Nine
Sam walks me to the door, though I ask him not to. I don’t want to do the what-might-have-been thing with him tonight, and standing on my front porch in the dark with him only makes the way the night turned out worse. In my Sam fantasies, I’d wrap my arms around his neck and thank him for the evening with a kiss. A long one. He’d kiss me back and I’d go to bed with a happy smile on my face and plenty to dream about.
But this isn’t one of my fantasies, and I can’t even meet his eyes, let alone kiss him.
“About tonight—” he begins.
I shake my head. “Don’t.”
There’s no way I’ll let him apologize for something that’s my fault. Sam doesn’t realize how lucky he is my brother didn’t see us on that log. No dating, James always says. I’m pretty sure “don’t kiss my best friend” is implied in there somewhere, especially since I’m not even allowed to talk to his friends. He’ll turn Sam into a limp pile of flesh and bones if he ever finds out.
I’ll never be able to live with myself if that happens.
One by one, I force my newly formed daydreams of Sam and I holding hands in the forest to shrivel and die. What was I expecting to happen? He doesn’t know anything about me. And no way does he like me enough to face off with my brother.
But when I reach for the doorknob, Sam grabs my hand. “Wait. I’ll see you again, right?”
He’s just being nice. Nothing more. I am invisible.
But the heat of his hand enveloping mine and the worry in his voice still stings, no matter what I tell myself. “I don’t think so.”
His stormy gray eyes bore into mine, imploring me to do…something. I don’t know what. I don’t think he does either, because after a long moment of staring at me, he lets go. Shoulders slumped, he turns away and heads back to his car.
I can’t see him drive away. Won’t. I stumble through the front door into the dimly lit kitchen, fist pressed into my stomach again, and collide with the open refrigerator door.
The door slams into my father’s side, knocking the can of beer he just opened out of his hand. It sloshes all over the ketchup and mustard bottles in the door and hits the linoleum with a dull thud-fizz. Sour yeast and hops taint the air.
“Damn it!”
Cursing my carelessness, I throw myself against the wall, out of his reach, and inch slowly toward the hallway like a shadow. The only light is coming from the open refrigerator and the television in the front room. Maybe he won’t see me. Maybe he’s too busy swearing at the condiments. Maybe he didn’t hear Sam’s car outside.
In the living room, a loud bratwurst commercial dissolves into the same cheering and jeering I’ve heard all my life. The Armory announcers are all racked up over the match they’re calling. The big name is either winning by a landslide or getting his ass handed to him. Since I’ve been forced to watch this particular video hundreds of times, I know the big name is winning by a landslide.
My father never lost in his prime.
He slams the refrigerator door and glares at me with bloodshot eyes.
Oh, no. I try to melt into the wall, but it’s no use.
“Don’ jus’ stand there, clean it up!”
I dash down the hall to the bathroom and grab my shower towel. He’s waiting for me, arms folded across his chest, still standing in the middle of the beer puddle in his holey tube socks. I drop to my knees at his feet and mop the spill up as best I can, trying to ignore the fact that James stood with his arms folded the exact same way an hour ago on the trail.
My father’s socks soak up a lot of the beer, but he makes no move to take them off. Maybe he’s waiting for me to offer? I won’t. No matter what he says, I’ll never touch him willingly. With the floor mostly dry and all the condiments cleaned off, I scramble to my feet hoping to escape to the garage where I’ll toss the dripping towel in the washer.
His hand snakes out and catches my elbow, bloodshot eyes fighting to focus on my hair.
“So, you’re tryin’ to look like your slut ma now, huh?”
I’m close enough to the living room to make out his rust-orange armchair and the pyramid of crushed beer cans on the coffee table in front of it. I can always gauge his mood by the number of cans in the pyramid. He’s already through two six-packs.
This is going to be very, very bad.
“It’s summer,” I say feebly. “Short hair is comfortable in the summer.”
The fifth round begins. Pausing in the foyer, my father watches his younger, blonder self land a wicked right hook that sends the other guy, a sinewy Hispanic that looks way too small to be fighting my father, to the ground in a shower of spit and blood. Shortest final round ever, my father always brags. I mouth the words along with him and hope he leaves it at that tonight.
He doesn’t.
Deceit, loss, rage. It’s all there in his glassy eyes when he turns to me. “Your ma used to keep her hair short like that.” He reaches for me, his meaty fingers digging into the soft flesh of my upper arm. If I try to run before he’s gotten in his first blow, or do anything to draw attention to the fact that I’m wearing a boy’s sweatshirt, this will be much worse. “She’d do anything to get a man to look at her.”
Coppery blood explodes inside my mouth when he knocks me to the ground. I’ve bitten something—my tongue, my cheek, my lip, probably all three. Now I can try to escape because he loves the chase. It’s like I’m a little girl all over again, scrambling backward across the faded carpet into the dining room as he stalks toward me and I plead for mercy that’s never going to come. He loves it when I beg.
I’m sick of begging.
Staggering to my feet, I focus all my fear and anger on his grim face. “Leave me alone, Daddy. I’m serious.”
He ignores me. “So where’d you whore yourself out tonight? The Armory? Those little shits they got fightin’ might talk big, but they ain’t never gonna be as good as me. How much they payin’ you girls nowadays? Twenty bucks? Thirty? Your ma used to let me screw her for a pack of cigarettes.”
The thought of him paying our mother for sex in cigarettes sends me over the edge. “I would never whore myself out to an Armory loser!”
My words hang like fumes in the eerily silent room.
I forget to breathe. My heart forgets to beat.
There are no bratwurst commercials to save me—the video is over.
My father already won.
When his eyes narrow and he takes a hesitant step closer, I know I’ve provoked the monster that lives inside of him. He follows when I back away.
My back hits the wall. In my frantic scrambling across the kitchen, I missed the hallway by three feet. Instead of the relative safety of my locked bedroom, I’m in the shadows of the entryway. Shadows that aren’t dark enough to hide the way my father’s eyes flash when his hand moves to his belt.
“Seems to me we’ve got a problem,” he says. “No way am I gonna let you sass me, and no way are you gonna ruin my reputation whorin’ yourself all over town. Maybe I oughta teach you a lesson. That’d be the honorable thing to do, and I’m honorable head to toe.”
No. No, no, no. I’ve heard him say the same thing to our mother. Heard the “lessons” he’s taught her.
I don’t want to lose my virginity to my father.
When he grabs me and drops to his knees, I fight with everything I’ve got and wail for James, for the mother who’ll never come, for Sam.
The front door slams open. My father rockets to his feet and spins around, fists cocked and ready to take out whoever had the nerve to interrupt.
James is faster.
His solid left hook sends our father staggering into the hallway. I watch, horrified, as he regains his footing and lurches toward my brother, a bloody grin on his face. “You’re gonna regret that, boy.”
“Get up, Sarah,” my brother urges.
I don’t know how he got here, or why he came at all. I just know when the warmth drains from James’s voice, he sounds exactly like our father. For a moment, I curl even further in on myself, shaking and clutching Sam’s sweatshirt to my body.
James throws another left hook, but our father ducks out of the way and laughs. Gritty determination fills my brother’s face. “Get up, Sarah!”
Sobbing, I get up and run.