Seventh Sanctum Writing Challenge #1: Birthday Girl

“The story takes place five years in the past.
A character will prepare for a birthday.
A character is sad throughout most of the story.
During the story, a character finds a long-lost relative.
The story ends in a shop.”

   I guess I’m pretty boring. It’s 2014 and I could be enjoying the fact that I’m getting a new smartphone this year, finally replacing the old flip phone I’ve had for a couple of years. Instead I’m just kind of bummed, and I can’t explain why. People ask me all the time, “why are you so bummed all the time?” Well, some of them don’t say “bummed,” they just say “sad” or “depressed,” one person even said I looked like I was gonna go all Sandy Hook and shoot up my school. Now that’s just rude. I’ve never wanted to do something like that, in my life! But I guess I have one of those faces.

   Mom’s gonna come back from the store in a few minutes with a cake. I already figured out what present I’m getting thanks to my loud-mouthed little brother, but I don’t know what kind it’s gonna be. One year they got me one and the frosting literally looked like crap. Like, it was supposed to be all nice and ridged around the edges or whatever, and it just looked like turd. In the meantime, I’m just sitting here and spending the last few minutes of my old phone’s life using it to play Sudoku. I used to do crosswords, but they started getting really hard, and it’s boring to just keep plugging letters in until one of them isn’t red.

   I can hear my brother and all his friends being loud playing PS4 in the room right next to mine. I actually put a hole in the wall once just trying to get them to turn it down. I knocked a little too hard. I was a little pissed off that night as it was, because my friend was supposed to call me and she didn’t. I found out from her at school later that my phone just wasn’t picking up the call. Anyway, now I have to go knock on his door to ask him to turn it down, which he doesn’t anyway so most of the time I just put in some earmuffs. My parents always try to get me to listen to music, but I’ve never heard any that I like all that much. Most of it’s too loud.

   But I’m sad, like I said, and I can’t explain why. I’m gonna be 18 this year. Just two more years and I’m not gonna be a teenager anymore. That’s really scary to me. I don’t even feel like I’ve been a teenager for that long. I think the happiest birthday of my life was the one where I turned 13, because I expected it to mean a lot more than it actually did. That is, I thought things were really gonna start happening when I started to grow up. Instead my voice just got deeper and I kept bleeding once a month. Since then, these have probably been the worst five years of my life. High school’s been boring, and every day I get out of school I’m happy until I get home and realize I don’t have anything to do. I complain too much. I complain at school when I have to go places, and I complain at home when I have no place to go. I should just shut up, I guess.

   “Fuck you,” I say out loud, for no real reason. I guess just to hear how it felt on my lips. I don’t swear a lot. Mom always beat the crap out of me whenever I did it as a kid. It was stupid, because I always did it by accident. It would always be something I heard Dad say to one of his friends on the phone, and I’d go and say it to my little brother later, or I’d make the mistake of asking Mom what it meant and she’d whoop my ass and ground me for, like, a week. But the worst part, she’d go and yell at Dad for saying it in the house, and they’d have a screaming match for like an hour before Dad would just get up and leave.

   I say it again, this time biting my lip hard as I pronounced the “f.” “Fuck you.”

   Not a second later, I heard the doorknob rattle as Mom unlocked the door. My heart nearly jumped out of my mouth. Of course, she’d have to show up right now, and I’d have to not be able to hear her car pull up because of my brother and his goofball friends playing his stupid games as loud as he could.

   “Denise! Help me with the groceries!” I hear her call, and I groan. I leap off my bed and walk into the living room.

   “Come on,” she says heading back outside, dropping the groceries next to the door. That always weirds me out because there’s a family photo hanging up beside the door and I’m always afraid it’s gonna fall on the groceries. It’s the only one in the house that has Dad in it. When he lived at home, he almost always had a mustache, but in the photo he doesn’t because Mom hated it and made him shave it off before we got the photo taken, so it’s weird because I always picture him without one these days.

   “Can’t you get Tony to help you?” I ask, following her outside. “It is my birthday, after all.”

   “Tony might be recording one of those ‘let’s play’ thingies with all his friends, he gets real upset when we interrupt him, you know. Come on, it’s just a few small things.”

    And all at once, I understand, and have to fight the urge to smile. She must have just bought the phone, and she wants me to find it in the backseat. Mom never gives a crap about Tony’s stupid “let’s play” stuff. She always opens his door and tells him to do stuff while he’s recording, and he whines every single time. But then she’ll be in the video, yelling at him to help with the groceries or wash the dishes, and he won’t take it out when they argue, so a bunch of people can comment and make fun of how shrill her voice is. She doesn’t even know it, and I’m afraid of how mad she might get at Tony if I showed her.

    I open up the backseat, and just like I expected, there’s a small gift-wrapped box sitting there, with just one other bag next to it and a cake in the front seat. I turn to look at Mom, who is smiling broadly. It’s not very often that she does that, and when I see it I always feel real happy, but also like I’m about to cry. “Happy birthday,” she says, and I walk over and hug her, also something that doesn’t happen all too often. “Thank you,” I say, then I grab the box and start to undo the ribbon on the top.

   “Wait until we get in the house,” Mom says, and I stop. “Let’s bring in the cake and other stuff first. Come on.”

   I think she might be a little happier it’s my birthday than I am. We walk back into the house together, and what greets us is the sound of one of Tony’s friends screaming “fuck” at the top of his lungs and the rest of them all laughing like a bunch of hyenas, except Tony, who’s probably trying to get the guy to shut up because he just heard us walk in.

   “Who in the world...” Mom says through her teeth and walks down the hall to Tony’s room. I know which one it is, too, it’s Paul. This is gonna be good, because he’s the one that acts like a smartass and like he doesn’t care all the time, but when he’s around Mom he gets real polite and sheepish, because she’s like a foot taller than him. He used to act that way around me too—and I’m not even all that tall, but then he saw Tony backtalking me a few times and I guess he stopped being scared of me. Well, now we was in for it.

   Mom swings open Tony’s door and it’s like a record scratch, all the noise coming out of the room gets louder for a second and then stops dead. “I need all of you boys out of here right now—Tony, not a word out of you. Out, now!”

   A single file line of boys comes out of the room and heads for the door as I’m standing next to it, probably looking like an idiot with a huge cake in my hands. Paul’s the one at the end of the line, and Mom calls out to him.

   “You know how I feel about using language like that in this house, Paul,” Mom says, her arms folded, her eyes dark, piercing beads that looked like they could injure someone if they got any harder. If Paul was Tony, he would be in for hell. “One more time I hear that, you won’t be coming back here, you understand?”

   “Yeah,” Paul said, his head drooping down, his eyes darting around like he’s trying to find a hole to drop down.

   “Yeah, what?”

   “Yes, ma’am.”

   “Okay. Now, go on, get out!” She made a “shoo” motion with her hand as she did this.

The weird thing is, Mom’s not the one who’s ex-military, Dad is. But I think what it is, Dad responds a lot to that Sergeant yelling-type stuff, like in the movies, and Mom figured out that it worked on pretty much everybody else, so that’s kind of how she goes around now. I’ve heard a lot of people mutter “bitch” under their breath as she walked away from them. But the few who dared to say it right to her face would usually have to have her hauled out of their store. She even went to jail once for a night, I’m not kidding. Good thing Dad was still around at the time, so he could bail her out.

I help Mom put the groceries away and then our attention turns to the cake sitting on the dining room table. I open the box and the cake has a huge “18” written on it in blue icing. Tony walks into the room and says, “wait, I thought you were gonna be 17?”

   “Tony, don’t be a goof,” says Mom, but Tony just looks at her and shrugs. I think he really forgot I was turning 18. He doesn’t really pay much attention to the world around him. “Earth to Tony” is probably a commonly said thing in classrooms he’s in. Next time he has a birthday, I’m gonna ask him if he’s turning 17. But considering he’ll actually be 16, he might take that as a compliment, like he looks older and taller than he actually is.

   “Alright, well, we’ve got a couple boxes of candles, should be enough for this cake and the one for your graduation in a couple months,” Mom says. “You’re gonna be sick to death of cake by the time June rolls in. Oh, God, and then there’s Tony’s birthday in July. You better watch out, Denise, or you’re gonna gain some weight.”

   She pats my stomach for emphasis and I move to swat her hand away, but think better of it. I’m already a little overweight because I don’t do anything all day except go to school when I have to and go for a walk sometimes, which Mom hates because I always go in the dark. It’s the only time I can go out when it’s not blaringly hot, though. Anyway, I hate it when Mom or someone at school makes some real snarky, back-handed comment about my weight. I’d like to be thin, but I don’t really feel motivated toward it. It’s not like I’m some beautiful diva when I’m thin anyways, so screw it.

   I blow out the candles and we each grab a piece. Mom tells us we’re only having one now, and then we’re going to have actual dinner. Salmon patties and fries. Ugh. Even on my birthday, we’re having the same old stuff we have once a week. Mom only knows a handful of recipes, and she’s fine-tuned them to a point. It’s really rare, but we have guests over and they’ll always rave about what a good cook she is. It’s not that she’s good, it’s that she’s cooked the same stuff for like, 20 years, so of course she’s going to be amazing at the same dishes after the 5,000^th time! Sometimes I even stop somewhere after school and eat dinner early so that I won’t have to eat Mom’s food. Of course, I usually wind up eating some anyway, which might be part of the reason I’m getting fat.

   But finally, after dinner, I get to open my gift, which means acting surprised when I find out it’s a smartphone. But then again, maybe Tony’s pulling a trick on me. I pull the ribbon off and do my best to open the gift without screwing up the wrapping paper. Mom’s one of those people who likes to hoard old wrapping paper to use on stuff later, even though I know we can afford more and Mom never has more than a few gifts to wrap for Christmas anyway. We don’t have a big family outside of the house, it seems like most of Mom’s family is dead and Dad’s stopped coming around when he left. So it’s normally just me, Tony, Mom and the two uncles for Christmas. That means not a lot of gifts to wrap, but of course, we’re still expected to help.

   Beneath the wrapping paper is a white box with a picture of an Android phone on the front. I had spent all day wondering whether or not my new phone would be an Apple or Android, even though it honestly didn’t matter to me. I was just happy to have my first touchscreen.

   “Is something wrong? You look disappointed,” Mom says.

   “No, not at all!” I say quickly. “No, I’ve just never seen one of these, these kinds of smartphones before… I mean…”

   I open the box and get a look at the phone. It’s, well, small, black, rectangular. I don’t know, it’s a little smaller than I had expected, but I get a look at the back and see that it has a camera and that makes me happy enough to smile a bit, because it reminds me of how broken and crappy the camera on my old phone is. I love recording stuff I find interesting while I’m out for a walk. Like, if I see a bug or something I’ve never seen before, or if some people are having a really loud argument outside, I get real far away and record it. I’ll either show Tony or I’ll show my friend Rita…

   “Rita!” I exclaim suddenly. “I should put her number in here!”

   “You should call her,” Mom says. “I wonder if she even knows it’s your birthday.”

   I frown. Mom always bugs me to find more friends, saying all the time how Tony has friends over all the time but I never seem to have anybody to bring over. But I have Rita as a friend and Mom just hates her. I bring her over one time and she just hates her immediately, I don’t get it. Rita didn’t even swear or do anything wrong.

   “I’m sure she does,” I tell Mom. I go to my room to get my old phone, so I can put the other numbers I have into my new one.

   It takes me about 30 minutes to activate the new phone. It’s a hard process. I wind up having to go back in the living room and having my brother help me out. He’s already got his own smartphone because one of his buddies let him have his old one when he got the upgraded model, so he knows how to do this stuff. Of course, he had to act like a real jerk about it the whole time, like it’s just unbelievable to him that I don’t know this stuff that’s so simple to him. Anyway, I finally get it finished and retreat to my room just as Mom is looking for one of us to take out the trash, which thankfully winds up being Tony. Serves him right. I put my numbers from my old phone into the new one, and relish the feeling of throwing the old one in the trash. Once that’s all done, I call Rita.

   “Hey!” I say.

   “Uh, hey,” the voice on the other end says. I hardly recognize it at first because the sound quality on the new phone is a lot better. “Who is this?”

   I feel a small pang in my heart, but I do my best to ignore it. “Denise.”

   “Ohh,” says Rita. “Huh. I didn’t recognize the number, what’s up?”

   “I got a new phone,” I say. “Today’s my birthday.”

   “No kidding?” Rita replies. “Happy birthday. I, uh, I would have called you if I had known.”

   “I did tell you about a week ago. You must’ve forgot, we were in class.”

   “Oh, yeah. Yeah, that class sucks, I probably forgot because it’s like 8 when we have that class and I’m like, done at that hour.”

   I laugh a little, and then I hear Rita clear her throat. “Anyway, uh, I have my Dad bitching at me to do my homework cuz I’m failing Chemistry. Talk to you in class tomorrow?”

   My heart sunk some more. I was hoping to have a longer conversation with Rita. She can be really funny sometimes. She’s this goth girl who pretty much hates everything, and we seem to get along a lot better the worse of a mood I’m in during the morning. “Are you gonna be in class tomorrow?” I ask.

   “Maybe,” she says. “See ya.”

   “Bye,” I say over the click of the other phone. She doesn’t have a cell phone, so she uses a home phone that makes a really loud click when she gets off. I lay down on my bed stomach first and suddenly get this overwhelming feeling of sadness just bearing down on me. It’s over. That was my birthday. I mean, it’s four hours from midnight, but that was it, and tomorrow was Monday, and all I have to look forward to was…

   I slam my face down onto my pillow and bite down. I have this massive urge to scream or throw something. Why do the good moments seem to last so short and the others last so long? They’re like blips, like little flashes of lightning that hit and go away as fast, sometimes when you don’t expect them, so you have no time to truly enjoy them. I hear Mom say something to Tony in the living room, then I hear his footsteps approaching my room.

   Tony pokes his head into my room. “Happy birthday,” he says, and before I can lift my head off the pillow to say thanks, he’s already back in his room. I just put my head back down and close my eyes, watching the small beads of weird light that happen when you close your eyes really tightly. I listen to my breaths as they pool warmly around my chin, nowhere else to go in the scant space between my mouth and the pillow. I mouth, “fuck you,” and my eyes start to sting. I jolt up, not wanting to cry in my room. If I’m going to do it, I’m going to go outside and find somewhere secluded so no one can bother me.

   I slip my sandals on and head for the front door. “Where are you going?” Mom asks.

   “I want to go for a walk,” I say. “Get some fresh air.”

   “Did you call your friend?”

   “Yeah, she… didn’t really want to talk.”

   I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s the way I say that sentence or the look I have on my face, but Mom leaves the kitchen and wraps me in a hug. My lips tremble and I do my best to stop tears from staining my mother’s shoulder. My arms are slack at my sides.

   “You’re going to make better friends in college,” she says in my ear. “I can guarantee you that. Did you apply yet?”

   Mom wanted me to get a real head start on college, but I didn’t really care either way. I kept putting it off. “Not yet, Mom,” I say. At once, I can feel my mood start to dissipate. It’s not that I cheer up, but all the emotions I’m feeling just… disappear down a dark hole, and I’m suddenly numb. And I hate the feeling so bad, it makes the emotions almost come back, but not quite. It’s like as soon as Mom asked me about my college applications, all the boredom of thinking about the same old stuff I needed to do but didn’t want to do came crashing over the well of feelings like a steel lid.

   “You need to get on that, Denise,” Mom says. “Do it between classes or during lunch or something.”

   “Okay, I will, Mom,” I say and pull away from her. I grab the doorknob and start to turn it.

   “Don’t be gone longer than 15 minutes, okay?” Mom says. “It’s late and you need to get some sleep for school tomorrow. You don’t want another week like last week, do you? Where you’re going to bed as soon as you get home and sleeping all day, staying up all night?”

   “I know,” I say, and close the door behind me. I open the door again, relenting. “I’ll be back in 15.”

   “You best,” Mom replies, then I close the door and start to walk in earnest. The warm night air blankets me and I stare down at the reflections the streetlights make off the pavement as I walk toward the town square. I don’t intend to walk all the way over there. It’s just where I tend to go when I’m getting down. When Mom tells me to be back in 15, I usually walk to the second stop sign and turn around there.

   I take a long, deep sigh, and try to make myself feel the way I did earlier. That huge, crashing wave of sadness, it was really… nice? I know how weird that sounds, but I liked it. It was… something.

   “God damn it…” I say to myself. That’s another one I don’t get to use very much, imagine that. I do love my mother, but she can be way too controlling, and I can’t wait to get out of the house. I don’t know where I’ll actually go when I get out of the house, mind you, but I am going to be happier wherever it is, I think. Tony already has his whole dang future planned out, I think. He wants to try and make money doing YouTube stuff, and he also wants to go to college for programming. He stays in his room even more than me, he just stays in there with his annoying friends and that makes him not seem like such a loser to my mother, at least compared to me.

   The night is beautiful. It’s still and easy. So many things are happening when it’s day. It makes me feel like I should be doing more when I go out in the afternoon and see the rest of the world moving and writhing around, place to place, A to B. But at night, I feel… alone, yet not alone. I feel alone, but I’m not alone in my loneliness, because this is the time where everyone goes into seclusion, and that includes all the people who have nobody at all. Who have even fewer people than me. The darkness comforts me, it reassures me. I don’t see it as dangerous like Mom does, and like a lot of people do, for that matter.

   I look up and find that I got a little carried away. I don’t know how I didn’t see it earlier, but I’ve already walked past the point I normally turn around. “Damn,” I mutter, and I turn around and start to walk back…

   But it’s my birthday. And I want more than a new smartphone I can play Sudoku and read Facebook on.

   I keep walking toward the square. There’s a nice game shop, and it should still be just early enough I can get there before they close and buy myself something. I’ve saved up about 15 bucks of lunch money I haven’t spent. I had almost 50, but when I started going out to eat after class, that money whittled down fast. It sucks that I have to lie to Mom about spending all the money on food, but… I just… I need something more. I want something more. Even if it’s just, like, a trinket from an anime I like or some kind of game I’m gonna play once then never again.

   As it gets closer to the 15 minute mark, I can feel myself getting less and less sure of my idea. It is late. It’s going to take me another 15 minutes just to get to the square. Then I’m probably going to spend a bunch of time in the games store trying to find what I want to buy. I won’t even be in the store before Mom’s already pissed off and looking for me!

   I reach down and feel the bulge of the new phone in my pocket. Suppose I called her and told her something so she’d chill out? She doesn’t know my new number. I don’t remember ever telling it to her, anyway. Actually, I don’t even have the new number memorized, so I couldn’t tell her anyway.

   As I step onto the sidewalk of the square, I can feel my walking pace starting to slow down, and I speed up on purpose. If anything I ought to be running. I haven’t thought of a good excuse for why I’ve been gone so much longer than my mother said. I probably won’t come up with one before I get back. Especially if I have a thing with me that I bought with money she didn’t even know I had. Where the hell am I going to hide it? There’s a potted plant on our back porch. I suppose I could go around and sneak it in there, hope Mom’s not observant enough to find it. I’ve never rebelled against her quite like this before. It feels so much more unnatural than it should, and I wish I knew why.

The game shop is on the other side of the square from me, so I cut through to the other side, walking past the City Hall where a bunch of smelly homeless people are sort of draped next to the staircase leading up to the front entrance. I’ve never had to go in there before. When I get my driver’s license, I’ll have to go here to get it, I think. I’m not sure. That’s another one of those things Mom keeps talking to me about doing in the future, but I never get around to it. I never feel all that much like doing anything.

   “Excuse me, excuse me,” I hear from someone to my left, and I flinch hard. My heart starts to beat a little more rapidly as one of the raggedy people from the staircase ambles toward me. It looks like he has something wrong with his leg or something.

   “Miss, do you… do you…” The man’s eyes tighten up. His breath smells like smoke and rot and I fight as hard as I can to not cry or make a face of disgust. He has this thick, graying beard, and long hair but only in the back, the top of his head bald and exposed so the light from the nearby streetlamps bounces off of it.

   “Are you… Denise? Denise, is that you?”

   If I thought my heart was racing earlier, it was now sprinting. I thought I was going to faint. My mouth opened to answer, but I couldn’t decide if “yes” or “no” would be worse.

   “Denise, it’s me! Shit, you have no idea who I am, do you?” I could hear his voice quivering a bit. “I’d recognize you anywhere, Denise, you—you haven’t even changed all that much! You’re still not as tall as Lanie, but you’re taller than me, that’s for sure!”

   “D-Dad?” I say in a choked whisper.

   Dad’s arms open and he steps closer to embrace me. I back away, covering my mouth. I’m so shocked, I can’t cry, or feel happiness or surprise or anything. Dad doesn’t look anything like I remember. I study his nose and eyes for familiarity because the beard is covering up the whole bottom of his face. His skin is much darker than I remember, his eyebrows thicker, he has these horrible scars and blotches on his face. No matter how I look at him, I can’t believe this is my father. But then his voice… I can’t deny it. It was why I flinched so hard earlier. I wasn’t reacting to it out of fear but recognition. It’s a little deeper, raspier, weaker, smokier… but it’s him.

   “You’re right,” he says with a sigh, putting his arms down. “I don’t have the right. I don’t have the right. I haven’t seen you or Lanie in years, I can’t just…”

   He starts to walk away, and I’m so torn between all the things I want to do, I can only stand there. I’m afraid if I take my eyes off of him he might disappear. He turns around, and I become more afraid of that.

   “But… but how is Tony? He’s, shit, how old is he, uh… I’m sorry, I cursed, I shouldn’t do that in front of you, but wait, how old… how old are you? Let’s see, it’s, uh, it just turned March, right? God, it must be your birthday soon!”

   “Today,” I say. “It’s today.”

   “Today!” he exclaims. “I don’t have anything to give you. Hell, barely enough to feed myself—”

   “Why did you—” I start to say, but think better of it. All I want is to get away from this and find a way, any way at all, to forget it ever happened. But at the same time, I—I don’t know. Everything about me feels so much heavier. I expect to look down at my own legs and find out they’ve become stone.

   “Why did I what?” asks Dad, with a face like he knows exactly what I meant. “Leave? You’ve lived with your mother. You tell me.”

   “Mom says it was because… you had a… you were…”

   “A drug addict,” he says, “and still am. Only reason I’m not dead right now is because I’m too poor to actually OD on the shit.”

   My hands and feet tremble. I’ve always wondered if Mom was telling the truth about that or not. Well, it looks like she was.

   “Denise, if you’re worrying about me, don’t,” Dad says, and I start to feel the tears I didn’t know were there running down my face. “Don’t cry, don’t worry about me. I wish I hadn’t even—well, no, that’s not true. That’s not true at all. I love seeing you again. I miss the hell out of you and Tony. I do. Really. I just can’t deal with some shit. I can’t deal with it. I can’t. I’m… a coward, hon. A coward. That’s what I am. I ran out on you and Tony because I was sick off the drugs and your mother gave me the choice of rehab or get the hell out. I was sick. I was so… fuck… so fucking sick. Don’t blame your mother, either. She’s a good woman, she tried. I should…”

   He starts to breathe real heavily, like he’s having a heart attack, but then he puts his face in his hands and whimpers. I’m briefly aware that we’re making a scene, but it’s not like we’re fighting. I want to go over to him and hold him, or something, but he’s so dirty and I’m afraid. I step toward him anyway, and he looks up at me. I have an idea. I take my wallet out and I offer him the 15 dollars I was going to spend at the game shop.

   “No,” he says flatly. “I don’t want your money, Denise. Your money’s no good to me, and if it’s Lanie’s, I don’t want that either.”

   “Take it, come on,” I say to him. He looks he in the eyes. “I won’t. I won’t spend your money on dope.”

   “Then don’t spend it on that! Spend it on food or something, but just take it!”

   “Honey, do you know how much food money I spent on smack? Food money, shit, how much ANYTHING money I’ve spent on it?! How much? Remember that Christmas your brother really wanted an electronic dartboard and didn’t get it until New Year’s? It was because I put that money down on smack! Now, god damn it, get away from me with that money before I DO take it!”

   “What am I supposed to do?!” I cry.

   “Whatever you were going to do before we saw each other,” he says, then he walks off, not back toward the City Hall where he came from, but down the street. I want to stop him. I try to think of a way to stop him. I don’t want him to come home, but I wonder how he’d respond to me saying that I did. I try to walk after him, follow him, but my legs will barely move. Then I no longer see him.

   “What can I help you find?”

   I look up. I have been staring at the same two or three anime keychains for the past, probably 10 minutes, I’d say. “I…”

   “Is there anything I can help you find?”

   “Nothing.”

   The store clerk looks a little confused. “Well, if you’re not here to buy anything, you need—”

   “I’m buying something,” I snap, maybe a little harder than I intended because the guy flinches back, his eyes widening up like saucers. He walks away and tends to whatever it was he was doing before he walked over to me.

   The ensuing loneliness reminds me of how I feel when my feet find a cold, untouched part of the blanket when I’m laying awake at night, shifting and trying to get comfortable. Mom and her no doubt feelings of sheer rage are no longer on my mind. If she raises a hand at me, I’m going to tell her about Dad, and I might even threaten to tell Tony as well. She loves me, like Dad said, but I don’t know if I like how she loves me.

   Then I start to walk toward the door. I decide I don’t want to buy anything after all. I decide that the last thing in the world I feel like doing is carrying something home. Then I spot a board game. Monopoly. We used to play that one with Dad all the time. Maybe it’ll jar Mom’s memory. She never talks about Dad. I grab the box and place it on the counter.

   “That’ll be 20.36,” the clerk says to me. I only have 15.