When I reach our neighbor’s house, I close my fingers over the sting of my freshly skinned palm and slam my fist on the door. When a light flickers on upstairs, hope swells inside of me.
The light turns back off.
I knock harder, but I don’t think she’s coming.
Fear claws inside my chest, wanting out. No one else lives close. I can’t leave my sisters long enough to walk a few miles into town. I cross the road again. Back in our yard, I start to sidestep the dozens of crows on our lawn, when the front door swings open.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He fills the whole doorframe. Two-hundred-plus pounds of anger now directed at me. I run through the answers in my head, playing outcomes as fast as I can. Which response is the safest?
“I called the police,” I lie, and it’s a big one. He will know in minutes that it’s untrue.
My father stares me down for a moment, as though he’s daring me to speak the truth. Then he turns into the house. The music finally cuts out, and the silence is surreal. Like everything before now was a nightmare, and I’ve just woken up.
If only.
He moves through the kitchen, and the birds shuffle around me, cawing softly. Or maybe they’re loud, and it just seems soft in contrast with how loud the music was a moment ago.
“After all I do for you,” Dad says as he collects his essentials: wallet, keys, gun. “So fucking ungrateful.”
He strides to his truck, slamming the door shut. Moments later, he’s leaving, and I know why. He likes to scream and scare us, but he’s always been careful not to land himself in jail. It’s a thin line, but he walks it well.
I move down our front path, through the grass, and stop at the edge of the road. He’ll come back tomorrow, but tonight we’re safe. I watch until his truck turns, and I lose sight of it as the sky cracks open overhead.
Rain pours down, scattering crows in the dark.
Auburn, Pennsylvania
September 3
CROW POPULATION:
3,582
Chapter Two
IN THE MORNING, THE CROWS ARE still here. And by here, I mean everywhere. Crows on every branch of the tree in our front yard, until it is more feather than leaf.
I stand at my bedroom window watching the birds rustle and twitch on the branches. They’re on Mrs. Stieg’s roof, too, shuffling along her rain gutters.
Our front door slams.
He’s back.
I hurry out of my room and into the shower, desperate to normalize the morning, to remind him we have school. Sometimes if we do things just right, he matches our calm. He migrates toward our normal. As the scalding water hits me, I hope that this is one of those times.
I love school, but this year is different. It’s the last year. My countdown has officially begun, and last night was a more ominous beginning than I’d wanted. One year. I have one year to find a way to keep my sisters safe if I want to go to college.
When I get to the kitchen, he’s not there, but Mom is. She startles when I walk in, and coffee slips over the lip of her mug, splashing her fingers. She doesn’t seem to notice.
“Good morning, Leighton,” she says. She smiles, but it’s not a Mom smile. It doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Mom used to smile at us like we were all in on a joke together. Now I get the same hollow one she flashes to strangers.
“Morning,” I say.
He’s brought her flowers. Scarlet roses that sit in a chipped vase next to the sink. He likes to apologize with small gestures that never match the gravity of what he’s done.
It seems to work.
I hesitate, wondering if this is a morning to provoke or let go. “He’s back?” I ask.
Now even the hollow smile is gone.
“Drop it, Leighton,” Mom says.
This is a morning to let go.
“He slept at his office. What more do you want?”
I rattle off the list in my head. His arrest, his apology, his relocation, his kindness. His death. It depends on the day, the hour, the moment, and my mood, but there’s a lot more I want than him sleeping in his office.
“I have work today,” Mom says. She’s always grabbed a few shifts a week waitressing at the diner, but she’s been picking up more lately. Trying to make up for the construction business not doing as well. “Will you come right home after school for the girls?” I ignore the abrupt change in subject. Walking into the living room, I begin to pick up framed photographs from the floor, hooking them back on their nails.
It’s like the house itself knows when these nights are coming. There are clues, if we watch carefully: a subtle darkening in the corners of the rooms; the picture frames tilting on their nails, preparing to fall at the first commotion; the sudden compulsion to whisper, as though the house will carry our secrets to his ears. The pressure inside builds for weeks, until it is so palpable I can taste it on my tongue—metallic and biting. Like blood. The taste of anger.
I step back into the kitchen and lift the last frame from the floor. It’s a photo of two teenagers wearing crowns. They’ve been named king and queen. I study the girl in the photo, my eyes gravitating to the things we have in common. Same pale white skin with a few copper freckles across the bridge of the nose. Same wide smile. I wonder how we’re different. Her hair is vibrant red, where mine is a lighter, strawberry blonde. And what about the things you can’t see? Like her capacity to forgive so much hurt. Do I carry that in my bones, too, like I do the shape of her jaw?
Instead of hanging this photo up, I lay it on the counter beside the roses.
She has to decide whether to put it back on the wall.
The last thing I do before it’s time to usher my sisters outside to the bus stop is reach past Mom to plug the phone in. This stupid, useless house phone. He told Mom and me that we could have cell phones last year. Then he remembered that cell phones call police and cost money, so we never got them. There’s just this one phone, with a cord that does nothing to help us when he tears it out of the wall.
I slam my finger down on the receiver and hold the phone to my ear.
“Dial tone’s back,” I say.
Chapter Three
TO EVERYONE ELSE AT AUBURN HIGH, summer means freedom.
That’s not the case for me.
At least here, I know what to expect. I know who I am. For the next eight hours, I know Campbell and Juniper are safe in their classes. I can pretend everything is normal. So when I step off the bus on our first day back and wave to the girls as it pulls away, I know they are thinking the same thing: thank God summer is over.
Sofia finds me before first period. She tears down the hall and throws her arms around me. “Leighton! You beautiful person, where have you been? We haven’t talked in a week!”
“Sorry, Sof.” I’ve been in a domestic nightmare. “I was . . . way behind on my summer reading. I spent the last few days catching up.” We make our way through the crowded hall together, bumping into so many people that it becomes silly to keep apologizing. It’s a stampede of wide-eyed freshmen, and we are caught in the fray.
“Well, me too. At least we could have suffered together,” she says, her long dark hair bouncing in its perpetual cheerleading ponytail. Sofia is the happiest person I know, and I’m not sure how, but even her features are happy. Her cheeks are low, round, and rosy. Her eyebrows arch dramatically, and she leaves them to grow naturally, adding to the drama. Her smile is a little off-balance—the right side of her mouth curls up higher. It makes her always look like she just stopped laughing a moment ago. And usually she did. After nights like last night, I’m so grateful she’s my friend.