11. Silas
“You little shit, get over here!” my father shouts, the last syllables tangling in his mouth after far too many glasses of vodka.
I pull my knees tighter to my chest, hating the trembling that takes hold of me and won’t let go.
Dean isn’t home. And he won’t be for a while.
One hour, twenty-three minutes, sixteen seconds.
That’s if he doesn’t miss the second bus. If he does, those twenty-three minutes become forty-five.
Damn it.
“You think I don’t know you threw out my other bottle of vodka? Who do you think you are? I’m your father!”
If I hadn’t thrown that bottle out, he’d be sitting in a puddle of his own piss and vomit right now. A puddle I would’ve had to clean up, and I can’t stand the smell anymore. The last time I tried to lift him, he threw up on me.
I don’t know how long I stood in the shower. I only know that Dean found me staring at nothing.
I hate him.
Mom kept him on some kind of a leash. Since she died, there hasn’t been a single day he hasn’t put a bottle to his mouth. He liked drinking before too, but she acted as a shield for us.
Now we’re alone with him until I turn eighteen.
Dean could leave any time, but that would mean leaving me here with him. Because in the few minutes of clarity he’d manage, he’d go to the police and report me missing.
My brother is the only one bringing money into this house. If I’m gone, his alcohol supply disappears.
That doesn’t mean he can’t make my life hell.
I hear plates shattering on the floor, and then his dragging footsteps coming toward my room.
You’d think that for someone with a blood alcohol level high enough to put them in a coma, he wouldn’t have the strength to throw himself against a door.
You’d be wrong.
The hinges shriek under the barrage of fists, and I find myself swallowing hard.
Why won’t he just stop?
But I know the answer.
It’s been two weeks since the last beating. Two weeks of Dean doing everything he could to keep him at a distance.
There are fleeting moments when I look at my brother and I know exactly what he’s thinking. What it would take. How he’d do it.
In even more moments, I wish he would.
The door shudders, and my back presses harder against the leg of the desk I’m hiding under, like the wood might absorb me if I push hard enough.
It’s not going to stop him. It’s only going to delay the pain.
I start counting in my head. Numbers have always been a comfort.
One.
“I’ll make sure to break the hand you used to steal from me, boy!”
Two. Three.
Another fist against the door, and the latch rattles.
Four. Five. Six.
I never make it to seven before the door slams against the wall, but my mind keeps going anyway.
Eight. Nine. Ten.
He’s too drunk to bend down and grab me, but his feet have no such limitations.
Eleven. Twelve.
Stop!
Thirteen.
A vase I painted with my mother when I was six years old ends up in his hands, and he hurls it at me. He’s too drunk to aim well, but a shard catches me on the neck.
Fourteen. Fifteen.
“You killed her! Everything went wrong the moment you were born!”
I don’t say a word.
Sixteen.
Run, whispers a voice inside me that has had enough of trembling in front of him. Now!
And despite the numbers screaming that we’re safer under this desk, I push off with both hands and sprint, ignoring the sound of broken porcelain crunching under my sneakers.
I shove him on my way out. Too surprised, or too drunk, to react, he goes down.
“You bastard! I’ll kill you when I get my hands on you!”
I wake up with sweat sliding down my temples.
You’re not there, Silas.
I’m not. But my mind is slow to catch up.
That night I made it out of the house and waited for Dean in the rain for over an hour. I counted every second. Calculated the speed of the bus bringing him home. Figured out exactly how long it would take me to go back inside and make my father permanently quiet.
That was the last time I ever let him put fear in me.
The next morning at breakfast, he yelled at me to make him coffee.
I refused.
Dean watched the exchange, ready to step in.
“You forgot who the hell are you talking with, boy! Bring me that coffee before I?—”
“It’ll take us exactly twenty-one minutes to pack everything and walk out of this house.
You can’t report us missing for twenty-four hours.
Do you have any idea what twenty-four hours without alcohol looks like?
After that, the police would have to find us.
By my calculations, we could stay hidden for a week without any trouble.
Can you last that long without putting that poison in your system?
If you come near us again, we walk. And your supply walks with us. ”
I don’t know if it was the numbers that scared him, but he never laid a hand on me again after that.
Dean squeezed my shoulder and murmured “I’m proud of you” before leaving for work.
That same stubborn knot lodges itself in my throat when I think about how he came home with pizza that evening, to celebrate what he called my Emancipation.
My mind picks the worst possible moment to conjure a pair of round glasses, and just like that, I’m furious with myself.
I should be focused on the man who killed my brother.
Forget about Amalia Sanchez, Silas.
I’m trying. I’m really fucking trying.