Chapter 1: The Fence
It all started when he was just ten years old, before he knew no one would come to save him.
His father beat him, but his mother had never said anything about it or stood up once to defend him. He didn't know if he could understand whether she got the same abuse from his father, who was a drunkard and had spent his life wasting.
He never heard have you eaten, John or how are you doing, my child. Those were rare words. Words he never got, though the belt taught him one thing and her silence taught him another, and this was a different Tuesday morning.
Simon pinned him against the chain-link fence before the first bell rang.
He was thirteen years old with a freckled face and red hair. When he noticed John was just another quiet kid that could be tossed around, he took advantage of it and had been making John's life miserable since the first day of school. It started with little things—shoving him in the hallway, stealing his lunch, calling him names—but it grew into something bigger, something meaner, because Simon could smell fear the way a dog smells meat, and John's fear was so strong it probably had a smell, something sharp and metallic like blood from a split lip.
Please not today, John thought. Please just leave me alone today.
But Simon never left him alone.
"Where's your dad, McAfee?" Simon pushed his face close to John's, and his breath smelled like sausage rolls from lunch, greasy and warm. "Is he too drunk to walk you to school? Or did he finally kill himself and leave you alone?"
The other kids laughed. There were about forty of them in his class, maybe more, all gathered in the schoolyard waiting for the bell. John noticed that none of them had tried to stop the bullying, not once. Not even a single person ever tried, so what was he hoping for until this very Tuesday—that someone would save him? Nah. He knew no one would. He had known that for a long time, maybe since he was old enough to understand that his own mother would sit in the next room while his father's belt came down and she would not make a sound, would not open the door, would not even look at him the next morning.
She hears me, John thought, and the thought made his stomach hurt worse than the fence against his back. She hears everything. And she stays in her room.
Simon shoved him, and John's back hit the chain-link fence. The metal rattled against his spine, and the impact sent a jolt through his teeth and up into his skull, and he tasted blood from where his cheek had split open against one of the sharp links. His eyes watered, but he blinked it away. He wasn't going to cry. He wasn't. But his lip was trembling, and he couldn't make it stop.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you," Simon said, and his hand grabbed John's chin and forced his head up. Simon's fingers were strong and thick, nothing like John's father's hands, which were thin and bony and shook when he hadn't had a drink in a few hours.
John looked. At home, looking made it shorter. Not by much, but by enough. You looked your father in the eye even though it scared you, because looking away was worse. You stayed still. You didn't make a sound. You counted in your head. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. That was the number of strikes John had counted last time. Seven. His father had run out of breath on the seventh.
"I asked you a question," Simon said, and his fingers dug into John's chin. "Is your dad a drunk?"
John opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Because if he said yes, Simon would use it against him forever, would call his father a drunk every day for the rest of the school year, would tell everyone in the class that John's dad was a loser who couldn't hold a job and spent all his money on whiskey. And if he said no, Simon would call him a liar and hit him anyway. There was no right answer. There was never a right answer. His father had taught him that, and Simon had taught him that, and his mother had taught him that by never saying anything at all, by just sitting in her chair with the television on and the sound turned up so she didn't have to hear.
Mom, he thought, and he didn't know if he was calling out to her or cursing her. Mom, please. Someone. Anyone.
No one came.
"Maybe he's not a drunk," Simon said, and he grinned at the other kids, showing his teeth. "Maybe he's just a coward. Like his son."
Simon shoved him one more time, and this time John's feet tangled underneath him and he went down hard. His palms hit the gravel. Small stones bit into his skin. His knee cracked against something hard—a rock, maybe, or the metal base of the fence—and a sharp pain shot up his leg. He stayed there on his hands and knees for a second, maybe two, because the world had gone blurry and he couldn't figure out which way was up.
"Get up, McAfee," Simon said, but he was already walking away, already bored. "You're not even worth it."
The other kids were laughing. John heard them. He heard their shoes on the pavement, the smack of a ball being kicked, someone yelling over here, pass it. Not one of them looked at him. Not one of them asked if he was okay. Not one of them said a single word about what they had just watched.
John pushed himself up. His palms were bleeding. Little pieces of gravel stuck to the scrapes. His knee throbbed. His cheek was still bleeding from where the fence had cut him. He stood there for a long moment, the cold seeping through his jacket and into his skin, the split in his cheek throbbing with every beat of his heart. He could feel the blood drying on his face, warm at first and then cold as the morning air hit it. He pressed his tongue against the cut and tasted copper and salt.
You're crying, he realized. There were tears on his face. Not a lot—just a few, slipping down his cheeks and mixing with the blood. He wiped them away with the back of his hand, but more came. He couldn't stop them.
Stop it, he told himself. Stop it. Don't let them see.
But no one was looking. No one ever looked.
He pushed himself off the fence and walked across the yard to the bathroom. His knee hurt with every step. His hands stung. He kept his head down so no one would see his face.
The bathroom was empty. The lights were off. He locked the door behind him and sat down on the floor with his back against the tiles. The floor was cold even through his trousers. He pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his forehead on his knees and let the tears come. They weren't loud. They weren't the kind of crying that made sounds. Just a slow leak, tears running down his cheeks and dripping onto his trousers, his shoulders shaking with the effort of not making noise.
Why won't anyone help me? he thought. Why doesn't anyone ever help me?
He thought about his mother. She was probably at home right now, sitting in her chair, the television on, a cup of tea gone cold beside her. She wouldn't even know what had happened. And if she did know, she wouldn't say anything. She never said anything. She never said are you okay, John or I'll talk to the teacher or I'll protect you. She just sat there.
She's scared too, a voice inside him whispered. She's scared of him. Of Dad. Of everything.
Then why doesn't she leave? another voice answered. Why doesn't she take me and leave?
He didn't have an answer. He never had an answer.
He stayed on the bathroom floor until the bell rang. Then he got up and looked in the mirror. His father's eyes stared back at him—same color, same shape, same emptiness. The tears had left tracks through the blood on his cheek. He looked like a mess. He looked like what he was: a ten-year-old boy with no one to save him.
He turned on the faucet and washed the blood off his cheek. The water in the sink turned pink. He washed his hands next, picking the little pieces of gravel out of his palms. Each one stung. He bit his lip so he wouldn't make a sound. Then he dried his face with a paper towel that came away red, and he walked to class and sat in the back and did not say a word to anyone for the rest of the day.
♡♡♡
That night, his mother tried to kill herself.
John came home from school to a house that was too quiet, and that was his first warning. His father's car was missing from the driveway, which meant he was either at the bar or passed out somewhere. The television was off, which never happened because his mother always had the television on, even when she wasn't watching it, because the noise filled the empty spaces where words should have been. Without it, the house felt like a held breath, like something waiting to happen, like the moment before a fist comes down.
Something's wrong, John thought, and his stomach tightened. Something's really wrong.
"Mom?" he called out, but his voice sounded small in the silence.
No answer.
He walked through the kitchen. The dishes were piled in the sink. A half-eaten piece of toast sat on the counter, the bread hard and curled at the edges. His mother's coffee cup was there too, still half full, the milk on top separated into a thin skin. She had been sitting there at some point. She had gotten up and left the toast behind. That wasn't like her. She never left food. She barely ate anyway. She just pushed things around on her plate and said she wasn't hungry.
Where is she?
The living room was empty. The bedroom was empty. His heart started hammering against his ribs, the same way it did when he heard his father's footsteps on the stairs, the same way it did when he knew something bad was coming and he could not stop it, could never stop it, could only stand there and wait for it to happen.
The bathroom door was closed.
"Mom?" he said, and his voice cracked.
He heard a small sound. A whimper. Like someone crying with their mouth shut.
He tried the door. Locked.
He pressed his ear against the wood. The paint was cold against his cheek. He could hear breathing—fast, shallow, the kind of breathing that came from panic or pain or both. The kind of breathing his mother did when she was having one of her episodes, when she sat in the dark and rocked back and forth and didn't say anything.
"Mom, open the door," he said. He tried to keep his voice steady, but it wasn't working. His voice was shaking the same way his hands were shaking.
"Go away, John."
Her voice was thick. Wrong. Slurred. Not the way sleep slurred your words. The other way. The way she sounded after she had taken too many of the white pills or drunk too much of the wine she hid in her closet.
"Open the door right now."
"Please, baby." A pause. He heard her swallow. He heard her breath catch. "Just go to your room. I'll be fine."
John did not believe her. He had stopped believing her years ago, around the same time he stopped believing that anyone would ever help him. She had said I'll be fine before, and she had not been fine. She had been sitting on the bathroom floor with a bottle of pills in her hand. She had been standing at the edge of the road watching the cars come. And he had been the one to pull her back. Every time. Because no one else would. Because his father didn't care. Because there was no one else in the whole world who would save her except a ten-year-old boy with scraped palms and a bleeding cheek.
I can't lose her, he thought. She's all I have. Even if she doesn't protect me. Even if she never says a word. She's all I have.
He ran to the kitchen. Yanked open the drawer. Found a butter knife. Ran back. Wedged it into the lock the way he had seen his father do once when the bathroom door stuck. His hands were shaking so badly that the knife slipped the first time. Slipped the second time. He almost screamed in frustration.
Come on. Come on.
The third time, the lock clicked. The door swung open.
His mother sat on the edge of the bathtub. Her feet were in her slippers, the pink ones with the flowers that she had worn every day since John could remember. Her hands were in her lap. She was wearing her blue housecoat with the stain on the sleeve from the time she spilled wine and didn't bother to clean it. Her hair was tangled. Her face was wet.
The medicine cabinet was open. The bottle of white pills was in her right hand. The cap was off. Some of the pills were already gone—John could see the empty space in the bottle where they used to be.
He looked at the bottle. Then at his mother's face. Tears ran down her cheeks without any sound. She looked at him like she was seeing a ghost. Like he was already gone. Like she had already left him behind and was just waiting for her body to catch up.
"How many did you take?" he asked. His voice came out calm. He didn't know how. Inside, his heart was trying to break out of his chest. His hands were shaking so badly he had to press them against his thighs to make them stop.
"I don't know," she whispered. "A few. Not enough."
"Give me the bottle."
"John—"
"Give me the bottle, Mom."
He held out his hand. She looked at it for a long moment. His small hand with the scraped knuckles from the fence. The nails he bit down to nothing. The bruise on his wrist from where his father had grabbed him three nights ago and squeezed until John saw stars and thought his bones would break.
She gave him the bottle.
He closed the cap. Set it on the counter. Then he knelt in front of her. The tile was cold under his knees. He put his hands on her knees. Her knees were shaking. Her whole body was shaking, like a leaf in a storm, like a bird with a broken wing.
"You can't do this," he said. His voice was cracking now. He couldn't stop it. Tears were slipping down his face again, and he didn't wipe them away this time. "You can't leave me with him."
"I can't stay." Her voice cracked open like something broken, like a glass hitting the floor. "I can't watch him hurt you anymore. I hear you screaming in my dreams, John. I hear you screaming and I do nothing, and I hate myself."
"Then do something." John was crying now. Really crying. The kind of crying that made your whole body shake and your throat hurt and your nose run. He didn't care. "Leave him. Take me and leave. We can go to Grandma's. We can go anywhere. Just please, Mom. Please don't leave me alone with him."
She looked at him then. Really looked at him. The bruise on his cheek from two nights ago, purple and yellow at the edges. The split in his eyebrow that was still healing, held together with a butterfly bandage he had put on himself because she hadn't noticed or hadn't wanted to notice. The dark circles under his eyes that never went away no matter how much he slept, because he didn't sleep much, not really, not with his father in the house, not with the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears.
She reached out and touched his face. Her fingers were cold and trembling against his skin.
"You look like him," she said. "You have his eyes."
John flinched. He couldn't help it. He had looked in the mirror that morning and seen the same thing. His father's eyes. His father's mouth. His father's face staring back at him like a curse written in his own skin, like something he could never escape no matter how far he ran.
"I'm not him," he said. But his voice was small. He wasn't sure he believed it anymore.
"Not yet," she said. Her voice was quiet. Flat. Empty. "But you will be. You'll grow up and you'll drink and you'll hit. You'll make some other woman miserable and some other child scared. It's in your blood. You can't escape it."
No, John thought. No, I won't. I won't be him. I won't.
But the words wouldn't come out. Because some part of him was afraid she was right.
"Then help me," he said instead. His voice came out raw and desperate. He was begging. He didn't care. He would beg on his knees if that was what it took. "Help me not be him. Stay. Please stay."
His mother closed her eyes. Tears slipped down her cheeks. Her whole body shook. John took her hands and held them. He held them tight, like if he let go she would disappear, like she was smoke and he was the only thing keeping her from drifting away.
They sat there on the bathroom floor together. A ten-year-old boy and his broken mother. The tile was cold under them. The house was quiet around them. Somewhere outside, a dog was barking. Somewhere in the distance, a car engine faded away.
After a long time, she opened her eyes. She looked at him. She nodded.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. I'll stay."
