Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84407 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84407 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 422(@200wpm)___ 338(@250wpm)___ 281(@300wpm)
Feeling optimistic for the first time since we got here, I decided to use some of Dare’s money—which I plan to pay back as soon as possible, which will be easy since I’ll be working next door—to pick up some pizza and beer for dinner tonight after grabbing Jess from school.
Henry stuck around after he got off work, and for the first time in over a decade, we had dinner with our dad. It was…weird. But a nice weird. He wasn’t like Mom who’d ramble on about being watched through cameras in the buttons of people’s jeans, how everyone was out to get her, and she couldn’t trust anyone. Paranoia at its finest. Dinner with Henry was almost normal. I’ve never had normal, but I’ve seen it on TV.
We’re still sitting at the table, drinking our beer. The pizza has been demolished, and the grease-stained box is full of crust, crumpled-up napkins, and bottle caps.
“So, you guys going to tell me why you’re here yet?” Henry asks after taking a swig of his Budweiser. I gave him the bare minimum when I called him. I told him we needed to get out of town, but I never mentioned Mom or Jess or Eric or any of that. He doesn’t need to know about Eric, and the look that Jess sends me tells me that he doesn’t want him knowing about his trouble, either, but I have to give him something. I decide that telling him about Crystal would be safe, and the most relevant to him.
“Mom was getting really bad,” I start. Henry’s eyebrows pull together in concern as he puts his elbows on the table, listening intently. I don’t know why, but it bothers me. How can he act concerned when he threw us away like yesterday’s trash? “She hadn’t paid the bills in years,” I continue, pushing my irritation aside. “She was almost never there. She disappeared for months, and Jess and I always scrounged together whatever we could from our jobs. But that was fine. We managed. We preferred when she wasn’t home. It was easier that way. Calmer,” I clarify, nodding to myself. “But then she got another shitty junkie boyfriend. This one didn’t have his own place to stay, so Mom suddenly remembered she had a home.”
“He was nasty as fuck, too,” Jess chimes in, absently spinning a quarter on the kitchen table. “That fool never showered. Stole my shit. Ate all of our food—well, whenever they were too broke to get high and actually had appetites.”
“They wouldn’t leave. Brought their lowlife friends around. Then it all came to a head when Mom’s boyfriend beat the shit out of Jess because he wouldn’t give them our last twenty bucks. She sat there and watched him hurt her son, and then me, and didn’t do a single fucking thing about it.”
Jess’ fists clench, and I know he’s thinking about what happened that day. He was half-asleep when our mom’s boyfriend, Darrell, attacked him. He’s lucky, too, or Jess would’ve killed him. He told him to fuck off when he asked for money, and then bam. Darrell went off. And once I tried to pull him off, he turned on me. Jess was swinging blind, blood in his eyes, while Mom screamed. For Darrell. Not her children. She let him beat on her, but I thought, maybe, some sliver of mother’s instinct or love was still inside her. You hear about panicked mothers lifting cars off their trapped children. I’d have settled for one word. Just one word. Stop, is all it would have taken for me to know she was in there, somewhere. That was the day I knew my mother was gone completely, not that she’d ever been the best parent. But she was ours, and she was all we knew.
“Christ,” Henry says, rubbing at his forehead. “I don’t blame you guys for getting the hell out of there.”
“There’s more,” Jess says, and the crease between Henry’s eyebrows deepens.
“I called the cops. When they showed up, asking about a disturbance, Mom stood out of sight, shaking her head, silently begging me to turn them away. I didn’t. They had warrants. Lots of them, for things we didn’t even know about. Long story short, they’re both in jail.” If she gets lucky, she’ll do court-ordered rehab instead of doing time, and then probation. Whether it’s jail or rehab, I know she’ll be fed, sheltered, and sober. I don’t care how it happens.
I still remember the way she looked at me. How I held her stare, resigned, as I slowly swung the door open wide, and did what you never, under any circumstances, do in a neighborhood like mine. You don’t rat out anyone, ever. Especially not your blood.
But as I looked at Jess, swollen, bloody, and humiliated, I knew he needed me to show him that someone would love him like he deserved. Stand up for him. Protect him. That I loved him like a mother and a sister and a best friend, and I would always do what’s best for him, even when she wouldn’t. And I did it for Crystal, too. If she has any chance of living a normal life, or even a sober life, then maybe jail was the best and safest place for her.