In chapter 7, we finally find out what happens with Carley, her mom and Carley's step-father Dennis. In the previous chapter, Daniel makes a comment that really hurts Carley's feelings and sends her running out of the house. With thoughts swirling around in her head, she thinks back to "that night". The night that everything went wrong; or should I say, right. In the beginning of the flashback, Carley is bouncing a basketball in their little shoebox apartment on the first floor (I'm not saying that they lived in one, but this is the way I would imagine their home). Her mom gets angry and annoyed and reaches for the ball, right as Carley moves out of the way. Her mom falls to the ground with an great expression of pain on her face, with her hand grasping her knee and pulling it to her chest. Dennis then comes into the room, looking sad because he got fired from his job (being an Elvis impersonator). When he sees Mrs. Connors, he looks at Carley and says, " What did you do to your mom?" "Nothing compared to what you've been doing to her" Carley said pointing to the bruises on her mom's arm. Dennis ran after her and chased her around the kitchen table. Carley said some mean things to Dennis just to get him more annoyed. She had a master plan, or so she thought. She wanted her mom to leave Dennis but her mom didn't want to. Carley had to show her mom how much of a monster he was. She thought that if Dennis hit her at least once, that her mom would stand up for her. That Dennis would just go away and disappear. But the only thing that disappeared, was Mrs. Connors love for Carley. When Carley ran past her mom, she grabbed Carley's ankle. Carley could see that her mom was in pain, but in a complete different direction, Mrs. Connors motioned to Dennis and says, "Honey, I got her! I got her by the leg!"