CHAPTER ONE
DIRTY FLOORS & DIRTY MONEY
AGE SIX
“Mommy?”
I peeked into the dark, dark room. Daddy was gone. He had left so fast, before I could ask if he wanted to play. Daddy never wanted to play, but I always asked anyways because maybe, one day, he'd want to.
But Mommy was crying now.
She cried a lot after Daddy left, but sometimes, she also cried while he was here.
I thought she just missed him.
I missed him too.
We didn't see Daddy a lot.
I climbed onto her bed and crawled beside her. Her hands were covering her face, like she didn't want anyone to see her cry, like it was a secret. But I could hear her noisy, snotty sniffles. She was sad, and I hated it when Mommy was sad.
“Mommy?” I asked again.
My bottom lip started to wriggle as I lay down next to her.
I really hated when she was sad.
She took a super-loud, boogery breath, like she was sick with a yucky cold, and quickly wiped her hands over her face. Then, finally, she looked at me, and I smiled big because she was smiling too.
But her cheeks were wet, and her eyes were shiny, and she still looked sad.
So, deep inside, I felt sad too.
“Hey, baby,” she whispered, putting one of her hands on my cheek. “I bet you're hungry, huh?”
I looked into her teary eyes, then at her mouth, and I saw a cut on her lip. It looked red and angry and a little bloody.
Mommy took her hand away from my cheek to touch the cut. “Oh, don't worry about that,” she said, talking really fast. “I slipped and fell earlier while you were playing outside. I'm okay, I promise. Are you hungry? Do you want me to make you something to eat?”
I nodded, but I wasn't hungry at all actually. I had been before, before I saw that cut on her lip, but now …
There was a gross feeling in my belly. Like I wanted to throw up, but I didn't feel like I had to throw up. I felt …
Scared.
Mommy was hurt a lot. Mommy fell a lot.
But I was starting to think Mommy also lied, and lying was bad. So, why did she lie to me?
“All right,” Mommy said, sitting up and climbing off the bed. “Come on, Noah. Let's go find us something to eat.”
***
“Seth, Seth, please,” Mommy said, grabbing Daddy's arm as he took my hand and started to pull me toward the door. “Leave him here, please. Please!”
“He's my son.” Daddy sounded angry. He usually did. “He goes where I tell him to go.”
“No! Oh God, don't take him from me, Seth. Do whatever you want to me, okay? Come on. You want to go upstairs? My parents won't be—”
“Shut up!” Daddy yelled, shaking his arm and pushing Mommy away.
She fell to the floor and her back hit something. The coffee table maybe. I tried to look over my shoulder to see, but Daddy yanked me away. I tripped over my feet, bumping into his side.
“Let's go!” Daddy demanded, dragging me along.
I wanted to cry, to scream, to tell him to stop … but I couldn't. Why couldn't I do anything? I was frozen, like a statue, and all I could do was exactly what he told me to.
“Seth!” Mommy cried. “Please! Please! Oh God, don't hurt him!”
Daddy didn't answer her this time. He just kept walking, kept dragging me along with him, until we were out the door. He pulled me down the steps, and I tripped again, but he didn't ask if I was okay. He didn't say anything.
“Daddy, where are we going?” I finally asked when we got to his big pickup truck.
“Get in,” he grumbled, throwing the door open.
I looked up at his face and saw the anger in his eyes. Why was he mad? Was he mad at me? But I hadn't done anything. I did exactly what he wanted me to do. I walked out the door. I’d left Mommy.
I don’t want to leave Mommy.
My bottom lip started to tremble as I began to say, “But—”
“Get in the fucking truck, Noah!”
His booming voice cracked against my ears, and it felt no different than if he had slapped me. Daddy hit me sometimes. Not as much as he hit Mommy though. But for some reason, yelling hurt more. It made me feel small. Stupid and embarrassed.
I hung my head and did as he’d said. I got into the fucking truck.
Daddy slammed the door shut behind me, and I buckled myself in while trying to stop my lip from quivering.
I didn't want to cry, not in front of him, but it was hard not to.
I didn't want to leave Mommy. I didn't want to go wherever he was going to take me.
Daddy never took me to the good places. He didn't take me to the library or the park, not like Mommy or Grandma did.
He took me to dirty places, scary ones, where people looked at me like I wasn't supposed to be there.
He climbed in and sat beside me. He didn’t bother to buckle his seat belt.
Grandma would yell at him for that—I just knew it.
But Grandma was never with Daddy.
I wasn’t sure she had met him at all.
“I have a job for you today,” Daddy said as he began to drive.
“A … job?”
I frowned. Jobs were work. Kids didn't work. Kids went to school.
Mommy goes to school too though, I thought, scrunching my forehead. Is Mommy a kid?
Daddy nodded. “A real important one,” he said. “And if you do good, I'll take you to McDonald's. How does that sound?”
“Okay,” I replied, not wanting to sound too excited, but … I loved McDonald's.
“Good. That’s good,” Daddy said, sounding happy.
He didn't sound happy a lot, and it felt nice to make him feel that way. My body got all warm and tingly, and I looked out the window to smile, not wanting Daddy to see.
Just in case he got mad again.
***
We drove and drove and drove for a long time. It felt like hours were going by, and at some point, I thought I had fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, I was opening my eyes to Daddy shaking me roughly.
I woke up to a dry, crusty mess at the corner of my mouth from where I had drooled in my sleep. I did that sometimes. I smacked my lips and stretched my arms before turning to look at Daddy's face.
He didn't seem happy anymore, and I guessed it was because I’d been sleeping.
I was sorry, but I didn't say so.
I didn't say anything.
“Let's go,” he said, climbing out of the truck and slamming the door behind him.
I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped I woke up fast as I fumbled with the seat belt buckle.
I looked out the car window to see a small house.
I thought it had probably been white at one point, but it was so dirty that I wasn't sure.
One window had a plank of wood nailed to it, and a screen door hung from the hinges, and the grass looked so tall that I knew Grandpa would yell at me to stay away because of bugs and snakes and other creepy-crawly things.
My belly began to hurt as I looked out the truck window at that little house. Something, like a little voice in my head, told me not to go near it. It felt haunted and spooky. There were monsters inside—there must be—and I was scared.
I wanted to go home.
I wanted Mommy.
But Daddy came into view and pulled my door open. He wrapped his big hand around my arm and pulled me from the truck. I stumbled a bit, nearly falling to my knees, and he cursed under his breath and demanded that I stand up and stop being stupid.
“Now, listen to me,” he said, reaching into his back pocket for something. “We're gonna go in there. I'm gonna talk to someone, and while I'm talking to him, you're gonna do me a big favor, all right?”
“What kind of favor?” I asked, keeping my eyes only on that house and not on Daddy.
“You're gonna find me a bag,” he went on. “It's a big bag—”
“What color is it?”
“I don't know what fucking color it is,” he snapped angrily. “Who gives a fuck about the color? It's a big bag. Got it?”
I scrunched my nose as the yucky feeling in my belly grew and grew until I thought I might throw up.
“You're gonna find that bag, and while I'm talking to my friend in there, you're gonna take it and bring it out here. Do you understand?”
I turned my eyes from the house, only to look up at Daddy with big, wide eyes. “You want me to steal?”
Daddy sucked in a deep breath and pressed his lips into a thin little line.
I heard something make a clicking sound, and that was when I dropped my eyes to see the shiny black gun in his hand.
It looked like the kind I saw in movies or video games sometimes, but those were cool because they were pretend.
Just make-believe. This one … this was here. And it didn’t look like make-believe.
My heart thumped and thumped loudly until it felt like it would explode, and I gasped and choked on the air in my lungs.
Why did my daddy have a gun?
“Hey,” Daddy said, and he sounded nice, like the way Mommy or Grandma sounded when I was worried, so I looked up at him. “It's fake, okay? It's just a toy.”
“The gun is pretend?”
“Yeah,” he said with a slow nod of his head. “All pretend. Don't you worry about it. Just get that bag. That's the only thing you gotta worry about.”
“Stealing is wrong though,” I said, relaxing a little bit—but just a little bit because even though Daddy had said the gun was fake, it still looked really, really real.
But maybe … maybe he was right. Maybe it was fake.
I hadn't ever seen a real gun before. Mommy didn't even let me have fake guns, let alone a real one.
She and Grandma said they were bad and dangerous, even though boys at school had fake guns.
Fake guns weren't bad or dangerous because they couldn't hurt anyone.
“Yeah, yeah,” Daddy said. “Stealing is wrong, but this isn't stealing because this guy in here … he stole from me. That bag is mine. Do you understand? I need to get it back. That's your job. Your really important job. And if you do it, I'll get you McDonald's. Remember? That's the deal, right?”
It was true. I had made a deal with Daddy to get my McDonald's, and I still wanted it … but now, I wasn’t sure it was worth it.
I could ask Grandma or Grandpa for McDonald’s tomorrow, and if I was good, I knew they’d get it for me.
They always did. So, maybe I didn’t need to do this for Daddy. Maybe I could go home instead.