Prologue
She’s the girl that’s called slut on the bus, and bares her teeth in a feral smile at the word.
He’s the guy that ignores his problems, shoving them to the side until he can drown them with a bottle.
They knew each other.
Now they don’t.
But when Raya accidentally gives a ride to a sweet little girl who needs it, she meets the only witness to the moment that changed the innocent little girl she was into the bad bitch that takes no shit (which is what she gets for trying to be a nice person).
And when Michael meets Raya for the second time, he hates her (the feeling's kind of mutual). He hates her because he sees himself in her, and the mutual destruction that they both cause to their worlds. But then he starts seeing more. The hidden secrets. The lies. The brokenness that they both share. The world isn’t so heavy when you can share the burden with someone else.
The world isn’t as shitty of a place to be when you have someone who can flip a middle finger at it with you.
The house across the street is making noise again.
Mama winces and hisses out the lady who lives over there’s name, hurrying out onto the porch.
She was making pie. Mildly disappointed, I follow her to see the big man, our neighbor, Mama always tells me, the man we can’t make mad, storms out, yelling all kinds of words that I know aren’t allowed.
“Mama,” I whisper, taking her hand. I’m not sure how I was going to finish that sentence because the girl comes out.
She’s a weird girl, the kind the kids at school like to tease and push around ’cause she’s small. I like her, though, ’cause she’s smart. I saw her spelling quiz she got back on Friday. She got them all right.
I don’t think I know her name, though, ’cause she’s always so quiet and you just kinda forget about her. Her hair’s pretty, though. It looks soft. And her eyes are blue, my favorite color.
“Daddy,” her voice is sad, and lonely, but quiet.
The big man turns around, his face softening for the first time I’ve ever seen it.
“Hey, darling.” Voices echo on this street. We hear him loud and clear, and Mama’s grip tightens around my shoulders.
“Are you really leaving?” Now the girl’s voice is small.
“Yeah, darling, I won’t be back for a while,” her daddy tells her tiredly.
He won’t be back at all. I can tell. He’s lying, just like my daddy did when he left us. My heart feels sad for the little girl.
“What’ll we do without you?” The pretty black-haired girl asks pleadingly. “Who will quiz me on biology and physics?”
“Mama,” my voice is a whisper still, “What’s bi-o-lo-gy? And- and phys-”
“Mr. Fell is a smart man, Michael. I imagine he passed on some of his smarts to his daughter.”
“Oh.”
As we look on, the little girl’s feet shuffle and her eyes go big and tired, and I start to pull out of Mama’s arms to give her a hug.
But then the big man sees us, Mama grabs me and pulls me inside, and we watch the big man drive away from that little run down house until he turns the corner, his little car dipping into a pothole.
The little girl doesn’t watch. She’s back inside before I can glance at her one last time, before her daddy drives away for good.
For the two years that followed in us living there, he never came back.
