“Come on, open up.”
The latch opened and the door swung up.
“Jesus, dude. Your face.” I reached toward the swollen, bloody eye. “Your ma said he pushed you around this time, but . . .”
“Pushed me around? He fucking punched me.”
I struggled for something to say. I couldn’t make sense of what I was looking at. I’d seen my dad pissed before—pissed enough to scare the shit out of me. I’d even seen his dad pissed—which was ten times scarier than my old man. But this? This was more than a pissed parent kind of thing. This was a hate I couldn’t understand.
“Can you see okay?”
“It’s alright,” he said while trying hard not to cry. “I’m outta smokes—you got any?”
We sat there, smoking and not talking, for a long while. With my back against the wall, I looked around at our simple fort—a fort that our old friend Sammy and his dad helped us build in the spring of fourth grade—our secret hideout all that summer. But then Sammy moved in the winter and Aaron and I stopped coming here. The wood was starting to rot, and the walls were covered with graffiti left by the kids who came after us.
“It’s falling apart,” I said.
“What isn’t?”
I lit another cigarette and handed him the rest of the pack. “I gotta get back before my mom gets home from church—I’m still grounded.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said.
“Your ma asked me to tell you she threw him out. She said he was gone for good.”
“Sure,” he said, “til he’s not.”
“So, you gonna go home?”
“Not sure yet.” He stuffed the cigarette pack into his pocket. “Probably,” he said. “It’s too cold to sleep here again.”