Page 35 of The Beginning and End of Everything
I’d tried to keep on top of everything, for Ma’s sake. I went to school, though my grades were bad. I fought most weekends, and I cleaned up the caravan. After a year with the old man, my patience had worn thin.
I chucked the plate into the overflowing sink and stepped into the narrow hallway. "You know. You could wash your own dishes."
"What did you just say to me?" He heaved himself out of the chair and stumbled toward me.
My shoulders squared. My fists tightened. I thought of what he put Ma through, of how he treated her—how he’d treated me. “You were a piece of shit when Ma was alive, but now—"
"I put food on the table.” His nostrils flared. “A roof over your head!"
I laughed. "The only money you make is betting onmyfights. And a roof?" I gestured around the caravan. "You callthisa roof?"
"You think you're the big lad now, eh?" He took a threatening step toward me, and I braced myself.
I should just leave this shithole and never come back, but Ma would turn in her grave. And that's the only thing that had me stopping in every few days to stock the fridge and clean up.
"Ma would be disgusted.”
The force of his fist when it collided with my face sent me crashing into the kitchen door. He usually stopped at one punch, but this time he went for a second, smacking the other side of my face. When he reared back to throw another, I ducked and swung.
One punch and he fell to the floor with a thud. Out cold.
I left him there, swiping my leather jacket and a bottle of cheap whiskey on my way out. On my way through town, I stopped in front of Poppy’s house and stared up at the window I used to climb through. It had almost been a year since I’d climbed that trellis. I saw the way Poppy looked at me sometimes—the same way all the other girls looked at me right before I kissed them. The same way she’d been looking at me since we were eleven years old when neither of us even understood what that look meant.
Ma’s words from years ago played on repeat in my head. “Girls like Poppy Turner, they end up with boys like Connor.” The concerning thing was, I couldn’t trust myself not to ruin Poppy the same way I ruined everything else. And I couldn't lose her. Some days she felt like the only thing that kept me going, so I turned around and headed across town to Lola Steven’s house. Because all I needed was a warm body and a bottle of whiskey to forget about my life. Just for a little while.
* * *
"Oh my god.I think my dad's home," Lola gasped, yanking the duvet over her bare chest. She waved a hand through the air in a piss-poor attempt to dissipate the thick cloud of smoke that made it smell like Snoopdog had moved into her bedroom. A roach sat burning on a plate on her bedside table. We were so screwed.
"What? Now?"
"You need to leave.” She grabbed my boxers and threw them at me. “Right now!"
I yanked on my underwear and nearly fell flat on my face when I rushed to step into my jeans. The floorboard on the landing groaned. Throwing clothes around in an attempt to find my shirt, I panicked. "Shit. Gotta go." Forgetting about my shirt, I gave her a quick kiss, grabbed the roach and shoved it between my lips, then forced up the window. One of my legs was already over the ledge before I spotted the bottle of whiskey on her dresser. I swiped it and threw my other leg over just in time for her father to throw open her bedroom door. His face was puce red, his eyes aimed right at me.
"Aw, shit." I jumped for the garage roof and hit it hard, my knees landed on the asphalt top. The whiskey flew out of my hands and skittered across the roof before it rolled off, smashing to pieces on the concrete below.
"You get back here, you little fucker!" her dad shouted from her bedroom window.
By the time I got off the roof and made it around the front, he was at the front door, holding a shotgun.
I had never run so fast in my damn life.
I legged it straight to Poppy’s house. By the time I threw myself through her bedroom window, I could barely breathe.
Poppy and Connor both glanced up from the books spread out on the bed between them.
The boom of a shotgun rang through the air, and all of us jumped.
Poppy’s eyes went wide. “What did you do, Brandon?”
“You come back ‘round my girl, and I’ll have you castrated!” Mr. Stevens shouted from the street.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said.
Connor nodded. “It looks like you’ve been chasing the private school girls again.”
Poppy snatched her notebook from the bedspread and scribbled something on the page. “Let me guess, Lola Stevens?” She shot daggers at me before going back to her writing.
