FIVE YEARS EARLIER
“This is unbelievable,” Mom is muttering under her breath for the fifth time already this evening. “A complete disgrace.”
We are in the kitchen and I am sitting at the table while Mom presses damp cloths and ice packs to my face, her hand in my hair, massaging my head. She tilts my chin up, inspecting my face, and she lets out a small, muffled groan. She moves the ice pack in her hand to my eye.
It’s bad, I know. There is no hiding it this time. No covering it up.
My eye is busted, painted black and purple, and I can’t open it fully. My mouth is swollen and cut. My cheeks are bruised. My face seems to have blown up to twice its normal size, and every time I so much as speak or blink, it hurts. That’s why I’ve been keeping quiet, sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the wall as Mom nurses my injuries. I’ll never forget the gasp she let out when she got home from work and laid her eyes on me.
“How can you only suspend one of them?” she continues to vent to herself, her voice bitter. I don’t see Mom get angry often, but tonight, she is. There is exasperation in her eyes. “Two kids get into a fight and beat each other up, and you don’t suspend both of them? It’s injustice! You know what? I’m calling Principal Castillo first thing in the morning.”
Dad is over in the corner of the kitchen, slumped back against the countertop with his head hung low. He’s been staring at the ground the entire time, motionless. “Ella . . .” he says quietly without looking up. “Just drop it. Tyler is still suspended no matter what.”
“Drop it? Are you kidding me, Peter?” Mom barks at him, turning to face Dad directly. The mascara around her eyes has smudged, and she isn’t even bothering to fix the strands of hair that have fallen from her updo. She’s really mad. “Look at what that kid has done! LOOK.” Mom angles my head toward him, exposing all of the damage.
But Dad still can’t look; he’s too guilty to look. He only shakes his head slowly at the ground, and I fight against Mom’s hold on my chin to turn away again. I don’t want to look at him, either. I hate him.
“I started it,” I mumble to Mom. I want her to drop this too. Blake wasn’t the one who did this to my face. “Blake doesn’t deserve to get suspended.”
“Be quiet, Tyler. I’m furious at you,” she snaps at me, moving the ice pack back to my mouth, dabbing my swollen, plump lips. I flinch at the coolness. Her blue eyes meet mine, full of confusion and disappointment. Mostly disappointment. It’s the first time I’ve seen her look at me like that, and my chest constricts. “Why would you even do such a thing?”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I say quietly. I am sorry. I don’t know what happened. I got angry, and I needed to release it, and I felt better after it. Is that how it is with Dad too? Does he feel better afterward?
“It’s just not you,” Mom says. She heaves a sigh, rubs her forehead, moves the ice to my cheek. “What did that kid do?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t just beat someone up for no reason, Tyler,” she says, echoing Principal Castillo’s words, growing frustrated at me now. I can’t tell her why I did it. Not without breaking her.
“Some people do,” I whisper. I crane my neck to look at Dad again. He is still leaning back against the countertop, staring at the floor, but he seems to sense me watching him, because his empty gaze flicks up for only a brief moment. I hope he can see the hatred in my eyes. Or eye, since he beat me up so bad that I can’t open the other.
“Tyler, you’re not only suspended. You’re grounded too,” Mom tells me as she passes the ice pack into my hand. “Go to your room.”
I’ve never been grounded before, but I guess I expected it. I frown up at her. I’m sorry that I let her down. I wish she knew that I regret it now. That I feel so guilty. I squeeze my fingers tight around the ice pack in my hand and slide off the chair. My shoulders are slumped low as I walk across the kitchen. I can feel Dad’s eyes following me, but I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. I keep on walking, straight out of the kitchen, all the way upstairs and into my room. For once, I slam the door behind me. I’m not even worried about the consequences at this point. I’m no longer afraid of Dad, because what more can he do to me that hasn’t already been done?
Dad has never hurt me this badly before. It is getting worse and worse each night, and in the four years that this has been going on for, he has never been so careless. His mistakes have never been so visible. His anger is uncontrollable, and it is never going to get any better. I am sure of that now.
So why am I letting it happen?
I glance around my room, at the scuffs in the paint on my walls from where Dad has thrown me around, at the dents in my desk. Then, I get down onto my hands and knees and reach under my bed for one of my old backpacks. Why am I protecting Dad, when really I should be protecting myself?
I’m going to run away.