Chapter 1 #2
"Right. And if I have no idea what any of those words mean in this order?"
A sound escapes me. Not a laugh. Close to one.
Closer than I've come in this classroom all semester.
"The independent variable is the one you think is doing the causing." I turn my laptop so he can see my notes. "The dependent variable is the one being affected. So if you're looking at study hours versus exam scores, study hours are independent and exam scores are dependent."
He nods slowly, writing it down in handwriting so messy it looks like a seismograph reading. "Okay. Okay, yeah. I see it."
His pen hovers over the page. "You're way better at this than me."
"It's not hard once you see the pattern."
He half-grins, and it changes his whole face.
It opens him up, makes him look younger, less guarded. "Everything's easy once you see the pattern. The problem is I'm pattern-blind in this class."
He leans back in his chair, clicking the pen against his notebook. "I'm good at other stuff, I swear. This is my weak spot."
I keep my eyes on the screen. "Everyone's got one."
"Yeah, but most people's weak spots aren't a required gen-ed standing between them and graduation."
Another almost-laugh. I catch it before it fully forms, but he notices.
His grin widens by a fraction, and he goes back to his notebook, copying the equation I walked him through.
We work through the rest of the problem in a back-and-forth I didn't plan on.
He asks questions without pretending he already knows the answers, which is rarer than it should be.
He's not performing confusion for attention.
He's genuinely lost and not embarrassed about it, and there's something disarming about a person who can sit in their own ignorance without flinching.
When Dr. Petrov calls time and starts going over the solution, he leans back and clicks the pink pen closed.
"Thanks. Seriously." He taps the notebook with his knuckles. "I'd still be staring at the screen if you hadn't translated."
I close my laptop halfway. "It's fine."
"I'm the worst statistician alive."
"You set up the equation right. You'll be fine."
He looks at me for a moment. Not long. Not invasive.
Not the way the woman at Starbucks looked at me.
He looks at me the way you look at someone you're seeing clearly for the first time and finding interesting.
Not like the woman at Starbucks.
Not like anyone in this town.
And my chest aches with how badly I want him to keep doing it.
"See you on Thursday?" He says it like a question even though we've both been sitting in this room three times a week for a month.
I nod, fingers resting on my laptop. "Yeah. Thursday."
He grabs his notebook, the pink feather pen, and heads for the door.
I watch him go for exactly two seconds before I stop myself.
He walks like someone who's used to being watched, but doesn't like it. Alert without being stiff. Eyes forward, posture straight.
I don't know his name, and I'm not going to ask.
Asking names means giving yours, and giving mine means watching someone's face change the second they realize who you are.
I don't want to watch his face change.
Not this one. Not the face attached to the half-grin and the honest confusion.
I pack up my laptop and leave through the door he used, taking the stairs down and out into the February air.
The rest of my day is ordinary. Two more classes. A shift at the bar from five to midnight, pouring beers for college kids who tip in coins and construction workers who tip in a decent amount of cash because they think they can get in my pants.
My boss, Gary, spends most of the shift in the back office watching football on his phone.
The other bartender, Marissa, talks enough for both of us.
I listen, I pour, I wipe down the bar, I collect my tips and close out for the night.
In the parking lot, I pull out my phone and text Mom:
Beat tonight. Rain check tomorrow?
Her reply comes before I get the key in the ignition:
Tomorrow. Love you. Eat something.
My apartment is dark when I get back. Cold. The landlord still hasn't given us a few extra degrees of warmth.
Why in the actual fuck does he think he can keep it sixty degrees in here for all of us?
I drop my bag, kick off my boots, and fill a glass of water from the tap.
The mail is on the counter where I left it this morning. I'd grabbed it on my way out and tossed it down without looking.
Bills, a credit card offer, a flyer for a pizza place on High Street, a coupon mailer addressed to "Current Resident."
And underneath all of it, a white envelope.
No return address. Handwriting I'd recognize in a blackout, in a fire, in my sleep, in the middle of a crowded room with my eyes half-closed.
Blocky capital letters. Blue ballpoint. Penmanship you develop when you have nothing but time, a commissary pen and a concrete wall to write against.
My father's handwriting.
I stand at the counter with the envelope in my hand, and the apartment shrinks around me.
The controlled space. The made bed. The washed dishes.
All of it carefully arranged to keep the chaos out, and here it is, sliding under the door in a number ten envelope with no return address because he knows I won't open it if I see where it came from.
He's reaching out again.
After nearly a year of silence, after I stopped answering the collect calls and returning the letters, after I told the facility not to forward correspondence, he found a way.
He always finds a way.
Because men like my father don't understand the word no. They hear it. They process it. And then they decide it doesn't apply to them.
I open the junk drawer in the kitchen.
The one with the takeout menus, dead batteries, and the rubber bands I keep meaning to throw away.
I put the letter inside and shut the drawer.
My hands are shaking.
I press them flat against the counter. Lean my weight into them until the trembling stops.
Breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth, the way my therapist taught me when I was sixteen and the panic attacks came so hard and fast I thought my ribs were breaking.
He can't get to me. He's behind walls and wire and a sentence so long he'll die in there.
He can't hurt me. He can't hurt Mom.
He can't do anything except write words on paper and send them into a world he lost the right to participate in when he picked up a knife in a parking lot and decided a woman's life was worth less than his anger.
The drawer stays closed.
I brush my teeth, wash my face, and set my alarm for 5:50.
The second I get into bed, I pull the comforter up to my chin and stare at the ceiling.
I can’t have him in my life again.
There’s one thing that follows my father: chaos.