by Amy Giles
“Do you think I’m an idiot, Hadley? This whole time you were thinking you’re so smart. So fucking smart, you forgot to clear your search browser.”
Terror overrides any kind of outrage over his invasion of my privacy. My vision starts to darken at the edges.
He’s been using my phone to stalk me. He’s been snooping around in my room, searching through my computer.
“Are you pregnant, Hadley?”
“No!” I yell, finally finding my voice.
My heart pounds violently in my chest.
He nods and turns toward the fireplace, picking up the poker and stirring the ashes around. That’s when I see it. My pack of birth control pills, smoldering. The fire hasn’t melted the plastic packaging completely yet. But there’s some fabric in there too, still burning.
With tense shoulders, he pulls the poker out of the fire. It’s a subtle cue, a distant rumble before the storm. The way his fist clenches around the rod, the white knuckles pressing against the skin. His rapid breathing. I wait for him to drop the poker and come after me with his fists and kicks. But that’s not what happens. There’s no time to react. Hot metal slams into my hip.
I clamp my teeth, trapping my scream before it escapes. The heat penetrates the fabric down to my skin. Falling to the ground, I wiggle out of my pants, pulling them down just enough that the material isn’t in direct contact with my skin. The burn throbs, mining deeper into my hip, radiating outward. I hold my breath, waiting for the pain to ebb like it usually does. But not tonight. Tonight, everything changed.
“You’re never going to see him again! Do you understand?”
I curl into a ball at the first kick.
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” He kicks again.
“Yes!” I lie.
I wait for another kick that never comes. I lift my head just as he hurls the poker across the room, cracking the drywall.
“Christ!” He falls on the couch, dropping his head in his hands, howling something so primal it scares me even more than his anger.
With his face still in his hands, he screams, “Go to your room!”
I jump up and run upstairs as fast as I can, trying not to limp.
My room is ransacked, torn upside down. The mattress is half off the box spring. My clothes are scattered all over the floor, still on their hangers, thrown in a fit of rage. The shirt I had wrapped for Charlie is gone, burned to ashes in the fireplace.
then
I text Charlie telling him I can’t pick him up because I’m running late, when really, I just can’t face him. I know last night is written all over me, the hot poker branding more than just my hip. The burn is minor, a swath of red between two dark bruises like a railroad track. My jeans acted as a buffer, protecting me from it being much worse. I put Neosporin and a bandage over the red skin. Not seeing it helps. But every agonizing step reminds me of last night.
Charlie sneaks up behind me at my locker, his breath tickling the back of my neck. I spin around, startled to find him holding a piece of mistletoe over my head. He leans in and kisses me quickly. I hide my misery away, not wanting to bring him down when he’s so happy.
It’s the last day of school before break. Way too many girls are dressed like naughty elves, looking like a bunch of Mean Girls wannabes. Even Meaghan is wearing her stiletto boots, a short black skirt, and a clingy red sweater, topped with a Santa hat. She and Noah join us at my locker.
“Look.” Noah holds her red floppy hat straight up by the pom-pom. “Now she’s almost as tall as a regular-size human.” She really does look like one of Santa’s helpers next to him, even in her heels.
“I’m so ready to bust out of here,” Meaghan squeals. “I’m going to sleep till noon every day for the next two weeks.” Then she turns to us. “Does anyone have Christmas Eve plans? My parents are going to my aunt’s tomorrow night. Let’s have a party at my house. Just us, so we can exchange presents.”
Noah shrugs. “It’s just another night for me, so I’m open.”
Charlie glances at me. “Well, we have plans with my mom tomorrow night. Maybe before?” He tries to read my face, but I’ve wiped it clean of any anxiety, doubt, or fear.
“Maybe,” I say. “Let me check.”
“Yeah, see if the Drill Sergeant lets you out for the night.” Meaghan laughs and makes a cracking whip noise in the air.
Charlie’s face falls. Completely, like he absolutely cannot play along with Meaghan’s joke.
“What?” Meaghan looks at him aghast. “It’s a joke! She knows it’s a joke!” She points to me, panicking.
I smile and nudge him. He readjusts his hand from my waist, dropping it just slightly, just enough to hit the sore spot. I groan and bite my lip. Charlie lifts his hand immediately, fingers flared, as if my hip still carries some of the heat from the hot poker and I’ve scalded him.
“You okay there?” Noah asks, scrutinizing me.
“Yeah.” I breathe, pulling it together. “Banged my hip yesterday. No biggie.”
The hallway thins out. “I better get to class,” I say, slamming my locker. I won’t look at Charlie. I can’t tell him about last night. How much worse it’s getting.
I hurry down the hallway without looking back.
“No more secrets.”
Charlie finds me before Spanish and pulls me to the side of the hallway.
I open my mouth, but he cuts me off. “And no more lies.” My lips close as I try to pull my words together. He must take my silence as resistance, because he offers me something in exchange.
“I never want to be anything but totally honest with you,” he says, leaning close to me. “I called CPS.” He waits for me to respond.
It doesn’t shock me. It doesn’t scare me. It doesn’t even make me mad that he did it behind my back. I just look up at him and nod. I understand why he did it. And because I believe in Charlie, I want to believe he did the right thing.
“I think that was a good idea.” He blinks. It was obviously not what he was expecting.
The bell rings.
“We’re late,” I say.
He looks around. “We’re not going today.” He grabs me by the elbow and wheels me around to a stairwell that leads down to the basement. There are shop classes down there, and a couple of art classes. Otherwise, the basement is a completely underutilized space.
“We’re cutting?” I ask in amazement.
“It’s the day before a two-week break in our senior year. No one is going to care, if they even notice.”
“We’re missing the Feliz Navidad party,” I say, following behind him down the stairwell.
“I can live without the flan.”
It sounds like a summer night down here.
“Am I hallucinating, or do I hear crickets?”
Charlie smiles. “You didn’t hear about the senior prank?”
“No,” I say, letting him guide me down the abandoned hall. Cutting class is much easier than I ever realized.
“Two years ago, a bunch of seniors poured hundreds of crickets into the school as their farewell gesture. The exterminator couldn’t get rid of all of them. It’s always warm in here, and the school protects them from their natural predators.”
He finds an empty classroom, dark and cluttered, with unused Smart Boards and art supplies. Chairs are stacked up on top of desks. By the thick film of dust coating every surface we’ve disrupted just by entering, I’d say this room hasn’t been used in a while.
With the lights off, he pulls two chairs down, face-to-face, and we sit in a dark corner. No one would ever think to look for us here, even if we bunkered down here for days.
“When did you call?” I ask.
He reaches over for my hands and holds them in my lap. “After Thanksgiving.”
I bolt forward. “You didn’t tell them your name, did you?”
“No, of course not,” he says. “I told her it had to be anonymous.”
I scratch my nose; the dust is making me itchy. “What did they ask y
ou?”
One side of his lips pinches back. “They asked if I felt you or your sister were in any immediate danger.”
“What did you say?” Maybe I need to hear it from him to believe it.
“I said yes!”
When I looked into how CPS works, I read they had twenty-four hours to investigate a call. “Maybe they interviewed our teachers . . . decided it was a prank.”
“I’ll call again,” Charlie says, thinking it’s the assurance I need right now. Instead, panic rushes into my lungs like water. The ball is in motion; I should stop it before it’s too late.
I ease back against the chair and close my eyes. “Maybe . . .”
I feel him lean closer to me. “What?”
My father’s face looms between us, like he always does. “What happens in this family stays in this family. It’s no one else’s business.”
It was down in the gym, two years ago. He was lifting weights and lost his grip. It was funny, something straight out of a blooper show. His eyes went wide and his body flailed, right before the bar with all the weights crashed to the floor. A laugh escaped when it shouldn’t have.
I clamped my mouth closed, but a smile still hovered on my lips.
“Wipe that dumb smile off your face before I wipe it off for you.”
It was too late anyway, even if I did manage to hastily tuck the smile away.
Usually a switch clicked after a couple of blows and he’d snap out of it. Not this time. He wanted to keep going; it took him everything to stop, I could tell. It was going to be hard to hide it tomorrow, the ache of every step.
“If anyone asks, you tell them you got your ass kicked on the field. Got it?”
I inched away from him on my side, across the rough carpeting, between the treadmill and the Bowflex.
“What happens in this family stays in this family. It’s no one else’s business. I swear to God, Hadley, if you ever tell anyone, I’ll kill you with my own bare hands.”
He held his hands out to show me, curling them into big square sledgehammers.
Then he stormed over to the heavy punching bag hanging from the ceiling and punched. I watched as his bare knuckles bled, knowing that each time his fist cracked against the hard leather, he was picturing my face.
There’s a small terrified part of me that wonders, or maybe knows, if the punching bag weren’t there, it would have been me he beat until his hands were covered in both of our blood.
“It’s not that bad,” I continue, my eyes still closed, measuring the pain in my hip against the pain of the beating in the basement. “I mean, other people deal with really sick stuff.” I wince. “You know? Broken bones . . .”
If this were only about me, I’d wait out the next few months and then I’d be free. No one would ever know what happened. We’d be the best-kept secret. But it’s not just about me.
He looks down at my hip. “What’d he do?”
I tell him how my father’s been tracking me, how he knows I’ve been sneaking out to see Charlie. I even tell him about the pregnancy scare and the trip to Planned Parenthood. I glance up at that, since I know this is our business. His eyes grow fearful first then go soft and tender.
“That’s something you should have told me too,” he says.
“If I told you, it would be real.” I play with his fingers holding my hand in my lap. “Then he tore through my room and found the pills and threw them in the fire. He threw your Christmas present in there too. And then—”
Last night my father did something he’d never done before. He hit me with an object. Like that day in the gym, he lost it completely. He had to throw the poker across the room so he wouldn’t hit me with it again. Maybe that’s why he’s not around as much. Maybe he’s not just avoiding my mother or having an affair. Maybe he’s avoiding me because I bring this hate, this rage out in him.
“He hit me with the fireplace poker. While it was still hot.”
Charlie and I sit quietly, alone in this neglected basement classroom. Somewhere in the corner, a cricket alerts us to his presence. I envy that cricket, tucked safely away from his natural predators.
That afternoon I come home to the warm smells of baking. Rows of banana-nut mini loaves cool on the kitchen island. Mom is getting ready for Christmas, even if Christmas wants nothing to do with us.
“That smells great,” I say, leaning over the counter.
“They’re for the PTA,” she says, pleased. “As gifts.”
“Save some for us.” I’m tempted to grab one and run to my room with it.
“You know we can’t. Your father’s allergic.”
“So make one without nuts.” I grab an apple out of the fruit bowl to stop my stomach from churning with hunger.
She takes a sip of wine and rolls her eyes at me. “It’s not just the nuts, you know that. It’s the sugar, the flour . . . it’s fine for other people—”
“It’s Christmas!” I whine around a mouthful.
She turns back to the double oven to check on several more loaves.
“We’ll have a nice dinner on Christmas Day,” she says.
I wait a few moments.
“Meaghan invited me over tomorrow night.” I take a casual bite of my apple.
With her back still to me, she stiffens, like a pole just shot right up her ass.
“Is he going to be there?”
I stare at her back, despising her.
“He has a name,” I snap back.
“Well? Is he?” she demands, turning around.
“Maybe,” I say, testing her, taunting her. So much anger and resentment are bottled up inside me; it would be so easy to take it out on her.
She takes a deep drink then lowers her glass carefully. She’s broken a lot of wineglasses on the granite countertop when she’s had a few too many.
“What do you want me to say, Hadley? You want me to lie to your father?”
“Do nothing. Look away, like you always do,” I snap.
The phone rings before she can respond. Mom answers it. Her face blanches, and she gets that haughty tone in her voice when she wants to let someone know she’s better than they are.
“This is she. Who’s this? . . . Who? . . . What’s this in reference to? . . . You can’t be serious. This is some kind of sick joke . . . Tomorrow? That’s absurd,” she huffs, pacing around the room. “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve!”
She pauses and listens. “Even if it’s in the morning, it’s still Christmas Eve . . . I . . . fine, of course, fine. I think this is completely unwarranted. I certainly hope you are discreet about this . . . Yes, yes . . . ten o’clock then. Good-bye.” She hunches over, her face in her hands. Then she spins around.
“Did you have anything to do with that?” She points to the phone, her cheeks red, her chin dimpling.
“With what?” I ask, pretending not to know.
“That was Child Protective Services. They’re coming here tomorrow for an interview!”
She looks at my face, for clues, for cracks. I’ve learned how to hide many dark things over the years. I have her and Dad to thank for it.
“This is ridiculous,” she says, holding her glass. “Your father is going to have a fit!”
Yes, he is, I think. And I hope CPS is here to see it.
then
Prisms of light burst overhead from my chandelier as my bedroom door swings open. I blink away sleep, trying to remember what day it is, what I forgot. The smell of his coffee in my room tells me we’re back to our old routine. I slide my legs out of bed.
“Get up. You need to run an errand today,” Dad says, slurping his cup.
“What?” I ask, stifling a yawn.
“You and your sister. You’re going over to your grandmother’s.”
I blink a few more times, arranging my thoughts in some kind of logical order.
“Isn’t Grandma coming over tomorrow for Christmas?”
“Nope.” He turns away.
“Why?” I ask, but he’s already left
.
Of course. CPS is coming today, and he doesn’t want us around.
I did my research long before Charlie called. I know what’s supposed to happen. They were supposed to interview Lila and me at school, a neutral place away from our parents, before talking to them. But school is out for the next two weeks.
What I don’t know is if they’ll try to find a way to talk to us over the break. My stomach knots at the thought.
As Lila and I leave later that morning, I see the house through the CPS caseworker’s lens. The boughs of holly that snake down the banister, the ten-foot tree with stacks of festively wrapped presents underneath, Christmas music piping through the sound system in the background, the smell of one more banana-nut loaf baking in the oven, which apparently only people outside our family are allowed to eat.
Closing the door behind me, I can only hope for a miracle at this point.
“Never, ever, ever, ever boil your water in the microwave,” Grandma says, putting the kettle on the stove for tea. “Always put a kettle on. Always.”
“Why?” Lila asks.
“It’s just the civilized way to do it,” she says as if that’s enough.
“But why? The microwave is faster.” Lila presses.
“Just do it for me, dear.”
She sets the table for us, putting out cream and sugar for Lila. I take mine with lemon for Grandma, because I know it makes her happy.
“Can someone please tell me why you’re not coming to our house tomorrow?” Lila asks.
Grandma turns away to gather teaspoons from the drawer, but her shoulders stiffen. “Your father has some kind of surprise for you tomorrow,” she says, heavy emphasis on father.
“Do you know what it is?” Lila asks.
Grandma turns back to us and smiles, but it wavers. “Yes, but you’re not getting it out of me.” She makes a zipping motion across her lips, lightening the mood for Lila’s benefit.
“Can we give you your presents?” I ask.
She smiles, but it’s a sad smile. Whatever surprise Dad has in store for us tomorrow cannot possibly be worth the pain of knowing Grandma will be spending Christmas Day alone.
I hate him.