Before I can get up and flee this entire situation, he whispers, low enough that only I can catch it, “Next time, break his fucking hand, Amalia. And if you can’t do it yourself, come get me.”
I don’t know why, but I smile and nod. It’s not a full smile, barely even half of one, but I watch the corner of his mouth curve upward in return like it’s the most natural thing in the world. My stomach fills with butterflies, and I decide I hate them immediately.
When I stand and pass by Professor Vaughn on my way out, my fingers brush against his by accident. I hear my own sharp intake of breath, and I catch him going completely still, like the air around him just stopped moving.
He doesn’t look at me right away. Then, with one last, faintly pained look in my direction, he leaves.
Ay, in the name of Cantor. What is happening to me?
“You little shit, get over here!” my father shouts, the last syllables tangling in his mouth after far too many glasses of vodka.
I pull my knees tighter to my chest, hating the trembling that takes hold of me and won’t let go.
Dean isn’t home. And he won’t be for a while.
One hour, twenty-three minutes, sixteen seconds.
That’s if he doesn’t miss the second bus. If he does, those twenty-three minutes become forty-five.
Damn it.
“You think I don’t know you threw out my other bottle of vodka? Who do you think you are? I’m your father!”
If I hadn’t thrown that bottle out, he’d be sitting in a puddle of his own piss and vomit right now. A puddle I would’ve had to clean up, and I can’t stand the smell anymore. The last time I tried to lift him, he threw up on me.
I don’t know how long I stood in the shower. I only know that Dean found me staring at nothing.
I hate him.
Mom kept him on some kind of a leash. Since she died, there hasn’t been a single day he hasn’t put a bottle to his mouth. He liked drinking before too, but she acted as a shield for us.
Now we’re alone with him until I turn eighteen.
Dean could leave any time, but that would mean leaving me here with him. Because in the few minutes of clarity he’d manage, he’d go to the police and report me missing.
My brother is the only one bringing money into this house. If I’m gone, his alcohol supply disappears.
That doesn’t mean he can’t make my life hell.
I hear plates shattering on the floor, and then his dragging footsteps coming toward my room.
You’d think that for someone with a blood alcohol level high enough to put them in a coma, he wouldn’t have the strength to throw himself against a door.
You’d be wrong.
The hinges shriek under the barrage of fists, and I find myself swallowing hard.
Why won’t he just stop?
But I know the answer.
It’s been two weeks since the last beating. Two weeks of Dean doing everything he could to keep him at a distance.
There are fleeting moments when I look at my brother and I know exactly what he’s thinking. What it would take. How he’d do it.
In even more moments, I wish he would.
The door shudders, and my back presses harder against the leg of the desk I’m hiding under, like the wood might absorb me if I push hard enough.
