Prologue
Theo
When it’s cold like this, the only warm place is the stove.
Snow comes in around the windowpanes. They can’t stand up to the winter, so we get frost inside. Everywhere but the gas stove. So I don’t mind that I’m the one who makes dinner. I get to stand by the small flame and hold my hands over the pot.
Stew is easy. All you need is enough stock so it doesn’t cook down and burn. It takes more room in your stomach than the dry peanut butter sandwiches they give out at school. The peanut butter has a burned taste, or maybe it’s the bread. It tastes like it came out of a machine somewhere, and the machine hated its job.
Mom’s still at her job. At least three times a week she has to work late at the factory, where she makes parts for other assembly lines in other types of companies. Machines for other machines. Her hands hurt so much at the end of the day that sometimes they won’t uncurl, and if she gets her least favorite station, her skin swells from the chemicals. We can’t buy enough lotion to make them feel better. I don’t think there’s enough in the world.
There’s nothing else I can do about the stew. It’s in the pot, bubbling. So I sit at the kitchen table and take out my homework. There’s math, with numbers in columns, and reading. A story about a boy who owns a dog. He has enough food to give some to the dog.
Half the time at school, it’s a peanut butter sandwich, but the other half? It’s heaven. The other kids make fun of me for getting excited about lunch. I don’t know why they don’t like it. I’ve never tasted anything better than the cheese sticks we get, hot enough to burn your mouth in the middle.
Those cheese sticks taste like grease and salt. They don’t taste like a can, which is maybe my favorite thing about them. Everything we eat at home tastes like the tin it came out of. Mom believes in being ready to go at any second, which means canned food, nothing that’ll go bad on the road.
I add numbers. Subtract them. Divide them. I don’t know if the answers are right. Not too many people I can ask, other than the teacher. I’m alone at school, most of the time. There are other kids who don’t have money, but they have families. Brothers and sisters. Moms who stay home and make dinner themselves. Dads who work at the factory instead.
I have my mom.
She’s at work most of the time so we can survive.
The math problems run out. I read the story about the boy with his dog three times, like it says in big letters on the top of the sheet.
The Bible is next. If I have spare time after homework, I’m supposed to read the big, old bible that sits in the middle of the kitchen table. It’s the most important spot in the house. The Bible is what makes it important.
But I’m hungry, and bored, and I don’t read it.
It’s so cold by the window that it doesn’t make any difference to be inside, so I get up and go out.
I’m not supposed to go outside. We don’t live on a good street, or in a good neighborhood. I can’t see the lights on the upper floors of the buildings, but I can imagine. They’ve got lights on at all times, so they must have money for the electric bill. I bet it’s like that book. A family around a table. Maybe a dog begging for scraps. Enough leftover food to let a dog eat it.
My ears burn in the cold. I should have brought a hat. A streetlight burns out right as I pass. She’s going to be home any second, and then what? She’ll be mad that I’m out here with God knows who.
I’m just going to turn around by the alley.
That’s all I’m going to do.
I’m going to turn around and go back to our apartment on the first floor, where we live beneath a man who stomps around all the time.
I’m going to turn around, but there’s a noise in the alley. Somebody calling for help without actually saying the word.
My feet try to take me back to the apartment. That’s where Mom would want me to go. But whatever I do not do for the least of my brothers, I do not do for God.
The alley’s dark except for a strip of neon light, and that’s where I find her.
My mom, and two men. Her purse hangs loose over her elbow, and she has both palms on the brick wall of the alley.
They’re behind her, and then she’s down on the ground.
Her fingernails swipe through the air. A scratch on one cheek. But there are two of them. Tall, with dark hair and broad shoulders. There’s only one of her.
They’re hurting her.
They don’t care.
Her head hits the ground and she makes a noise like a startled animal. Two of them. One of her. Their hands are on her clothes. Shoving at them. It’s not right. It’s not right to do that to someone’s clothes. It’s not right to make them show so much skin. It’s too cold.
One of them pushes down on her shoulders.
“No.”
They all look at me. Three pairs of wide eyes snap toward me at the sound of my voice.
My mother twists on the ground, fighting again, losing again. “Go home,” she shouts. “Thaddeus. Go home. Lock the door.”
I run at them instead.
I can’t let this happen.
I can’t leave her on the ground.
She’s on the ground, all skin and wide eyes, and I can’t.
They get taller as I get close but I run as fast as I can. I’m not going to lose my nerve. My hand curls into a fist. I’m not supposed to hit people. I’ll have to apologize for it later.
I don’t get a chance to swing.
One of their hands whistles in the air.
It feels like a brick to the side of my head.
My knees hit first, and then my palms, both of them scraped raw in a second. My eyes shake. I get one foot under me, then the other, and stand up.
“Oh, wow, are you going to fight?” The one who’s closer to me smiles, his teeth like broken tiles. “You gonna call somebody to come save you?”
“Nobody’s going to come for him. He’s homeless.”
“I’m not.”
“You have enough money to pay a hospital bill?” A wider smile. I hate it. “You have enough money to put the teeth back in your head?”
My hand comes up before I can stop it. We don’t have money for that. I know.
His hand comes fast, too.
This time, I can’t catch myself. My ears ring. Someone screams in the alley. It’s my mom.
“Mom.”
She doesn’t answer.
It hurts to open my eyes. The air is too cold. It’s going to freeze me from the inside out, and it started with my ears. They’re starting to hurt and throb along with my head.
They have her on the ground. Too much skin. The first man is bent over her, doing something awful. Something that’s making her scream.
The other man sees me looking.
He picks me up off the ground with one hand on my shirt.
I don’t feel it when he hits me. The world just goes dark.
Chapter One
Carter
Trees close over me, obscuring the plane and the ocean and most of the sky. I run under green leaves and above black soil, a living demonstration of my entire fucking career. My fake career. The one I hid from the world. Until someone figured it out.
I’m not out of breath, but my lungs burn with guilt and a far less familiar sensation: panic.