But it was like the world decided we weren’t allowed.
By the time Halloween rolled around, and the strip mall costume store ran out of all the good stuff, Mom was already sleeping through mornings, and sometimes nights, stretchedout on the living room rug with a blanket she’d tried to crochet herself.
Lillian called it “hibernating,” which sounded almost cozy, but I knew bears woke up strong.
I don’t remember the first time I noticed the change.
Maybe it was the day Mom left a lit cigarette balanced on the edge of the sink and the bathroom filled up with tacky sweet smoke, or maybe it was the time she forgot to pick me up from after-school reading club, and I stood outside in the dark until the janitor chased me away.
It could have been the way her hands shook, how she’d light a new cigarette before the old one was out, or how the kitchen knives vanished from the drawer and never came back.
Mostly, it crept up slowly, like frost on a window. One day, you could see through it, and then suddenly, you couldn’t.
That winter, the cold got into everything.
The radiators never worked right, so Lillian and I slept in the same bed, arranging our bodies into a tangle of knees and elbows so we wouldn’t fight over blanket rights.
In the dark, we whispered numbers back and forth. How many days until Mom got paid, how many hours she’d been asleep, how many more times we would suffer before we had to tell someone.
We never did tell.
My thoughts drifted to the school day and Caiden’s kindness. He was a nice boy, but it made me nervous thinking about how he might turn mean or weird if I started expecting him to be nice all the time. That was how it worked with grown-ups, so why not with kids? I liked him better as a maybe.
The TV through the wall switched to a channel with people screaming at each other, then a commercial jingle I almost knew the words to.
I set Rabbit down and fished through my backpack for the little plastic dinosaur, the ankylosaurus Caiden had given me. It felt heavier now, like it had absorbed the whole day and was carrying around my secret for me.
I tucked it under the pillow and rolled onto my side. I thought about the boy who left bruises on his own fists, who knew the names of every dead thing, and how he’d peeled the bandaid for me without shaking.
I wanted to believe we could stay friends, but I’d seen how fast people disappeared in this town, how easy it was to become a rumor or a punchline or just one more empty seat at the lunch table.
I stared up at my ceiling and tried counting the cracks, but I kept losing my place.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Caiden’s hands, the bandaid, or the crows.
I wondered if he was lying awake in his house, thinking about the same things, or if he was already asleep, dreaming about running so far away that no one could ever catch him.
I thought about him endlessly until I fell asleep.
30
CAIDEN
Amelia neededa day to herself so that she could process and recuperate. She would be going to her mother’s house today to collect anything she wanted to keep before it would be emptied out.
I dropped her off at her mom’s house, though I lingered for a few minutes to see if she would run back out. I wouldn’t want to leave her stranded.
She did not come back out, so I sped off and left her alone in that house filled with ghosts and sorrow.
I needed a fucking drink.
Being strong for Amelia was taking everything I had in me. Being back in this town was fucking suffocating, and all I wanted to do was scream or punch a hole in a wall.
I couldn’t.
I was not sure what possessed me at her funeral to hold her like that. I had seen her break down plenty of times in the past.
Like at graduation, or after Lillian died, or all the times she made a scene asking me why I was such an asshole. So, what was different about this time?
