Chapter One
Mum and I sitting are on the couch, but as far away from each other as possible. The living room is dark besides the hazy glow of the television. Some football game is on, though neither of us know the first thing about the sport.
There’s a knock at the door. I hear it open; we both know who it is, though I’m not sure if Mum even hears anything. Her face is completely blank. Cue her routine. Stand up. Pace the room anxiously. Sit back down on the couch. She does everything exactly the way I knew she would. I get up off the couch as Uncle Gavin walks into the apartment carrying a box of greasy pizza.
“Marlo-” But I’m already out the door. Let him worry. Let him wish he hadn’t bought us dinner. I slip down the stairs, holding my breath because the place reeks of old gym socks and cigarette smoke, and run out the door into the evening.
The first thing I can tell you about myself, if you want to hear anything at all, is that they’re all trying to get rid of me. They want me gone. They all think I’ll do something like Arya did, and that it’ll all be their fault. They don’t know me, that’s why. No one knows me.
There’s this joke I once heard. A man goes to this monk wanting to know the meaning of life and all, but the monk tells him he can only tell the secret to other monks. So, this man sets out on this difficult journey to become one and returns to ask again. Except, the punchline to the joke is that the person listening will never get to know the meaning, because we’re not monks.
Anyway, it’s a stupid joke that Alexander once told me, and I’ll talk about it later, but this what I’m thinking of as my foot sinks into the sand. The earth grabs it, wrenches it deep within. I see waves sloshing up against the jagged rocks, hear a seagull flying overhead, and feel an odd feeling, rising through my body.
The water makes me sick. And the joke isn’t distracting me.
I turn and run. I run and run until I have no breath left in my lungs, like when I’m running the mile in Phys. Ed all sweaty and Coach Davies is screaming at me that time’s running up. I’m standing at the corner of Gill Street, gasping for breath. Outside the flower shop. I turn and run again. I know where I’m going, and yet everything pulls me away from there.
But I find the house.
A bird lands on the stone fountain. It’s a big house. I walk up the front walk, though I know it isn’t my place to be here. It isn’t my place it all.
I knock on the door. I think it’s his mother who answers, but all I see is him coming up behind. There’s a long silence. The woman leaves. It’s just me and him.
“I saw what you all did,” I say. “I saw what you did to my sister. I was there.”
He laughs. But I see the flicker of fear in his blue eyes. “Leave my house.”
“It’s your fault!”
“We didn’t do anything,” he says. His hand is on the door.
“You made-”
The door slams. I should tell the police. I should tell someone.
But I go back home. Back to Mum and the TV and the dark living room.
