CHAPTER ONE #2
“I-I don't think I'm hungry anymore,” I said, my voice shaking and sounding small. “C-can I j-just—”
I gasped as Daddy grabbed my arm, holding it tight in his grasp.
“You are going to do exactly as I say,” he threatened in a low, angry tone. “You are going to go inside that house, and you are going to get that bag. Now, let's go.”
Daddy tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans and covered it with his shirt and jacket.
Then he grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the broken door of the scary house.
I bit my bottom lip to try and keep myself from crying, and I swallowed over and over, hoping that pukey feeling would leave my belly.
I thought about Mommy.
I thought about all the times Daddy had hurt her.
She hardly ever cried. She never threw up. No matter how many bad things happened to her.
She wouldn't be crying now.
She wouldn't puke.
So, I won't either.
Daddy swung the screen door open and banged loudly on the dirty white door inside with the peeling paint and rusty doorknob. He didn't stop banging until it was finally opened by a skinny man wearing a faded T-shirt and ripped jeans.
The guy’s eyes opened wide as he looked at Daddy, and he said, “Seth, man, I-I was just g-gonna—”
“Where's my money, Tommy?” Daddy asked, pushing the man aside and stepping into the house, dragging me along every step of the way.
Tommy didn't take his eyes off me. I didn't like those eyes. Big, round, and so red. They were creepy and mean. Even meaner than Daddy.
I didn’t think anyone could be meaner than Daddy.
“H-hey, so, uh … what's with the kid?” he asked, looking angrier and angrier by the second.
“Don't you worry about him,” Daddy said. “You worry about getting me my fuckin' money.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll get you your money. As soon as you tell me who that, uh … who that kid is.”
“The kid is nobody.”
The man's eyes got squinty, like the way Grandma's had when I fibbed and told her I hadn't touched the icing container on the counter. She had known I lied to her then, and this mean-looking man—Tommy—knew Daddy was lying to him now.
My belly felt heavy and yucky again as I looked at Daddy.
“Nobody, huh?”
He took a step toward me, tipping his head to one side. He smiled big and wide, revealing a mouth full of dirty, yucky teeth. A few of them were missing. I was missing a couple of teeth, too, but they didn’t look like that. Rotten.
“What's your name, little boy?”
I swallowed, took a step back into the room, and began to say, “N-no—”
Daddy grabbed the mean man and yanked him away from me, spinning him around to look at Daddy's face. “Eyes on me, Tommy. My money. I want it—now.”
Frozen on the spot, I watched Daddy's face, my hands shaking and my lungs struggling to take a single breath. His eyes darted toward mine for a split second, and his head nudged a teeny-tiny bit to the left.
The bag, I remembered, and quickly, I nodded, proud of myself for understanding his meaning.
Daddy held the mean man named Tommy while I turned and looked around the gross-looking room.
I scrunched my nose at the garbage littering the floor.
Empty chip bags, beer cans, soda bottles, bags from fast-food places—there was so much of it.
I didn't know how I could walk through without tripping over something.
A light-gray couch with stuffing sticking out of its cushions was pushed against the wall.
There were brown stains all over it, and I didn't want to think about where those might’ve come from.
Across from it was a little TV and the rickety table it sat on.
The room was small, so there weren't many places to look, and I couldn't see a bag anywhere.
“I d-don't have your money, Seth,” Tommy said from behind me.
“You don't have my money?”
“No, man. I-I'm sorry, okay?”
Daddy laughed a little, but he didn't sound happy. “You're sorry?”
“Yeah, man. I'm really sorry. I-I-I have to feed my kid, you know? You know how it is, right? M-my family a-a-and—”
“You know what I think?”
I took a few steps farther into the room, careful to not walk over any of the garbage. My eyes stared ahead at the doorway toward the back of the room. It led to a kitchen even dirtier than the living room.
“W-what?”
“I think you're bullshitting me, Tommy.”
“Why … why would I do that?”
“You tell me.”
There was noise from behind me. A scuffle, and then Tommy shouted, “Whoa! Seth, dude, holy shit! Okay, okay, okay! I’ll talk!”
My legs felt like jelly, and my hands shook.
What was Daddy doing? I remembered the gun he had, the one he'd tucked into his waistband. He’d said it was fake, but Tommy sounded scared.
Really, really scared. Like the way I’d sounded when a whole bunch of yellow jackets came into the backyard and buzzed, buzzed, buzzed all around me.
I didn't turn around though. I didn't dare look over my shoulder to find out if it was the fake gun that had Tommy so scared or if it was something else.
I kept walking into the kitchen.
Little flying bugs swarmed around the sink full of filthy dishes.
The stovetop was cluttered with dirty pots and pans, and the tiled wall behind it was splattered with something crusty and black.
Grandma made yucky faces when her countertops were even a tiny bit dirty.
I couldn't imagine how she would feel here, surrounded by the stench of rotten food and a mustiness so thick and heavy that I could barely breathe.
Bag. Daddy needs a bag.
I gagged, then swallowed down the pukey feeling in my belly again as I looked around the disgusting kitchen.
The floor was gross, peeling in spots and thick with dirt and who knew what else, but it was empty of things.
Not like the floor in the living room at all.
The little round table in the corner of the room and the two chairs beside it were all cluttered with stuff.
Stacks and stacks of papers and magazines and envelopes, coats, garbage, more dishes and pots …
A backpack caught my eye.
Quietly, I tiptoed over the tiled floor to check it out when a noise behind me made me gasp loudly and drop to the floor beside the table, hoping I was hidden from view. I peeked at the top of a pile of envelopes and quickly noticed the name as I reached for the backpack.
Tomas.
They forgot the H, I thought, thinking about a boy in my first-grade class whose name was also Thomas but spelled the right way.
“What are you doing?”
I peered over a pile of laundry on one of the chairs to see a bigger kid than me. A boy. He sounded like one of the fifth graders at my school, but he looked meaner.
Like Daddy, I thought. He's mean like Daddy … but he's just a kid.
“I see you, stupid,” he said, taking a step into the kitchen.
His eyes were aimed directly at mine. I knew he saw me. I knew it. But fear kept me on the floor, like my knees were glued to the grime-crusted tiles.
“Get up.”
Slowly, I did exactly as he’d demanded, and once I was standing, I felt even smaller. He was a big kid. Maybe even bigger than a fifth grader.
Maybe he’s a sixth grader.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked, his upper lip curling into a sneer.
Mommy and Grandma would put soap in my mouth for saying a word like hell, and I wondered if his mom and grandma never did.
I remembered Daddy wouldn't let me tell Tommy my name. I thought he probably wouldn't want me to tell this kid either.
“I-I-I'm not allowed t-to tell you,” I answered.
The big kid laughed. “Says who?”
Just then, Daddy yelled from the living room, “I'm done playing games, Tommy! You give me my fucking money, or I’ll put a hole through your fuckin' foot!”
The big kid turned to look through the doorway, like he only just realized there was someone else in the house besides me. The moment he wasn't looking at me, something in my head told me to run, run, run, and I did. I ran right past him and down a dark, narrow hallway.
All I could think about was the bag Daddy wanted me to get.
The bag that would make him happy. I wasn’t sure Daddy was a good person, but these people—Tommy and the big kid—I thought maybe they were worse.
Because Daddy still wanted to get me McDonald's.
Daddy didn't like when I said bad words, even if he said them, and the big kid was allowed to say hell.
And I thought Daddy needed my help more than Tommy did, even though Tommy sounded really, really scared.
“Hey!” the big kid yelled, running after me. His voice squeaked a little bit. “Get over here!”
I ran straight into an open doorway and looked around for a bag, any bag. But the room was so dark, and it smelled like the time Mommy and I had gone camping with Grandpa and Grandma.
“Skunk spray,” Grandpa had told me.
Did a skunk live here too?
I pinched my nose and started to look when the big kid tackled me to the floor. I fell with an oof. He was heavy, and I cried out, unable to pull in a deep breath.
“Daddy!” I screamed as loud as I could. “Daddy! Help!”
I heard Daddy say something through the whooshing sound in my ears as I tried to scramble out from beneath the kid's bigger body. But he punched me right in the face and wrapped his hands around my neck. I tried to cry out in pain as tears began to stream down my face, but I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t do anything but claw at the boy’s arms. I pinched my eyes shut, knowing I needed to breathe if I wanted to live, and I couldn’t breathe, so did that mean I was going to die?
I didn’t want to die—I didn’t know what that even meant—and I wanted my mommy.
Then, suddenly, I was free to take a deep breath as he was lifted off of me.
“Ahh!” the big kid cried. “Dad! Dad!”
“Seth! Let my boy go! Please! Let him go!”
I coughed and choked and sat up in time to watch through the darkness as Daddy threw the big kid into the corner of the room. He held his hand out, and I saw the gun, pointed right at the boy who had just tried to strangle me.
“Daddy! No! Stop!”
“Get out of the house,” he said calmly, never looking in my direction. “Go.”
Tommy was behind Daddy. There wasn't much light in the little room, but I could see his big, scared eyes.
“What are you gonna do?” I asked Daddy, scrambling to stand up.
“Don't you worry about what I'm gonna do,” he replied through a clenched jaw. “Get out of the fucking house.”
“Seth,” Tommy said, squeezing into the room. “I will get you your money, I swear to fuckin' God, all right? Keep my kid out of it. Please. Holy fuck, man. Please. He didn't do anything.”
“Noah!” he yelled. “Go! Now!”
Without taking his eyes off the big kid, now crouched in the corner, crying and cowering, Daddy reached for Tommy, grabbed him by the arm, and shoved him toward his son, leaving the doorway open for me to get through.
“Don't hurt them,” I whispered, the tears continuing to stream down my cheeks. “Please, Daddy.”
But Daddy didn't say anything. He just shoved me past him, back into the dark hallway. I knew he'd be mad at me if I didn't listen, so I did as he’d told me.
I left the house.
Without the bag.
When the door was closed behind me and I was standing once again on the other side of the broken screen door, I sucked in a breath of fresh air as a loud BANG cracked against my eardrums.
And as I fell to my knees, I finally gave in to that feeling in my belly and threw up.