Page 2 of Full Throttle

It was big—not too big—but bigger than this. I didn’t have a lot of room to play, my furniture was taking up most of the space.

“Hey, kiddo,” Dad whispered from behind me.

I whirled to fine him in the doorway, leaning into the room, with a smile on his face. He had a baseball hat on his head and his beard was coming in. “Hi, Dad,” I said, turning back to my clothes. I was about halfway done with putting the shirts on hangers.

I heard his big feet move across the old wooden floors, and then he was beside me, taking the shirts and moving to the closet. He hung them up one by one as he said, “Thank you for being cool.”

A laugh came from me. “Cool, Dad?”

He gave a crooked smile. “Yeah? What? Dads can’t have cool daughters?”

I shrugged. “I’m just hanging up shirts, Dad. Nothing cool about that.”

The look on his face changed then, and when he spoke next, his voice sounded funny. “You have no idea how cool it is, kiddo.”

I blinked. Sometimes (okay, a lot of times) since Dad lost his job, he acted funny. He would get all…weird and thank me for random stuff. I didn’t know what to say, so I just went back to hanging up my shirts. He cleared his throat. “Nikki?”

“Yeah, Dad?” I didn’t look at him. For some reason, my brain didn’t want me to.

“You know, you can be a seven-year-old.”

I didn’t understand what he meant by that. I was seven. How could I be something other than that? Out of the corner of my eye, Dad crouched down to get to my level. He did that a lot. Once he told me he did it because he never wanted me to feel looked down upon; I didn’t get that either, because Mom never knelt down.

“Nikki, look at me,” he whispered, put his hand on my back.

Come on, brain. We have to look at him now.

I looked at Dad, bracing for whatever he was about to say. He smiled again, without teeth this time. “You have your mom’s eyes, you know that?”

I nodded.

“Thank you for being my girl this week. Thank you for helping out when asked and for taking all of this so well. I know it's a big change for a kid. Moving, I mean.”

“Did you move when you were a kid?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, though I was a few years older than you are now.”

“Why did you move? Did Grandpa get fired from his job too?”

I didn’t mean it in a bad way, but I could tell my question wasn’t the right one to ask, judging by the look that came over his face. He blinked it away quickly. “No, kiddo. He didn’t.”

I didn’t have anything else to say, so I just looked back to my clothes.

His hand went to my shoulder, and he gave me a little shake, chuckling. “You going to give your old man a hug or what?”

I knew his laugh was fake. I was old enough to know the difference now. Still, I gave him want he wanted. When I wrapped my arms around his neck, I laid my head down on his shoulder. I kept my eyes closed for five seconds before opening them, and when I did, I froze.

Outside my window, across the narrow way between our houses, the blonde boy stood in his window. His eyes were on me and Dad, his head tilted slightly. Slowly, I lifted my hand away from Dad and gave the boy a lame wave.

I thought he would sneer or give me a dirty look like his brother did—

He didn’t.

Instead, he smirked at me.

Over time, I would fall in love with that smirk, and later, I would come to hate the sight of it.

Present Day. St. Louis, MO.

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