He zipped his backpack closed and then sort of hovered, shifting his weight from heel to toe. “You want company?”
I didn’t, but I nodded yes, because he was the only one left and I didn’t want to walk the hill alone.
We started down the sidewalk, not in step, but not not in step either.
The leaves had begun to rot into that sweet, swampy smell they get in November, and my shoes made a slopping sound in the piles.
We walked past the broken fence where the high schoolers smoked after hours, past the shuttered hair salon (OPEN again in March!), past the liquor store where Mom sometimes bought cigarettes if she was too embarrassed to go to the gas station.
I realized, after a block, we hadn’t spoken. I wondered if he regretted it, if he’d rather be trailing behind or walking ahead, instead of beside me.
I tried to remember how to talk, what kids said to each other when they wanted to sound normal. "You ever get in trouble at school?" I blurted.
He shrugged, his shoulders crawling up to his ears. "Sometimes. Once I filled the teacher’s drawer with ants." He looked over, watching to see if I’d laugh.
I did. "Did you get caught?"
He shook his head, and for a second, he smiled, the real kind that showed his teeth. "They never catch me. I’m fast."
We made it to the bottom of the hill, where the houses get smaller, and the shutters sag like tired eyelids. There was a maroon car in the driveway across from ours, the kind that shed paint in big, dramatic flakes, and a pickup truck parked in front of the sardine-tin mailbox.
I recognized the truck; it belonged to one of Mom’s boyfriends, though I wasn’t sure which one. They all looked the same from the knees down: pale, hairy, and ending in dirty white socks.
Caiden stopped at the edge of my yard. There was a little line of crushed cans in the mud, some bent in half like they were screaming. He looked at the house, then at me.
I wanted to say something brave, like, “See you tomorrow,” but I couldn’t make it past the lump in my throat.
I looked at my front door instead, wondering what version of my mother waited on the other side: the silent, shivering one, the screamer, the kind that made every lamp feel too bright and every breath too loud.
Some days she was barely there at all, just a shadow curled on the couch, her hair splayed out over the cushions, and her hand clutching an empty glass like it had the power to save her.
Caiden’s eyes flicked from my house to mine, and for a second, he seemed older than he was, like there was something ancient folded up behind his bruised skin. “It’s not your fault, you know,” he said, voice soft enough that maybe he didn’t even mean for me to hear it.
I didn’t ask what he meant. I think we both knew.
Before I could say anything, he nudged my shoulder, gentlye, and peeled off down the sidewalk, swinging his backpack like nothing in the world could catch him.
I watched him go, the way he wove between the puddles and never once slipped, like he was made for running away.
The sun had started to set, and the world was turning blue and cold around the edges, every shadow stretching longer than the last.
Inside the house, the air was thick with cigarette smoke and something sour, like spilled beer left to rot in a carpet. Lillianwas in the kitchen, hunched over a bowl of soup, her eyes rimmed red from crying or allergies or both.
She didn’t look up. That’s how I knew it was bad.
Down the hall, there was a man’s voice, then the clinking of a bottle, my mother’s sniffles.
Mom was here. Home, but not home, which was worse.
Lillian saw me, and I could tell from the way her eyes went glassy, even though she blinked fast to clear them, that she’d been waiting for me a long time.
She made a little space at the table, nudging the cereal box and the lighter and the bent cigarettes into a pile, so I could sit across from her and pretend we were normal.
For a minute, I just stared at the orange plastic bowl in front of her, watched the greasy soup swirl around the sides every time she moved her spoon.
She didn’t say hi. She just reached for my hand across the table the way you would reach for a cat that might scratch you, and squeezed twice: once for sorry, once for it’s not your fault.
I squeezed back, because Lillian was all I had left.
