“Why the fuck would I?” I snapped. “She’s a freak.”
Dante shrugged, chewing a hangnail. “Just saying. She’s different, is all.” He smiled again.
I stood up so fast the world tipped sideways and for a second I saw it all: the autumn rot along the bank, the scum swirling on the surface, Dante’s face split by the line of shadow from the old birch.
“Don’t ever say that again,” I said, my voice flat. I let the silence stretch, let the threat live in the air, the way my father had taught me.
Dante raised his hands, palms out. “Fine, man. Jesus.”
But his eyes never left me, dark and careful. Measuring.
A wind shivered through the trees and I felt the cold crawl inside my hoodie, settle against my ribs. I wanted to breaksomething but there was nothing there except Dante, and Dante was the closest thing to family I had left.
It was a sick, twisted dependency.
I jammed my fists in my pockets and stalked away, crunching over dead leaves and brittle sticks, not looking back even when Dante’s footsteps followed at a careful distance.
I walked until the trees thinned and the town reasserted itself, until every porch light and warped picket fence reminded me of the world’s smallness, the impossibility of escape.
Dante peeled off toward his house without a word, leaving me to pace my own block like a caged animal, circling the perimeter until the streetlights flickered on.
I killed time at the playground, scuffing my boots on the fire-blackened slide, watching as the day’s heat bled away into a bruised evening sky.
I didn’t want to go home, and I didn’t feel like crashing at Dante’s house anymore.
I just wanted the ache beneath my skin to stop, for the meat of my body to quiet down and leave me alone with the white noise.
I pictured my father, already half-lobotomized by a bottle, sprawled in his recliner with the TV muttering in the background.
Maybe tonight would be peaceful. Maybe the bastard would just pass out and leave me the hell alone.
I was wrong.
As soon as I slipped through the back door, the stench of vodka and microwave burritos hit me, followed by the pulsing bass of some rock song.
The living room was a disaster of empty cans, ashtrays, and crumpled boxes, and my father lay stretched across the couch in nothing but boxers and a sweat-stained undershirt, eyes half-lidded and mouth hanging slightly open.
The man’s chest rose and fell with the slow, heavy rhythm of the nearly dead.
For a minute I watched him, seeing the future mapped in the bloat of my father’s gut and the purple rings beneath his eyes.
I hated the bastard, but more than that, I was afraid of turning into him, of repeating the cycle so many times thelines between us blurred and it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
I stepped into the kitchen, the floor sticky underfoot, and opened the fridge. There was nothing but expired milk, a six-pack with one beer left, and a Tupperware container of something that might have once been chili.
I grabbed the beer and popped the top with my teeth, letting the cold foam cut the taste of bile in my throat.
“Boy,” the shape on the couch growled, not even opening its eyes. “Bring me a cold one.”
I said nothing. I just set the beer down on the coffee table and retreated to the far side of the room, hands tucked into the sleeves of my hoodie.
The old man grunted, took a long swallow, and then finally cracked one eye open.
“You late,” he slurred. “Where you been?”
I shrugged. “Out.”
“You got a fuckin’ attitude on you,” my father said, his voice rising. “Come over here.”
