We didn’t have a TV, and I was told not to turn on the lights unless I absolutely had to. Instead, I had a flashlight. Too dark to brush your teeth? Shine the light in the mirror—lights up the whole bathroom. Making dinner past sunset? There’s a lantern on the kitchen counter.
As a child, I thought it was normal. Until one time, when I was out walking at two a.m., I saw the Bronsons’ house lit up like the Fourth of July. After that, I tried to avoid Beckham coming to see me after the sun went down.
I stared at my flip phone lying on the pillow next to me as lightning struck somewhere in the distance, causing another roll of thunder to shake the house. I’d mucked one hundred fourteen stalls to save up for that phone. It was cheap, it had a shattered screen, and the green was coming off the call button, but it worked.
A door slammed, but I didn’t flinch. I wasused to the crashes that came out of this shell of a home, given that my parents threw a lot of things when they were angry with each other. Never at one another, but at a wall or the floor. For two people who could barely afford food on the table, they sure liked to break a lot of our belongings, as sparse as those were.
“That’s because you’re fucking drunk,” my mom chastised from somewhere closer to my room. They must’ve made their way down the hall, my mom likely hot on his heels as he headed to their bedroom to change or piss or do whatever the fuck he usually did when he was wasted.
“I ain’t fuckin’ drunk!”
His denial was a slur.
I grabbed my phone off the pillow, rolling to my back and flipping the screen open and closed with my thumb. I didn’t want to be here, but I also didn’t want to call Beckham and have him hear the commotion in the background.
My only escape from all of this was either him or a walk on the back roads. When he discovered I went out on those empty roads alone, he told me to stop. I’d asked him why, and all he’d said was it wasn’t safe for me to go by myself. I’d told him I couldn’t simply call him every time I was sad, and he’d said I could.
He bought me a can of pepper spray the next day.
My screen lit up the room each time I flipped the phone open. A door opened, then slammed, then opened again. My dad was trying to get away from my mom, andshe wasn’t going to allow it. She liked to fight for some reason. I didn’t see the appeal.
The bickering continued as they went back to the kitchen, and I took that as my hint that this would likely go all night. I had school in the morning, and it was already past eleven p.m. I’d never get any sleep at this rate.
Shoving off the bed, I grabbed my thin jacket to protect me from the rain. The temperature inside didn’t vary much from outdoors, so I figured it’d be enough for a short walk while I called Beck. Chances were he was already asleep, though. He was a senior, myself a junior. We went to the same school, so some days he’d give me a ride. I always asked him how he’d slept, and he’d somehow always manage to include what time he fell asleep. I think he did that so I’d know I could call him late if needed. I still tried not to.
My parents were too busy arguing—my father buried in the fridge, my mother berating him where she stood at his back—to notice me leaving. Their shouts were too loud to hear the creak of the front door shutting behind me, or the broken screen slapping back against the frame.
The wind howled through the trees, the sky lighting up with another strike. I walked under a nearby oak, opting not to choose the carport as protection from the rain, as its pounding was only amplified by the metal roof. I flipped open the phone as my shoes squished wet leaves and pressed the number one. Beckham was theonly contact I had on speed dial. He was the only person I called in general.
After hitting the fading green button, I held it to my ear, scanning the dark expanse around me. We were the only single-wide on this road for about a mile, and with us having no porch light or neighbors, the black night was suffocating.
Beckham answered after the fourth ring, his voice rough like he’d been sleeping. “Park?”
“Were you asleep?” I asked.
A distorted sound came from the background of the call, but it was hard to hear over the storm. If I had to guess, though, it was the sound of him sitting up in bed.
“No. Are you in the rain?”
My eyes froze on the telephone pole at the end of our driveway before I quickly cupped my hand over the microphone and my mouth. “No.”
“I can still hear it, Park.” Beckham sighed, likely checking the time. But he wasn’t sighing at me. He was sighing because he knew exactly why I was standing in the middle of a storm. “I’ll come pick you up.”
“Beck, no, that’s not?—”
“You have your pepper spray?”
As if the weapon heard him, the weight of it in my pocket suddenly felt heavier. “Yes,” I reluctantly admitted. Beckham would always worry about me, but I hated that carrying it made me feel like there was a reason he had to be concerned. Bell Buckle was a safe town. The only danger was being hit by a flying object inside my house. I was far safer out herethan in there.
“You’re outside your parents’ place?” he asked, movement rustling behind his voice.
“Yes.”
“Don’t walk down that road, Park,” he warned, knowing where my wandering typically took me. “I’m on my way.”
I sighed, staring up at the branches hanging above me. Large droplets of rain splashed on my cheeks, the water icy. “Fine.”
The line went dead, so I flipped the phone shut and shoved it in my jacket pocket. The fabric was damp, and it’d likely be soaked by the time Beckham got here, but that phone was an immortal brick. No matter what happened to it, it survived. I knew that because it’d once been the victim of my dad’s alcohol-induced rage.
