“Beaver,” Sally says, “Be careful.” Mr. Blink barges back into the room
and stops near the door. He sees the plate in my hands, seconds before I toss it
through the window, shattering our reflection.
Bobby immediately darts out through the window frame, disappearing
into the dark. I follow his lead, and run away, onto the road and up the hill,
between the glowing homes of the slanted neighborhood.
In each window, faces leer at me, disrupted by the sound of shattering
glass. In one, an old woman covers her sagging breasts with her hands, glaring at
me, her fat husband leaning on her shoulder. A man stares at me from the table
where he’d just had dinner with his family, plastic tubing wrapped around his
arm and a needle of heroin pressed into his vein. The girl with the silkie-top hair
watches me, as she burns the pages of her textbook..
VII. Bobby
I run into the forest until I’m at the edge of the lake behind my house. No
Dad to hold me up, and no Mom to kiss me.
Without thinking, I strip down and dive into the tar-black water. I’m sure
this will be the time I drown, that I won’t have the strength to pull myself out, that
I’ll melt into the black – so the pain of breathe and chill of autumn air come as a
surprise when I resurface.
“Beaver, huh?” someone says from across the lake. I feel the ripples in the
water as they come closer.
“Bobby?” I call out. I squint at his faint outline and he laughs. “What was
that?” He swims around me, splashing water on my face.
“You get used to it,” he sighs. “But I had to leave. It’s fucked up, what he does.”
I remember the first night I met Mr. Blink at the swimming pool. I ran
there with the heavy feeling of my father’s knuckles across my back and chest
and neck and cheeks. The scent of my mother’s sweater and the bitter taste of
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