Day 2074

Today is my first day of high school.

Well, it was. It’s over now, and I’m walking home. I’ve got to say, the walk home is turning out to be the best part of today. It’s a way shorter distance than to my old junior high school. So that’s something.

And it was better than most days at home, I guess. At least after Dad gets home.

All the same, I was ready to leave. I want to get back home�"I want that four hours of relaxing time, even if it’s not really relaxing. It’s true that there’s more work to do, but it’s easy work, and I can turn my mind off for awhile.

Skyland, Nevada is being grumpy, too. The weather here isn’t very impressive; it’s cold a lot, it rains a lot, and even on the nice days, all the shade from the trees blocks out most of the light. Today it’s kind of sticky, the sky a washed-out, cloudy blue, the weather unable to decide between hot and cold. I can never decide how I feel about this place. On one hand, I hate all the shadows and the rain and the cold weather, but on the other hand, I don’t know if I would like the exposed feeling of somewhere like where my friend Kylie (short for Immokaleah�"don’t ask) used to live, somewhere around the Grand Canyon. Nothing but empty space for miles and miles? Yikes.

I get home and throw my backpack and shoes to the floor, heading for the fridge. Hmm. Leftovers, leftovers, leftovers, ketchup, mustard, pickles…. I’m going with leftovers. (Why do we even have pickles? I’ve been doing the shopping for about six years now, and I know I’ve never walked into the grocery store thinking, “You know what our fridge needs? Pickles. Who cares if nobody in the house likes them?”)

I put some food on a plate, shove it in the microwave, then go sit at the table with my homework, As I’m staring at it, wondering if watching food cook in a microwave really gives you cancer, and why the hell teachers bother with homework when they hate grading so much, the back door bursts open. I flinch, even though I already know who it is.

“Hey, Evan!” Kylie cries, running up to me and squeezing the breath out of me. I put up with it until she lets go, tugging my shirt back into place.

“Hi, Kylie,” I say, glancing up from my homework. Kylie looks the same as she always does�"quite literally the same. I’m pretty sure she only owns three dresses, plus some blue jeans and shorts and a jacket that I picked out for her ages ago. She’s wearing the brown dress today, which is really a top and skirt combo, and doesn’t fit, because her mom made it for her when she was about ten, and she’s thirteen now and a lot taller and skinnier and bonier. She’s not wearing shoes, either�"she only owns one pair of those, and they look exactly like you’d think a pure-blood heritage-obsessed Cherokee’s shoes would look. In other words, they’re moccasins, more or less. And yet despite all this, she’s actually a lot more dressed up than most Cherokee women are during the summer (sometimes they don’t even bother wearing shirts), especially when, like today, she’s decked out in all sorts of jewelry made from leather, beads, stones, and the occasional feather. I lost count of how many ear piercings she has�"she never sits still for long enough to look at them.

“Is that homework? Ew,” she says, making a face. Kylie, of course, does not have homework. She doesn’t even go to school. I can never understand how her life works: she’s constantly subverting the law, living in the same house for six years when it doesn’t even belong to her family, refusing to go to school, trespassing on private property, fishing in Lake Tahoe out of season, and I’m pretty sure she barbecued a deer once, for some Cherokee ceremony. You shouldn’t ask if she has a hunting license, or special permission of some sort, for any of these things: the answer will only make you wonder how she and her mother are not in prison yet. Believe me, I’ve been there.

“Yep,” I reply. “English.” English I hate. A lot. Math I could handle, but English is so vague and subjective and sometimes there aren’t any wrong answers and I hate that.

“I don’t get it,” Kylie says, resting her chin on my shoulder so she can see. “I thought you learned English already?”

I try to shrug her off, but she doesn’t get the hint. Why would she even need to see my homework? She refuses to learn how to read English, or any Romantic or Germanic language (English is a mixture of both of these), even though she’s pretty much fluent now (as well as fluent in French, semi-fluent in Italian, and conversational in German and Czech. Apparently learning random languages is a hobby she and her mom like to do together). She says that the characters are stupid. Looking at the languages she can write�"Cherokee (which looks like scribbling to me), a couple of oriental languages (I don’t know which, but I’m impressed anyway), and Greek (I thought she was making this up until she proved it)�"I guess I understand why. And yes, I have also lost count of how many languages she knows, no matter how many times she rattles them off to me.

“I’ve known English for forever,” I tell her. “But we have to take the class every year.”

“So you won’t forget?” she guesses.

I snort. “I’m not going to forget it,” I remind her. “It’s the only language I know. We don’t learn how to speak English, we learn grammar and stuff like that�"and we read classics now,” I add, scowling at the reading list on the English syllabus (What is the purpose of a syllabus? Why should I care what order we’re studying all of this crap in?).

“What’s a classic?” she wants to know. Despite my best efforts, she isn’t fully American yet�"not even close. I think that there just isn’t room for another culture in her head, so stuff keeps falling out. I have to explain things to her about ten times a week.

“It’s a book that’s so old that it’s meaningful, or something,” I say. “I don’t really get it.”

“Do you not like them?”

I shrug. “Some of them. Depends on who the writer is. But they lived forever ago, so you can’t understand what they’re talking about half the time. And they talk weird, and do weird stuff.”

“Ohhh. Why do you have to read them?”

“I don’t know. Get off,” I add, elbowing her in the ribs. She lets go of me without complaint, and I turn back to my homework.

The microwave beeps. I throw my pen down, frustrated. “I’ll get it,” Kylie says, but she sounds nervous�"for some weird reason, she’s scared of appliances, and cars, and anything else that makes noise when it shouldn’t, except for televisions, because she sort of knows how they work.

“No, I got it,” I mutter. I get up and grab the food, stirring it around to make sure it’s hot. I shove my homework aside as I eat, knowing perfectly well that Kylie will under no circumstances allow me to work on it while she’s here. She’s way too ADD for that.

Sure enough, right after she curls up in the chair next to me, she asks, “What d’you want to do today? D’you think it’s too cold to swim? Or we could�"”

I sigh, stabbing at a particularly slippery piece of broccoli. “I can’t, Kylie. I have too much to do.”

“I could help,” she offers, sounding a bit hurt. That’s just freaking fantastic.

“No,” I say firmly. “Why don’t I put in a movie or something?”

She brightens up immediately. “Okay!” she says excitedly. “Which one? Are there more? Maybe we could watch Little Mermaid again, d’you like that one?”

“I can’t watch it with you, Kylie,” I snap, wishing she would wake the hell up. “I told you, I have to do chores and homework first.”

“But….” She falters, and I close my eyes and groan internally, knowing she’s going to say something that will make me feel really guilty and mean when there’s really nothing else I can do. “But we always do stuff after school. You never have homework. And I haven’t seen you in like a week….”

I don’t know what to do. I never know what to say when she gets like this. “I just can’t,” I try to reason with her. “High school is harder than junior high, I have more homework than before, and you know I have to clean�"”

“I could help you,” she says again.

But I don’t want her to. She doesn’t understand�"it has to be done just right. And Kylie used to live in a dirt hut or something and has no clue how to clean a house�"if something spills, she’ll wipe it up, and if she sees dirt she’ll sweep (badly), but that’s about all she ever thinks of doing. I’m not even sure if she brushes her teeth�"they look perfect, they’re straighter and whiter than mine anyway, but I’ve never seen a toothbrush or anything at her house.

“No, I have to do it,” I tell her. But my voice sounds too sharp as I say this, and I wince. I shouldn’t be so rude to her. She’s only trying to help. “But you can keep me company if you want,” I add, trying to sound nicer.

“Okay,” she says, but she still sounds upset. Wonderful…. I close my eyes again, pressing my hands against my face, trying to ease this pounding headache at my temples and behind my ears. What do headaches in those places mean? I hope nothing’s wrong…I’d know if something was wrong, wouldn’t I?

“’M sorry, Kylie,” I mumble. “I’m just stressed out.”

“Aww, it’s okay,” she says at once, starting to rub my back with her hand. “About what?”

“Well…if we have so much homework due tomorrow, I just wonder what we’ll have to do later on, when school gets harder….” But even so, I can feel myself relaxing. I don’t know what she’s doing, but it feels awesome.

“You can do it,” she assures me. She sounds so confident�"but then, she already thinks I’m a total genius because I’m in high school. I guess it’s impressive to a girl who’s never seen the inside of a kindergarten…man, it’ll blow her mind when I go to college. Or, well…if. It’s an if.

The back rubbing stops, and I wince as Kylie presses the back of her hand to my forehead. I push her hand away, but she has the worried-Kylie look on her face: she can tell something’s up.

“Are you getting sick again?” she asks me, her eyes widening. One thing I both love and hate about Kylie is her empathy. Even the thought of me getting sick is enough to freak her out, and it’s hard to calm her down again.

“I don’t know,” I mutter. “Maybe. Don’t worry about it.”

But she continues to worry about it. “Maybe you should take medicine,” she frets. For some reason, she got the idea into her head a long time ago that American medicine can cure any ailment at all (except for cancer, which she doesn’t know exists) and always wants me to take some, even though she’s never had any herself.

I sigh again. I swear to God I’ve explained this a thousand times to her…. “I can’t, Kylie. You know I’m not supposed to.”

Kylie should know that. But what Kylie does not know is that upstairs, in my dad’s bathroom, is a cabinet that is (I assume) stocked with any medicine I could want. But it is quite literally padlocked, with one of those four-dial number locks attached to what I assume is a bike chain. I’m not one hundred percent sure why Dad doesn’t think I should have aspirin, though�"I’d say it’s so I won’t get addicted to, abuse, or overdose on any of these drugs, but that would mean he wouldn’t have a problem with giving me the proper drug at the proper time, and he does. Maybe he just likes to torment me.

“Oh,” says Kylie lamely. “Well…maybe you could come to my house, and Etsi could make tea.”

Just to clarify: “etsi” is the Cherokee word for “mom”, and when she says “tea” she means a bunch of herbs ground up and stewed in a manner similar to tea. Kylie and her mom love to prescribe these “teas” whenever I feel bad; some of them taste all right with sugar and milk, but most just taste like grass.

“No, thanks,” I tell her. “I can’t leave, not when I have so much to do.”

“Oh,” she says again. “Well�"I’ll help you clean, if you want.”

Some days Kylie is perfectly happy watching a movie while I clean, except when I have to vacuum (she is scared of those too). Some days she isn’t. I give in, knowing it’s no use. “Okay,” I tell her. “But let me finish eating first.”

Kylie is fine with this�"she knows I don’t eat lunch at school, and that I usually skip breakfast, so she’s always bullying me to eat more anyway. She asks me about school as I eat; I don’t say much, partly because my mouth is full, and partly because there isn’t much to say. High school is exactly the same as junior high, but with more people, more classes, and more work.

After that, we clean. Kylie doesn’t get to help much, just with the easy stuff�"partly because she’s bad at cleaning, and partly because I hate to make her work, even if she wants to. It seems improper somehow, because she’s a girl, and it’s not her house, and she’s my friend, not my lackey. She doesn’t have to do this stuff like I do. But she helps me cheerfully enough, slipping around in a pair of my socks (since she refuses to wear shoes, that’s the only way to keep her from tracking dirt everywhere), doing whatever she can if it doesn’t involve skill or nasty stuff like bleach or power cords.

We finish downstairs, and then I plug in Little Mermaid and head upstairs on my own. I don’t let Kylie come up here; there are only five rooms, and she’s not allowed in any of them. One’s mine�"I usually keep her out because it feels weird to have her there�"and one’s my bathroom. And one’s locked. That used to be my mom’s studio, where she hung out, developing pictures and painting and reading and doing other artistic things, but Dad locked it after she died, and I haven’t been in since.

The other rooms are the master bathroom and Dad’s room, which used to be Mom’s room too. I don’t let Kylie in there because I don’t even like being in there�"it gives me the creeps. There are about a million good reasons why I don’t, and shouldn’t, like it in there, even though most of them are irrational. I have to clean it every day, yes, but I hate it, and I don’t want Kylie to know that I hate it, because there are no reasons that would be good enough for her. At least, not any that I am allowed to tell her.

I return after a while to find Kylie sitting on her feet on the couch, entranced by the movie, which is at the part where Ariel’s being transformed into a human. Kylie’s such a little kid�"she’ll sit there with her eyes and mouth wide open, staring at the TV, until something brings her back to reality, which are usually the ending credits (that she can’t read at all). This is why I don’t let her watch Nickelodeon�"I’d never be able to pull her away.

I put the cleaning stuff away and wash my hands, making sure they don’t smell like bleach. Then I come to sit next to Kylie on the couch.

“What’s happening?” I ask her, even though I saw this movie a thousand times before I even met Kylie. My mom was a sucker for them, too.

“Oh, you missed it, Evan, it was so sad, her daddy killed her statue and it made her cry and she loves Prince Evan a whole lot and the witch knows so she tricked her and now she’s got legs and it looked like it hurt,” she says, refusing to look away from the movie, eyes wide with shock, even though she knew exactly what was going to happen. She even has the songs memorized (she’s not a bad singer).

“Nah, I don’t think it hurt,” I assure her, even though it probably hurt like hell. I mean, you can see her tail get ripped in half. If that doesn’t hurt, then those fumes she inhaled must’ve been glue, or paint, or cocaine, or maybe morphine if morphine is less dense than water, because sometimes they forget that they’re all living in the ocean.

I watch the movie for a bit, but it gets awkward (I never know how to feel about a naked mermaid chick, especially when she’s not really a mermaid, but is a cartoon) so I watch Kylie watch the movie instead. This is much more interesting, because she gets so into it�"I swear to God she still has tear marks on her cheeks from earlier in the movie, probably when Triton totally decimates Ariel’s lover-statue.

That part kind of upsets me too. Even though she’s a girl, and a pretty girly girl (on a scale of one to ten, lowest to highest, I’d give her about a six, because she’s adventuresome, but also concerned with her looks and interested in boys and she sings and collects stuff. On this scale, I would be a negative three) I can kind of relate. It’s not fair to destroy all her human stuff. So she has a hobby. Big deal. The hobby isn’t hurting anyone, it’s the messed-up ideology behind the hobby, and that can’t be fixed with a Triton-smash. And he could just have a nice heart-to-heart with her instead of yelling and being an a*****e.

The movie gets to the part where Eric (not Evan; Kylie just calls Prince Eric that because she used to be horrible with American names. Now it’s sort of an inside joke) takes Ariel on a date, showing her around the city. At this point, I turn back to the screen�"for some reason, Kylie’s expression is making me uncomfortable. I’ve seen that look on girls before�"the isn’t-this-romantic?-I-wish-my-boyfriend-would-do-that-for-me look. Because girls always want stupid s**t like that. Honestly�"is a carriage ride, puppet show, near-death experience, and a moonlit cruise in a freaking rowboat all it takes to make a girl fall in love with you? If so, girls are pathetic.

I don’t get it, though. What’s Eric’s appeal? He seems like every other Disney prince, except Aladdin (and Shang from Mulan. But was he a prince? She’s a princess, I think, so he must be. Stupid chauvinistic b*****d). Aladdin I liked a lot. He was sassy and stood up for poor kids. But Eric? He plays the flute, he likes to take in stray mute chicks, he’s super rich and powerful, and he’s a total freaking idiot. What’s the appeal? I think if I were Ariel, and my sonuvabitch boyfriend fell for some hag disguised as a s****y supermodel, just because she could freaking sing, I’d ditch him. I don’t care if it was a spell, Ursula’s fat and he’s stupid and Ariel would be better off with that strong sailor type from the beginning, or any of the mermen, or even that guy with the huge nose and the pipe.

And yet Eric gets the girl. How? No one knows. Grrrrr.

“What d’you think about him?” I ask Kylie, even though I’m supposed to be doing my homework, making dinner, and being responsible in lots of other ways. I could be growing a beard, even. I know lots of people that can grow a beard at fourteen�"or, well, almost fourteen. But instead I’m sitting here worrying about a cartoon.

“Prince Evan?” Kylie turns to me for a moment, looking curious. “I like him! Don’t you?”

I ignore that last part. “Why d’you like him so much?”

“’Cause he’s nice to her.” Like it’s so obvious.

I really, really want to argue, but I’m afraid it’ll hurt her feelings. So I don’t. But I really want to.

Since when did Disney movies start to piss me off so much? I must be going crazy.

I think about napping, but there’s too much to do. After all, even if Kylie won’t let me do my homework, I still have to cook dinner. It’d be nice to wait for Kylie’s help, but the only way to drag her away from this movie would be to turn the TV off, take the video out, and unplug the whole system. And though that’d stop her from trying to finish it, she wouldn’t be happy about it.

I try to stand up, but Kylie, almost by reflex, grabs my arm and pulls me back down. “Where are you going?” she demands. “Aren’t you gonna watch it with me? You missed the beginning, you can’t miss the end too!”

This is something I like to call Kylie Logic�"in other words, it makes no goddamn sense. “I hate this part,” I tell her. This would be the part where Eric is being emo and playing the flute and then the stupid jerk lets a witch seduce him because she jacked Ariel’s voice. B***h.

“It’s not his fault,” she protests. “It was a spell! Please?” She wrenches her eyes away from the movie and turns them on me instead. She knows I can’t resist that goddamn look.

“Fine,” I sigh, giving up.

She doesn’t believe me; she keeps a firm hold on my arm. She’s embarrassingly stronger than me, so I don’t bother struggling, I just try to get as comfortable as I can. I try to focus on the screen, but my eyes can’t do it, for some reason; the bright colors and all the moving hurts, so I close them.

The next thing I know, I’m lying on my stomach on the couch, staring at the living room rug, aware somehow that a lot of time has passed; panicked, I sit up and look around, confused. I hear a noise in the kitchen, and my heart rate kicks up another notch.

“Dad?” I call, my voice hoarse and cracked.

“No, just me,” Kylie calls back, sticking her head around the kitchen door. “Did I wake you up?”

“No�"I�"what time is it?” I demand.

Kylie shrugs, then checks her watch�"a plastic Hello Kitty one that I gave her a long time ago, from when the drive-thru people at McDonald’s forgot to ask and just assumed I was a girl. Miraculously, despite all the abuse she put it through, it still works.

“Um,” she says. “It’s�"well, the long hand’s halfway down. I don’t know what that means.”

Fun fact about Kylie: she can’t tell time. She’s never needed to. She knows how to tell if it’s three o’clock, but anything else stumps her. I always wonder if I should try teaching her military time instead.

“Crap,” I say, jumping up and stumbling into the kitchen. I look up at the clock. Oh…it’s only six-thirty. It takes my body about a minute and a half to realize that it’s freaking out for no reason.

“Thank God,” I mutter. “That means six-thirty, Kylie.”

“Okay,” she tells me vaguely, which means that she will immediately forget this. “Come taste this.”

I turn around, surprised to see that she’s already started cooking dinner. To clarify: I cannot cook. Kylie can. She has been saving my a*s since the day we met with her genius cooking skills, and has also been trying to teach me, but without much success. I am the memorizing-recipes-and-precise-measuring type, but Kylie has a real gift: I’ve never seen her measure anything, or use a timer, or not know if something was ready just by looking at it. She can tell what something needs just by tasting it. And she does this with recipes that she makes up. It’s really impressive. I like help her however I can, but usually there isn’t much for me to do; I just sit back and watch her do her thing.

Kylie pulls me over to the stove, grabs a wooden spoon (she knows where everything is from long years of practice), dips it into a weird orange sauce, and lifts the spoon to my mouth. I obediently give it a taste.

Wow. Delicious. Savory, but also light and a bit spicy. I nod my approval.

“What do you think it needs?” she asks me.

I shrug. “Nothing,” I say, and I mean it. I don’t see how she could make it any better.

“Hmm,” she murmurs, licking the spoon to see for herself. I grimace�"Kylie never seems to care about germs. I grimace again when she stirs the sauce with the same spoon, but we’ve had this argument about a million times before, so it obviously isn’t going to take this time. “I wonder if…hmm,” she says again, and darts over to the pantry to grab a random spice. I don’t even know what the hell it is�"I bought her whichever ones she wanted ages ago so she would cook for me�"but she sprinkles some of it in, stirs a little, adds some more, tastes it, and is satisfied. She lets me try it too, and I am awed by how much better it tastes�"it’s the same taste, but without the acidy part that tastes like the oily stuff that floats to the top when you’re cooking spaghetti sauce.

I give her my thumbs-up, and she smiles at me before turning her attention back to the food. She’s making a thick stew with corn and carrots and some kind of meat, probably beef (at first we had problems with this; the only meat she knew how to cook was deer, and she usually won’t eat meat because she likes animals too much, but Dad yelled at me, so we reached a compromise. Or rather, I begged her shamelessly, and she agreed because she’s incredible). Also rice�"I think that’s what the sauce is for. Yum.

I watch Kylie for a little while, still half-asleep and yawning, as she bounces around, stirring things and singing something under her breath. It sounds like another language�"like Chinese, or something. This is the best part about Kylie, the part that probably makes her cooking so fantastic, and the part that always drives me crazy: she grew up with so many different languages and cultures in her head because of her mom, who is a taller and slightly older version of her, and it all spills out at random, all those influences tangled up but, somehow, balancing each other out. It’s really hard to try and keep up with it; you learn to kind of stand back and just accept it.

“Why’d you let me fall asleep?” I ask her after a bit. “I could’ve been helping you.”

She smiles in a way that’s really embarrassing for me�"like she just saw a kitten yawning or something. I am not a kitten, and it’s not supposed to be cute if I fall asleep, and yet she still gives me that look. Girls make no sense. “’Cause you were tired,” she points out. “You feel better now, right?”

“Yeah,” I mutter. “Except I still have a bunch of stuff to do.”

“Well, go do it, then,” she says bossily, pointing to the homework-strewn kitchen table. “I got this.”

This almost makes me laugh. Like she even needs my help. “Fine,” I say. I grab my homework and sling it onto the counter near the stove, pull up a chair, and stare at the paper.

I get frustrated with it almost immediately. This is so stupid. Trying to focus on this crap makes my brain feel like it’s being strangled.

“I hate this,” I groan after about five minutes.

“Aww,” says Kylie in sympathy.

We’re silent for a minute. Kylie, I notice, is thinking about something; she’s frowning, stirring the stew with way more concentration than the task requires. I wait.

After a long pause, Kylie looks up, then looks away again. “What happened to your face?” she says quietly.

I flinch, looking away from her. “What d’you mean?”

She hesitates. She knows that I know damn well what she means�"just like she knows never to bring this up. Ever. “You’ve got a bruise,” she mumbles, tapping her own cheek. “What happened?”

“Oh,” I say, biting back a sudden surge of anger. “It’s nothing. You know.”

“Oh,” she echoes me, letting it go.

Kylie thinks that I have this disease�"a real one, but a fairly rare one�"that makes it really easy for me to bruise, even if I so much as bump into someone else. Or, well, I hope she thinks so, because that’s what I’ve told her�"and I told her that because in her world, it’s the only option that makes sense. She couldn’t imagine any others.

To break the tension, I ask her, “What’d you do last week?”

She shrugs. “Not a lot,” she says. “Just some stuff. Me and Mama are learning Arabic.”

“Cool.” I’m surprised they don’t already know it. “What else?”

“Nothin’,” she says quietly. She’s trying to sound nonchalant, but I know it’s an act. Last week I couldn’t see her�"I told her not to come over here for awhile. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to come over until Wednesday, but I can’t say I’m not glad that she did.

I wonder if she missed me. I wish I could tell her that I missed her too. But it would sound too weird.

“How’s your cold?” she asks me.

“Meh.” I shrug. “I still feel crappy.”

“That sucks,” she says fervently. I smirk at this, and she giggles. Kylie’s always had a bit of an accent�"not Cherokee, like her mom’s, but a little bit of everything mixed together�"and it’s just too funny hearing her use American slang: she makes them sound so formal and complicated because she tries to pronounce every letter. Swear words are even more hilarious.

I give up on my homework and help Kylie cook, which I think is way more fun and useful�"at least it’s more useful to me in my life. I try really hard to remember everything she teaches me; I get better every day, but I still shudder to think what I’d do without her. I mean, it’s just dinner, but if I mess it up….

Kylie has to go home now�"Dad will be home in ten minutes. Kylie and Dad have never met�"in fact I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know she exists. I intend to keep it that way.

I wave goodbye to her, slipping inside and watching her walk away through the kitchen window. I hope she gets home safe. I wish I could walk her there, but I don’t have time before Dad gets home. Still, it’s not like anything bad could happen to her…she could just get hit by a car, or run into the kids at school that always harass me, or get attacked by a bear, and it would be my fault….

Okay. No. Stop. Kylie’s been living here for nearly six years now, and we do this almost every day. She’ll be fine. She’s way more capable than I am of protecting herself, even if she is a girl. And since when does Skyland have a bear problem? Idiot.

I sigh and start to set the table, spooning the food onto the plates. This is how it always is: Kylie comes over, we hang out when I’m not doing chores, cook dinner, joke around, talk…. That’s every weekday. Weekends depend on when Dad is home; if he’s around, I usually can’t leave, and of course she can’t come over. We’ve had close calls, before…. It would be a lot easier if Kylie would actually listen to me, instead of thinking that it’s not a bad thing, if Dad meets her….

Speaking of Dad….

I hurry up and finish setting the table, then sit at the counter again, staring at my homework, trying to look like I’ve been concentrating on it for a long time, maybe even all afternoon. I hear Dad’s Acura turn into the driveway, see a flash of green as it passes the window, hear the garage door open. As I listen hard, tracking where he is and what he’s doing, I peek around the kitchen and into the living room. Spotless. Good. No dust, no clutter, no mess…everything should be fine….

I can’t suppress a shudder as the back door opens behind me. My hands tense; I listen carefully as he kicks off his shoes and tosses his keys onto a side table, trying to gauge his mood. “Hey, Dad,” I say as casually as I can.

“Shut up,” he snaps back.

I wince. Not a good response. Usually he just ignores me.

Dad sits down at the kitchen table; I get up and get our plates, setting his down in front of him. Then I sit and pick at the food, watching him from the corner of my eye, waiting for him to try it.

He doesn’t; he just glares at it for a moment, then switches his glare to me. I feel my whole body tense, waiting.

“What the hell is this?” he demands.

Well, I guess it does look weird. “Um,” I stammer, “It’s�"stew�"and rice�"”

“Shut up,” he hisses again, and I do, immediately. “I’m not an idiot, I know what it is. Do you think I’m stupid?”

I flinch, not daring to look up. “N-no�"”

“Excuse me?” he snarls.

“No, sir,” I add hastily. Stupid, stupid, stupid�"

“Sit up straight.”

I do so, looking up at him; his expression makes me shudder. I turn my eyes away.

“What did you do?” he asks suddenly, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

I look at him again, bewildered. “What?” I say without thinking.

In no more time than it takes me to gasp and recoil, he stands up, grabs my arm, and yanks me to my feet. The quiet sound I can’t help making is drowned out by the clatter of his chair falling over.

S**t, s**t, s**t�"not again�"

“F**k,” he mutters at the sound, then turns back to me. Before he can talk, I start babbling like my life depends on it.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean�"I didn’t�"”

He cuts me off with a violent jerk on my arm, in the wrong direction; I grit my teeth to stop a cry of pain. “Shut up,” he snaps at me, shaking my arm; my whole body shakes with it, and everything goes blurry for a second, my head spinning.

This will be over soon�"really soon�"I just have to count�"

From 4000. Yes.

3999.

3998.

3997…

“What did you do?” he yells at me.

His voice is so loud that I flinch automatically and try to cover my ears�"but he shakes me again, snarling, “You put your goddamn hands down and stand up straight�"answer me, you stupid child, what did you do?”

“Nothing, sir,” I gasp, standing as stiff and straight as I can with my arm still in his grasp. “I didn’t�"”

He slaps me, hard; my vision blurs and dissolves for a few seconds, and when I can see straight again, I can feel myself starting to hyperventilate, feeling as if there’s not enough air in the room, as if I can’t pull any into my lungs�"

3954 3953 3952 3951�"

“‘Nothing, sir,’” Dad mocks me, his grip on my arm tightening painfully. “Don’t you f*****g lie to me, Evan, I can tell when you’re lying. What did you bring home this time?  Did you think you could hide it? Like I wouldn’t find out?”

His voice grows louder and harsher; I wince as he shakes me again. “No, sir,” I try to tell him. “It’s the�"”

“Don’t f*****g mumble at me,” he snarls.

“Yes, sir,” I say quickly, as loudly and clearly as I can. “It’s the first day�"there isn’t anything�"”

“Liar!” he growls, twisting again. I whimper, trying to pull away, but he grabs my hair and yanks, forcing me onto tiptoe. I feel my eyes prickle with tears, but I don’t let them fall. I can’t.

3887. 3886. 3885.

“You’re pathetic,” he sneers at me, pulling harder. My face twists in pain; I fight the urge to lift my hands, clenching them around fistfuls of my shirt. “What are you, a man, or a whining little brat? Well?”

3868. I know the answer to this: I am neither. But with Dad, there are no right answers, only the ones that he wants to hear.

I don’t know what he wants to hear. “I�"I don’t�"” I falter.

He lets go of my hair; I stumble backward, then fall as he shoves me forcefully, knocking into the counter before tumbling to the floor.

3824. Ow. 3825. Ow.

Ow. Ow. Ow….

“I know what you are,” he hisses at me. “You’re a stupid, pathetic, spoiled, useless, worthless little s**t.” He punctuates this with a kick to the stomach; I double over with a groan.

3769.

“Get up,” Dad snaps. I struggle to my feet, leaning heavily against the counter. Dad shoves me with a harsh, mocking laugh; I stumble backward, but keep my balance.

The laugh turns into an angry snarl. “Get out of my sight.”

I’m more than happy to obey.

 

“Get out” or “Get lost” means I have to go to my room, where Dad doesn’t have to deal with me anymore. I dart upstairs and take refuge in there, sliding down the wall, clutching at my stomach as I take stock of the damage.

          3761. 239 breaths. 215 seconds. Four minutes.

That’s not too bad. Not really. But it felt like much, much longer.

I wonder what I did to make him so mad? It had to be something. It must’ve been something kind of small, and maybe he just had a bad day. That’s all.

Wish he would’ve let me eat dinner.

3582. I have to keep counting until it stops hurting. 3581. 3580….

For a long minute I can’t move; I have to keep hugging my stomach, which feels like it’s being pulled out of me. And on fire. I must’ve pissed him off for him to hit so hard�"maybe because I talked back? I keep trying not to do it, but I forget when I get scared…stupid, stupid, stupid….

3435. Ow. Ow. Ow. This pain is really stubborn.

I don’t have to look at my arm to know how bad it is, but I look anyway, unbuttoning my shirt and tugging it down. Ouch. My whole upper arm is bright red, and a bruise the size of an apple is forming (not those pansy apples you get during the winter, big ones); the rest of my arm, from elbow to fingertips, is pink, my fingernails purple, my skin stabbed all over by little icy needles as the circulation returns.

My stomach doesn’t look any different yet. Just bright red. But I think it’ll bruise too.

3195. Ouch. 3194. Ouch…goddamn it….

Actually, what I told Kylie wasn’t a total lie. I do bruise easily. I wish I didn’t. It’s too hard to hide all this stuff. And you’d think, since Dad doesn’t want anyone to see it either, he’d stop beating my face up, but I guess it doesn’t occur to him until later.

I sigh, wrapping my arms around my knees so I can hold myself together. 2990. Ow. Why’d I have to go to pieces like that? I was being such an idiot. He says stand up straight, I should be able to, it’s not that hard, is it? It’s simple….

He’s right about me. I’m such an idiot. Can’t I go one week without pissing him off? Maybe I’m not spoiled, but I always screw something up…it is pretty pathetic…and it’s pathetic that I can only keep one friend around, and she’s a girl, and she’s stronger than me, and she has to help me every day…and I probably couldn’t even get her to like me, if I weren’t lying to her….

I just don’t think I can tell her…that Dad…that he hates me. She’ll never understand. She and her dad love each other, just like they’re supposed to, even if he lives across the country and hasn’t seen her for years. And in her world, there’s no room for people like Dad; she can’t even conceive of something like this. She’s like one of those Japanese people living in Hiroshima, singing on their way to the grocery store, not even knowing what a nuclear bomb is until it falls on her head.

And I don’t want to be the one that drops it on her. Her innocence is the best part of her. To ruin that would be to change who she is completely. Which I never, ever, ever want to do.

The problem is that she thinks that I’m…well, that I’m a totally different person than I am. She wouldn’t understand why Dad hates me so much, because she doesn’t know me as well as he does. But if she found out, she wouldn’t think I’m as innocent and smart and honest as she does now�"she’d see me like he does. And I couldn’t bear it if she knew what I’m really like. She’d probably hate me too. She’d probably think I deserved it.

And if I told her now, she’d wonder why I never told her before…and she can’t possibly understand. It’s…it’s humiliating. I hate screwing up all the time. I can’t tell her, she’d make fun of me…and I hate being punished, but she might find out that I have to be, and she’ll tell, and Dad’ll find out, and then….

No, he can’t find out. He can’t. He can’t.

It makes me awful that I have to lie to her, but I don’t have a choice. If I tell her the truth, she won’t want to be friends with me anymore. And then what’ll I do? I don’t know if I could get through each day without her. She’s the only friend I have.

2820. My head hurts. I wish I could just go to bed. But I haven’t done my homework. I don’t even have my homework. I left it down there because I’m an idiot. I’ll have to wait until Dad goes to bed�"but that means I can sleep for a bit now, if I want to…if I can….

“Evan! EVAN!”

God f*****g d****t. What did I do now?

Maybe I just thought I heard him. Maybe I can ignore it�"

“EVAN!”

Nope.

I sigh, closing my eyes for a moment, then gather up my strength and push myself to my feet. I wobble a little, and my legs feel like Jell-O, but I can walk okay.

“EVAN!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I mutter to myself, stumbling out into the hall. I hesitate at the top of the stairs; Dad’s standing at the foot of them, with a look on his face that makes me cringe.

“Yes, sir?” I ask him, hoping that whatever it is, I can do it from up here, and never have to get within arm’s reach of him�"

“Get the f**k down here and clean up this mess,” he snaps, and I suppress a groan. So much for that.

I make my way down the stairs as fast as I can, gritting my teeth, wishing it were over already….

Dad snatches me before I can dart past him, grabbing my shoulder and jerking me toward him.

“Now, you listen to me, Evan,” he growls�"as if he doesn’t already have my undivided attention. I shiver when I smell the whiskey on his breath�"I don’t know if he’s drunk, but if he is…. “Just because you’re in high school doesn’t mean anything changes around here.” He shoves me backward, and I fall onto the stairs; I try to back up, to put some distance between us, but he stomps down hard on my foot and ankle, trapping it and making me cry out in pain.

“You’re still going to do whatever I tell you,” he tells me. His voice is terrifying; he’s not yelling, but talking very quietly, with cold and unmistakable venom, in a way that makes me feel like a mouse staring down a poisonous snake.  “All your homework and all your chores will be done, every day, and your grades are going to be f*****g impeccable. If you let anything distract you from school, or from your responsibilities at home, I will make you regret it. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” I whisper, biting my lip against the mounting discomfort in my foot.

Dad’s eyes narrow at me, making me shudder. “I’m warning you now, Evan,” he snarls. “If you ever even make me think that you’re drinking, or using drugs, or messing around with some girl, or putting a single toe out of line, I am not putting up with you anymore.” His voice is now deadly soft. “Ever again. Am I clear?”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out; the room’s closing in on me, my heart’s racing, and I can’t breathe, I can’t get any air…. “B-but,” I finally manage to gasp, “but you can’t�"ow�"”

I wince as he grabs a handful of my shirt and yanks me to my feet. I struggle as he twists my shirt, his fist pressing into my windpipe, cutting off my air. “I can,” he says quietly. “And I will, unless you do everything I tell you.” With a sudden, vicious burst of strength, he slams my back against the wall; my head follows with a dull thud that makes my vision blur for a few seconds. “You don’t want to go back, do you?” he asks me, mocking me, tormenting me. “Didn’t you tell me you didn’t ever want to go back? You meant that, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” I whisper, attempting to nod, my head spinning frantically. “I don’t�"I don’t want to�"please�"”

He presses harder. Black spots appear at the edges of my vision. “Then you’d better watch your step,” he hisses. “No slacking off, no drinking, no drugs, no girls�"” He pauses, then laughs, flinging me back onto the stairs. I cough painfully, clenching my hands on the edges of the steps, cringing away from him.

Dad keeps laughing, a cruel edge to the sound. “Who am I kidding?” he asks himself with a cold, malicious smirk in my direction. “Girls? You? Like you’d ever get a girlfriend,” he jeers at me, still laughing as my cheeks burn with humiliation. “Like you could convince a girl to do anything with you. I’ve got nothing to worry about. There’s not a girl in the world who’d ever want to go near you.”

Kylie. There’s Kylie. He’s wrong. But Kylie’s just my friend. And she doesn’t even like me that much. And other girls hate me, or laugh at me…he’s right, they’d never want to hold my hand, even, let alone do anything else….

Dad laughs again, grabbing my arm and shoving me toward the kitchen. “Go clean the kitchen. And do your homework,” he tells me, and I catch my balance and dash into the kitchen, thankful for any way, no matter how painful, to escape his mocking.

In the kitchen, I start cleaning off the table and putting the food away (my plate, which Dad put by the sink is still full; I put it away with the other leftovers, my appetite long gone), pausing to scrub at my eyes with my sleeve. 

How does he do that? How did he know that that was exactly what I’ve been worrying about all day? No one cares about classes in high school, it’s all about doing things with friends, and being free to drive and stay out late and trying new things, and falling in love…. That much was obvious from the very first class. I sat in the back for every class, so I could hear all the gossip, all the plans, all the inside jokes and playing around and flirting and having fun….

None of it included me. It never will. Even I would think it was ludicrous if someone, even the nicest person in my grade, turned around and looked right at me and said, “How about you? Do you want to come this Friday? It’ll be tons of fun!”

They don’t even know my name. They don’t even know me. But even if they did, why would they bother? They don’t like people like me. I never know what to do, what to say, how to act, so I just stand out of the way and watch, and keep quiet…. I’d be no fun at a party. I might even ruin it.

And the girls, those stupid girls…they’re so pretty, but I can never talk to them. I never know what to say. My head gets all confused and my tongue feels so awkward and heavy and I can only think, You’re really pretty. I really want to kiss you. But a couple of years ago, when I actually mustered the nerve to tell a girl that I thought she was pretty and smart and cool, she laughed at me. And she wouldn’t stop laughing�"I had to run away and hide before I started screaming.

I bet they all laugh at me. That’s what girls do, isn’t it? They make little clusters in the yard or the bathroom or around their lockers and talk about boys: who’s cute and who isn’t. And it’s obvious which I am. I’m only 5’1’’ and 90 pounds. I look like a walking skeleton, and I’m pale, and ugly, and pathetically weak, and my hair’s always messy, and I’m always covered in bruises and cuts and God knows what else….

Even after the kitchen’s clean, I still can’t escape to my room; Dad said I had to do my homework, which means I have to do it where he can see me, and leave it out for him to see it when I’m done. But I can’t start crying, especially not where he’d see. I can’t…I have to stop….

But I can feel that it’s going to be impossible. So as a last-ditch effort I duck behind the counter, push up my sleeve, and sink my teeth into my wrist. The pain isn’t enough of a distraction, so I bite harder. And I keep going, my eyes squeezed shut, my whole body shaking, until, suddenly, I can relax, and take a breath, and stand up again. My wrist is bleeding in two places, and I have to wash my mouth out before the taste of blood makes me throw up, but I managed to shove all the bad stuff aside, and think about nothing at all.

I sit at the counter and pull my homework closer to me, pressing my wrist as subtly as I can against my chest to ease the pain. With my left hand (I can write with both, because I broke a couple of fingers once and had to learn how to use my right hand), I start my homework; now that my head’s clear, it’s a lot easier to focus.

The homework gets done in no time at all; I’m dragging a little by the end of it, but once I’m finished, I breathe a sigh of relief. I did it. Now I can take a shower and go to bed….

I get up, then hesitate, glancing into the living room. Dad isn’t paying attention to me; he’s sitting on the couch and watching TV, a tumbler of whiskey in his hand. But there’s something unnatural about it: he’s not relaxed, but sitting with perfect posture; the whiskey glass is covered in condensation, but the ice seems to have melted; and his eyes are glazed over, unfocused.

I shiver. Dad scares me when he gets drunk.

Since he’s unresponsive, I decide to make some food, as quietly as I can; I put a plate in the microwave and hover over it, not even caring that that’s supposed to give you cancer, so I can yank the door open right before it beeps. Once I have the plate in my hands, I freeze, listening hard, but Dad’s not paying attention to me; just in case, I decide to sit on the floor, out of sight until he walks in and heads for the fridge, and eat as much as I can. Which isn’t much; my stomach feels like it’s eating itself, and I’ll be lucky to keep down the little I’ve already eaten.

Even leftover, Kylie’s food is great. I wonder why Dad was bitching about it. He certainly liked it; there was hardly any left over. Maybe it was something else. I’m never really sure.

I force myself to clean the plate, then rinse it off very carefully and put it in the dishwasher. Then I head up to my room, being as quiet as I can. I pass right by Dad, but he doesn’t even look at me. His dead stare makes me shiver again, half-wishing he would start yelling again.

Once in my room, I close my door firmly behind me, shaking it a little to make sure it’s closed, even though I know it doesn’t matter. I can’t lock it�"none of the doors in our house have locks except for the front door�"and even if I shove something in front of it, he’s stronger than me, so he could push it aside, and then I’d be in more trouble than ever….

I need a shower. Showers always make me feel better.

Once I’m under the hot water though, with nothing left to clean, all the things Dad said come back to mock me…. Especially the part about girls. I have a feeling he knew that that was the worst thing he could have picked to laugh at. He’s right, and he knows he’s right: I don’t know what I’m going to do about girls. How am I ever going to talk to a girl, let alone convince her to kiss me…or do other stuff…?

I look down at myself, and wince. It’s not a pretty sight. My ribs and hips stick out; my hair is in my eyes, every piece a different length thanks to Dad’s rough version of a haircut; and my skin is so pale that it glows in the dark. Plus I’m covered in bruises of all ages, two small rows of stitch-marks, and a bunch of scars, the most prominent being the one on my wrist from my teeth, a pink blotch covering half my right arm, a welt across my shoulder, and a tiny red scar that makes the corner of my lip look funny….

I look like Frankenstein’s monster. Who’d even want to look at me without clothes on, let alone…?

I don’t understand how other guys do it. Being nice to girls isn’t enough. You need something else. But I don’t know what.

Maybe someday…when I can get away from him…I’ll be able to try again…

But for now, I just want this day to be over with. I want to curl up in my bed and read a book and drown all the thoughts torturing me with someone else’s problems, for a change….

Author's Note

Does Evan sound natural? Are the -events- natural?