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Sienna blinks, a tiny frown forming between her eyes as she glances up at me. I wonder what she’s thinking. Maybe she’s wondering why she hasn’t thought to ask me that question before now.
Or maybe she’s not wondering about that at all.
Maybe she’s wondering why I say random shit at random times that has nothing to do with what we were just talking about.
“Uh, yeah… sure,” she says, marking a page in her notebook with a pen. She sits up straighter, giving me her full attention. “Go ahead.”
“So, this one time right, my dad was lighting the grill out back. We were having burgers for dinner. It was one of the few times he actually let me stand beside him and watch what he was doing. I asked if I could help him by striking the match. I felt pretty confident that I could do it by myself. I wanted to prove to him that I wasn’t a complete loser. He told me that often, just for the record. Jot that down in your book there, go on…loser, sometimesfucking loser,and let’s not forget my absolute favorite …illegitimate loser.”
Sienna frowns.
“Anyway, he turns on the gas and then gives me the box of matches so I can light it. And then he tells me not to screw it up.”
“What happened?”
“I screwed up.”
“How?” she asks, her voice echoing in horror.
“Well, I lit the match just fine, but as I held it closer to the burner element, the smell of the gas must have gotten up my nose or something because the next thing you know, I sneezed. I dropped not only the lit match but the entire box of matches onto the grill; the gas burst into flames, catching my father’s T-shirt on fire in the process.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah, he jumped back so quickly he nearly fell over. He was so angry at me for ruining his new T-shirt that he kicked me in the stomach, so hard that I puked blood, and then he grabbed a handful of my hair with his clenched fingers. He dragged me around the backyard by the back of the head, screaming at me for being such a braindead moron.”
“For god’s sake,” she says quietly.
“When my scalp was no longer red, raw, and stinging like Dante himself was giving me a head massage, I trudged back inside the house and grabbed a pair of sharp scissors from the kitchen drawer.”
She gasps. “You were going to stab him?”
“What? No.” I feel my eyebrows furrow. “Christ, Jonesy, I’m not a psychopath. I used the scissors to hack off all my hair. Mom walked in on me halfway through and froze on the spot, her eyes as wide as saucers. After I explained what’d happened out back, she took me into the bathroom and shaved the rest of it off for me.”
“And you’ve kept it like that ever since?”
“I promised myself that he’d never get the opportunity to hurt me like that ever again.”
Sienna’s eyes are suddenly watery. She squeezes them shut for a few seconds, stretching her legs out straight in front of her, breathing deeply through her nose.
“It’s not a big deal, Jonesy.”
“Yeah, it is,” she whispers.
And as the words leave her mouth, barely finding my ears, I’m starting to think she might just be right.
How my father treated meisa big deal.
I don’t know why I always pretend it’s not.
Sienna
As far as times go, midnight is a bitch of a time for your phone to ring. I wake slowly, groaning and disoriented for a few seconds while I search around blindly on the nightstand for my glasses.
My phone keeps ringing.
For the love of all that’s holy, I beg politely for it to shut the hell up.
Once I find my glasses the screen comes into focus, a green glow in the otherwise dark bedroom, and Andrea’s gorgeous face comes to life right before my eyes.
