Sometimes, if he went too far, he’d show me a kind of mercy: wrap me up tight in his arms, squeeze until I couldn’t breathe, and then let all the air out of me with a long, slow shudder.
He’d say, “You’re my blood, Caiden, you know that? My fucking blood.” Sometimes he’d cry a little when he did it, the kind of tears that burn instead of cool. Then he’d start over like nothing happened.
When mom left, it was the only time I saw him cry, and it was a weird sound. Not sad, not sorry, more like he’d been kicked in the ribs.
After that, the house turned into a new kind of quiet. Not the soft quiet of cartoons and pancakes on Saturday, but the vacuum kind, where every noise echoed, and even the fridge felt like it was waiting for someone to yell at it.
So I learned early: don’t talk, don’t ask, don’t move when you can help it. If you had to cry, do it in the shower with the water on hot so nobody could hear.
School was easier. You could disappear in the herd if you knew how. I kept my head down, did the work, never got picked for anything except sometimes crossing guard, when the teacher was desperate.
I knew the way teachers talked about me: “withdrawn,” “bright but troubled,” “potential, if only…” Language is like a slow leak under the hood—never the whole story, just a drip, drip of something rotten.
The thing you learn about being a kid is that the grownups think their secrets are safe, like a plastic tarp on a crime scene, but all it takes is one walk through the hallway and you know everything you need to: who’s been fighting, who’s fucking, who’s two days late paying the light bill.
I knew about the affairs. I knew about the day my mother left. Knew it was my fault, or at least knew everyone else thought so.
I knew the reason Dad didn’t want me to play with girls, or even talk to them, was because of the stuff he said about Mom. “All women are poison,” he’d tell me, spitting the words like watermelon seeds into the sink. “They’ll ruin you, if you let ’em.”
He told me that so often, I started to believe it.
But then I’d see Amelia Langston in the school hallway, with her lopsided ponytail and Band-Aids all over her knees, and my chest would go soft and stupid inside, like bread left out in the rain.
I knew I was supposed to hate her; my dad talked about her family like they were a disease that crawled under your skin, but every time I saw her, I felt something like shame, and also something like wanting to share a secret.
I had a secret, and even I didn’t want to know it. I wanted to peel it off my skin and leave it somewhere nobody would ever find, but it stuck to me no matter how hard I tried to scrub.
My secret was: I liked watching her.
When she went missing for a week, I thought about her so much it made me sick to my stomach.
I dreamed about her hair in the sun, about her voice echoing in the lunchroom long after she’d gone home. I wanted her to look at me and know exactly what I meant.
My father caught me staring at her once in front of Sweeney’s Deli.
He gripped the back of my shirt and leaned down, his breath sour. “You see that Langston girl, you keep away from her. Trash breeds trash, but her mama’s on a whole other level.”
I could hear his words replay in my head every time I saw her at school: trash breeds trash. It made me feel sick, but alsosort of important, like maybe I was someone special, just for knowing it. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but I never did.
In our house, you didn’t correct the things he said. You just nodded and chewed the words up and swallowed them whole.
Sometimes I’d see Amelia in the cafeteria, pushing peas around her tray with the back end of a pencil.
She ate slowly and watched everything, eyes darting, like she was making a map of the room in her head. I’d watch her from across the table, pretending not to, but every now and then she’d look up, and I’d get hit with this weird, buzzing panic, like I’d been caught shoplifting in my own skin.
I’d look away fast, but my ears would glow, and my fingers would tingle, and for the rest of the day I’d act extra mean just to even it out.
The only thing worse than wanting something is wanting something you’re not supposed to want.
In the dark, under my blanket, I’d punch my pillow over and over, pretending it was her face, then pretend it was my own face, and sometimes I didn’t know which one I wanted to hurt more.
I tried to tell myself she didn’t matter. That she was just another ghost in the hallway, a nothing.
But the truth was, she was the only kid who ever looked at me like I had a real name. She’d catch me staring and not even flinch, like she recognized something in me. Like she was waiting for me to say something first.
I remembered last year when I helped her a few times. Once, when she fell, and I gave her a Band-Aid. I even walked her home that day, just to make sure she made it safely.
I helped her when she showed up at my house, shivering and sad. I wasn’t expecting her, and I don’t think she expected to see me either, but we had a way of running into each other without meaning to.
