My jawdrops.
The audacity.
The sheer fuckingaudacityof this man who touches my ass every time we pass in the hall and stares at my tits like he’s cataloging them for later, to sit here and call himself afather figure.
I want to say something devastating. Something that will strip him down to nothing but the pathetic predator he is. But the words stick in my throat, choked by rage and tears and the sick realization that my mother is passed out in the back and there’s no one here to stop him from being exactly who he is.
I choose rage and swallow all the rest down.
“Fuck you.” I grab my little backpack purse and stomp toward the front door.
“Where do you think you’re going? Get back here, young lady!”
I flip him off without looking back and slam the door so hard the whole trailer shakes.
I hope it wakes Darlene up to the world’s worst hangover.
The second my foot hits dirt, I’m running.
Past Ms. Hernandez’s place, where her garden gnomes guard a patch of struggling petunias. Past the Jenkins’s house, where the nine-year-old twins are beating the shit out of each other in the dirt yard, screaming about whose turn it is on the Xbox. Past the barrel fire where a bunch of folks are tailgating around a pickup truck, blaring Luke Bryan and drinking Bud Light at four in the afternoon because nobody here has anywhere better to be.
The ammonia stench of the chicken factory two towns over rides the breeze, mixing with the beer and smoke.
There’s no place like home, they say.
Buttheynever lived in a shithole like Grass Valley Trailer Park. The V rusted out ages ago, so it’s just Grass Alley, which I always imagined as a dystopian image—or a great place to get weed. Both apply to Grass Alley.
Finally, I make it to the trailer at the end of the row—the only one that matters—and I don’t bother with the front door. I just book it around back to Z’s bedroom window, the one that’s always cracked open like an invitation.
I hop up on the crate we set up for exactly this purpose, grab the windowsill, give a little jump, and heft myself up and over the edge.
Z’s bed is right underneath, and today I don’t stick the landing. I come down half on my head, half on my back, and roll the rest of the way with all the grace of a drunk elephant.
“What’s up?” Z asks from his desk, barely glancing away from the clunky laptop he liberated from the library’s donation pile last year.
He didn’t consider it stealing. He reasoned that if it was going to charity, and he needed charity, why not cut out the middleman?
His finger slams a key over and over, and I can hear the tinny sound of something exploding on screen.
I never got into gaming. Why spend half my life fighting for thirty-minute slots on the library computerswhen I could be sketching or reading? Plus, the digital world feels too much like an escape I can’t afford. Real life has a way of dragging you back, whether you’re ready or not.
“Damn it.Goddamn it.” Z shoots up from his chair and glares out the window like the Wi-Fi signal personally offended him. “I fuckingswearyou’re so lucky you live right next door to Ms. Hernandez.”
I grin from where I’m sprawled on his bed like a starfish. My racing heartbeat is only now slowing down from the encounter at home. Z’s bedroom is one of the few safe places in my world where I can totally relax. “Benefits of a better signal cannot be denied. If I could ever stand being home.”
“Fucking Todd?”
“Fucking Todd.”
We sit in silence for a second, the background music from his game filling the space between us. This is what we do. We don’t dwell. We don’t unpack our trauma like some after-school special. We just exist next to each other, and that’s enough.
I change the subject because that’s also who I am. One foot in front of the other. Every day is one day closer to getting out of this shitty town and never looking back.
“Can you believe senior year starts tomorrow?” I sigh, letting relief wash through me. “We finally fucking made it.”
Senior year. The light at the end of this long, dark tunnel of survival we’ve been crawling through for what feels likeforever.
I’ll turn eighteen in November, Z in March, and then we’regone.