" but I just stared at it.
    "Um, Stephen," Ruthie said, trying to snap me out of my trance. "Bruce was just inviting me to a party this weekend." She tried to sound cheery but I think she knew how angry I was.
    "You can come, too, man. I just didn't think you were the partying type, ya ' know. I mean, there won't be any microscopes or anything there." Bruce chuckled. I didn't crack a smile as I stared at him. He straightened his posture and poked out his chest, suddenly aware that he might be in danger.
    "Come on, Ruthie. I'll walk you to class." I grabbed her hand and entwined our fingers together, not breaking my eye contact with Bruce.
    Ruthie didn't move at first. I looked at her and saw how she stared down at our hands with her mouth open. Then she raised her head and looked into my eyes in complete shock. Slowly, her lips curved into a smile. I knew she was happy.
    I pulled her away from her locker and a stunned Bruce Connelly toward her next class.
    Ruthie squeezed my hand as we walked, ignoring the stares and whispers.  "Today 'little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and little white girls as sisters and brothers,'" she said when we reached her art class. She thought the day we dreamed about when we were five years old and listening to Dr. Martin Luther King had finally come. Feeling the tension in the pit of my stomach, I wasn't so sure.
    Maybe it was too soon for me to profess my feelings for Ruthie like this. It might seem like a simple thing, but holding hands like that in the hallway was the equivalent of asking for a marriage license.
    Ruthie sensed my apprehension. She grabbed my other hand and said, "I love you, Stephen. We're going to be okay."
    "I love you, too," I said, staring down at her. But something inside me screamed that we weren't going to be okay.
     

Chapter 15
     
    That night while I was sleeping, my father came into my room and beat me with a broomstick.  I was so disorientated that I couldn't defend myself.  I tried to get up, but I was too weak after the first few blows.  He kept yelling things like "stay away from her" and "never disobey me".  Right before I passed out I thought I heard him call her a nigger. 
    By the time I woke up the next day it was too late for me to go to school.  At first, I didn't remember what happened.  Then I tried to move.  Every inch of me was in pain.  It hurt to even breathe.
    Thankfully, nothing was broken.  I didn't want to have to go to the hospital again.  My mother and I had been there so many times I had lost count. I was tired of the looks.  It was too far away, as well - we never went to the one in town.  We always drove two hours away and went to an emergency room in a town that was even smaller than ours.  We gave fake names and paid with cash.  It was only in the direst situations that we made the effort to go, like right after my father murdered Matthew and my mother was vomiting blood.  I didn't understand what the word miscarriage meant back then.  When I found out, I was more than a little terrified.  That meant that my father had killed two of my siblings and it was only a matter of time before he got to me.  I thought that time had come last night, but I had survived once again. 
    I lay in bed and tried to make sense of it all.  But I couldn't.  There was no logic to it.  All we had done was hold hands in the hallway at school. It was something any two teenagers in love should have been