My heart one million percent aches for West and that creates problems. I’m attracted to him, I hurt for him and, overall, I like him and I need additional complications like I need a hole in my head.
Staring at the television, my uncle sits on his La-Z-Boy throne in the living room. He’s below a man, who’s below a man, which makes him the lowest man at an exterminator company. From six in the morning until three in the afternoon, he kills things for a living. The things everyone else cringes to touch.
I slip off my sneakers and line them neatly near the front door and hang my backpack on one of the many hooks. Feeling like a wallflower geisha, I lower my head and position myself next to my uncle’s chair. I learned once in Sunday school that wishing someone dead, wishing for the murder of someone, is as sinful as committing the act. Standing here, I have the same thought every day: when I die I’m heading straight to hell.
While staying focused on the television, he talks at me. “Where’s Jax and Kaden?”
In the cramped living room, my younger sister lies belly-flat against the floor and colors a picture of a house: two stories, blue shutters, rosebushes near the front door. The sun is shining and a family of stick figures smile. It’s our old house. It’s what we used to be. “At the gym.”
He knows this, but he enjoys asking. He enjoys knowing I’ll answer.
“Why aren’t you at work?”
“It’s Monday. I’m off.” He knows this, too. I’m a waitress, like my mom. Except I work at the pizza place for bad tips and she works double shifts at the Roadhouse for slightly better bad tips. She works so much that I never see her anymore. Ever.
My uncle avoids looking at me. It’s a reminder I’m not worth being looked at. He drinks from the frosted can of Coke. Alcohol, he says, is the devil.
If I didn’t believe he was Satan incarnate, he could be considered a handsome man even in his blue work uniform and with the stench of pesticide-death rolling off him. He’s my father’s half brother and a thirty-eight-year-old carbon copy of Jax: whitish-blond hair, blue eyes and sturdy build.
It’s the half part that has made the difference between my father and him. The difference between me living in this prison for a few months and Jax living here his entire life.
My uncle finishes the Coke and extends the can to me. “Cut up the vegetables and start the meat and get me another.”
Dad steps out of the bedroom and I catch his tired eyes. Tell him to say please. Tell him I’m not his slave. Instead, Dad glances down. When we moved in I promised him and my mother I’d keep my mouth shut and do what I was told.
I made a promise.
A promise my pride prefers not to keep. I’m not a slave. I’m not. Being poor, being homeless, being a girl doesn’t make me less.
“I think I told you to do something, girl,” says my uncle.
“Haley,” Dad barely mutters. I flinch like I did when Conner rammed his fist into my gut. With too much anger, I snatch the can out of The Dictator’s hand and stomp into the kitchen. I breeze past Dad, not once meeting his eyes.
The burner on the stove pings when I slam the pot against it and a few magnets bounce to the ground when I throw the refrigerator door open.
“Don’t let him get to you.” Dad picks up the magnets and snaps them back on the door. He speaks in a hushed tone because we’re not allowed to have opinions in this house. No one is allowed to think in this house. “It’s how Paul handles things.”
I want to scream at Dad to find a job. To save us. But I don’t. That wouldn’t be fair of me and life hasn’t been fair to him. A black forest of bitterness festers inside me and other words flow out instead. “You’re okay with how he talks to me?”
Because guys shouldn’t talk to girls like that. Because my own father doesn’t speak to me that way. I deserve to be treated better. At least I think so. My eyes burn and I quickly blink. My life is so twisted I’m not sure what’s correct anymore.
I’ve been hanging upside down for too long and a terrifying doubt wedges itself in my brain, asking the question...is this normal? Is this right? And the horrifying part is the small voice answering, “Yes.”
Dad grabs my shoulders and I gasp. He turns me, forcing me to stare at him. Fire blazes from his eyes. “No one should talk to you that way. Do you hear me, Haley?”
“But he does.” My throat thickens with every word. “And you let him.”
Dad releases me as if my skin were layered with acid. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m your father... I should...”
He pivots slightly, angled half toward the living room, half toward me. The gray of his skin is what worries me and causes me to snag his wrist, to keep him from deciding between fighting for his daughter and giving the rest of his family a place to live. “It’s okay.”
It’s not. I’ve never desired anything more than for my father to tell me I’m worth saving, that I’m worth being stood up for. I press my fingers into his skin until he meets my gaze. “It’s okay.”
The sane part of my brain knows it’s selfish for me to even want it, because my uncle would throw us out and we’d have nowhere to live. But if I’m going to be honest, if I thoroughly analyze the black monsters inhabiting my soul, I’d discover I’m stopping him because if given the opportunity, even without repercussions, I doubt he’d believe I’m worth more than what my uncle thinks of me and I’m not sure I can handle the truth.
My father nods and moves his arm so we no longer touch. A hand through his hair, then he clears his throat. “I’m going to the library.”
“At least take Maggie with you.” At least save her. In movements so deliberate that I mimic a marionette on a string, I turn from him, take vegetables out of the fridge and close it. He’s gone when I turn back.
I slice a knife through the potato and listen as he mumbles his destination to my uncle, tells Maggie to grab her coat and closes the front door.
A numbness shrouds my body. One slice of the potato, then another. The same motion again and again. There’s an awareness you have when you reside with evil. A presence. Tiny whispers snapping at your energy. The only thing preserving your sanity, the only thing that helps you sleep at night is the idea that others surround you. That somehow together you can be protected. My spine straightens and a shiver runs through me.
I’m alone.
Chapter 20
West
A few blocks up from Haley, I lean on the glass of the pawn-shop display counter and count the wad of cash the street-hustler-owner of the joint just gave me. The owner reminds me of a fattened hog prepared especially for Christmas as the legs of the stool he sits on creak under his weight.
“You don’t trust me,” he says.
“No.” I got played on the cost of my watch, even with negotiating him much higher than his initial price. Now I have money for food, gas and a few items for school. The temptation to rent a hotel room hovers around me, but I’ve got to think further than that.
“Good,” he says. “It means you’re smart.”
The glass cases on the wall contain guns and electronics. In the display below me, a couple of old baseball players stare at me from their cards. When I count out three hundred for the second time, I shove the wad into my front pocket. An asshole pickpocket is going to have a rough time digging in the front of my jeans to get their gold.
“Anyone around here hiring?” At this point, I’ll shovel shit if it means I can have a roof over my head.
A smoker’s hack shakes his fat rolls. “Everyone’s looking for a job, boy.”