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JOÃO
Fuck, I felt so fucking stupid.
I tightened my hand around the steering wheel and pulled up to Vera’s house. After getting out of the car and slamming the door, I stormed up to the house door and banged on it hard enough to wake the neighbors. But I didn’t give a shit right now. I was fucking pissed at myself for doing that shit.
“Vera!” I shouted. “Open up.”
All I wanted to do was go home and erase Imani from my fucking head. I tried to do that every night, tried to shake away these feelings of her, but I fucking couldn’t. I didn’t want to see her again this weekend. Maybe not this week either.
I shouldn’t have ever let that slip out of my mouth.
“VERA!”
A couple moments later, Blaise Harleen—who was apparently Vera’s boyfriend now—opened the front door. “Fuck, dude. Why are you calling my girl’s name like that? It’s almost two in the fucking morning. What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m picking up my sister,” I said, pushing past him into the house. “Fucking watch it.”
Blaise shut the door behind me and called for Vera, who walked out one of the few bedrooms with Ana sleeping in her arms. She padded into the living room and handed her to me. I pulled out a wad of cash and shoved it into her hand.
“This is the last time this week that I’m watching her,” Vera warned. “I have shit to do.”
“Like this fucker?” I asked, nodding to Blaise.
Vera rolled her eyes, placed both her hands on my back, and pushed me toward the door. “Yes, that fucker. Now, please. It’s two in the morning. Next time, get Imani to watch her or something. She’s good for me, but I’ve been so busy lately.”
After clenching my jaw at the mere sound of her name, I walked with Ana to the car and strapped her into her car seat, then drove to my house. When we made it there, the living room light was on. With Ana in my arms once more, I opened the front door to a quiet house.
Ana shifted in my arms, mumbling something incoherent in her sleep. I stepped into the house and turned on the kitchen light, glancing over at Mom passed out on the couch with the TV still on, which never happened.
After depositing Ana into her bed and pulling the blankets over her small body, I took a deep breath to prepare myself and walked back into the living room, where the kitchen light dimly illuminated Mom’s body. In her hands, she had the remote and another orange pill bottle.
I balled my hands into tight fists and refrained from slamming them into the drywall.
Mom had chosen fucking drugs over her own children. Tonight, she had gone out and fucking bought some more somewhere in Redwood. She had decided that it was more important to get high than to get clean for Ana.
Like I had done with the other pills, I took these ones and flushed them down the toilet, then walked to the driveway, grabbed a baseball bat, and smashed it into the pill bottle over and over and over until it became nothing but plastic pieces.
One fucking day, I would find out who the fuck was giving these to her and kill him. I didn’t give a fuck about what Imani would think of me. I protected my family, no matter what. I didn’t even fucking care if the police found out about it.
Once I finished, I hurled the baseball bat into the front yard and stormed back into the house. Instead of heading to my bedroom, I slipped into Ana’s room and lay down beside her. I told myself that I was lying with her because if I didn’t, then I feared Mom would take her away from me in the middle of the night. But that was only part of the reason.
So many thoughts raced through my head. I was angry, annoyed, and pissed at Imani, at Mom, at everything happening in this fucking town. I hated it here, more than anything ever. Everyone here deserved to fucking burn.
“What’s wrong, João?” Ana whispered, voice groggy.
I blinked to see Ana staring at me with big eyes, like she was wide awake now.
“Go to sleep,” I said, closing my eyes again.
She pushed some hair off my forehead and snuggled closer to me. “But you’re sad. You always listen to me when I’m sad. Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine, Ana.”
“Even with Imani?”
I clenched my jaw and opened my eyes, staring at Ana, who was inches from my face. She had her brows furrowed and a deep frown on her face. She took her two pointer fingers and placed them on the corner of my lips, pulling them up and forcing me to smile even though I fucking wanted to kill something right now.
“Even with Imani,” I said.
