Page 86 of Silent Damage

Jason tries to charge at Doug, but I grab his arm and pull him off the porch with me. “I’ll kill you, Doug! No one touches him! No one!”

Mom screams at Doug to go inside, and she runs toward us. “Get him in the trailer and put ice on it,” she hollers to Jason. “I’ll deal with Doug.”

A second later, the screen door screeches open, and Mom reads him the riot act.

Jason wraps his arm around me. “Come on, let’s get ice.”

He leads me across the gravel road to our trailer, and, once we’re inside, he sits me down in a kitchen chair.

“Hold on.” Jason rushes to the bathroom, grabs a towel, then a fistful of ice from the freezer, and wraps it in the towel. He walks toward me and gently presses it against my eye.

“I’ll fucking kill him,” Jason says, red-faced and seething. He has one hand on the ice pressed to my head and the other wrapped around the back of my neck. “Does it hurt?” he asks.

I shake my head no.

“If you get a shiner, I’ll kick his ass so hard—”

Mom’s screaming grabs our attention, and Jason looks at me wide-eyed.

He rushes to the window and looks at Doug’s trailer. “Damn, I wish I could see inside there. She is laying into him,” he says with a chuckle. “Maybe I don’t need to kick his ass—Linda’s got it covered.”

As he walks back to me, he says, “Hope the sharp objects are locked up—”

He slaps his hand over his mouth.

Silence.

We stare at each other for what feels like an eternity before Jason lowers his hand from his mouth. “I’m so sorry—”

A sharp pain shoots through my stomach, and my throat starts to close. Memories of that night whip through my mind like a slideshow played at double speed.

But then I look at Jason.

He has his hands on his face with a horrified expression, and it reminds me of Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.

And his eyes.

Bright blue and huge.

I don’t know if it’s the stress, the hurt, the horniness, or the fact that the statement was just so Jason, but I start laughing.

Uncontrollably.

Like a freaking hyena.

Jason watches me in horror.

“Fuck, did I break you?” he asks.

Aaaaand, that’s when I expire.

I fall to the floor, holding my gut as I cackle, and he looks down at me with a worried expression. “That was twisted. I’m so sorry.”

I can’t stop. I just keep laughing, endlessly.

Then Jason starts chuckling, and soon, we’re both cackling like we used to—laughing at the fucked up shit that happens in life because, if you don’t, you might start crying. I haven’t laughed this hard since…

Since he left.