Page 1 of Endless Anger
1
ASHER
THIRTEEN YEARS OLD
According to my father,next to death, anger is the only constant in life.
When Mom and Grandma aren’t around,hisfather, my grandpa, says anger is a part of our heritage—unforgiving and endless.
So I have to be too.
“Daddy!Asher and Foxe are fighting again!”
My older sister’s scream echoes down the beach, bouncing off the water as Foxe’s elbow catches my right eye.
I wince as pain shoots across my forehead. He’s not supposed tofight back. That’s not part of the deal.
If Mom were here, she’d have come running to break things up already. She always gets to us before we can do too much damage.
Dad is another story entirely.
I sense the moment he steps out from the rosebushes partially hiding our backyard, impossibly tall and foreboding, like one of the ash trees lining our property.
He stuffs his hands into his dress pants pockets, walking over casually. There’s no urgency with him, no rush to correct bad behavior. Everything is calm, like the moment before a storm rolls in.
I grab my cousin in a headlock and drive my fist into his face. Blood spurts from his nose, painting my knuckles, and I wait for a beat of excitement to pulse inside my chest the way it normally does when I let rage win.
Nothing happens.
Glancing over Foxe’s head at the sandy shore, I search for the cause of the fight.
Well, not that shedidanything. I just like sticking up for her. Sometimes she’s too nice to do it herself.
Right now, though, Lucy’s not even looking in my direction. I wonder if that’s why I feel sostupid.
She’s with some of the others, plucking wilted flowers from my aunt Violet’s garden. They drop the petals on top of a wooden lockbox and repeat some Latin prayer that none of them even understand.
The box isn’t that big—just enough for the ashes of the mutt her family’s had since before she was born—but there’s a fresh carving of a wolf with an arrow between its teeth on the lid, which is why she insisted on using it for the memorial.
She lives for symbolism like that.
Black hair falls out of the double braids her mom did this morning and sticks to her face, hiding her expression from me.
But I don’t need to see her to know she’s crying.
Don’t need to hear the sniffling or watch her nose get all red to want to beat the crap out of Foxe anyway.
He grunts when I lift my knee and wedge it into his stomach. A heavy hand comes down on my head and then on Foxe’s.
I see the flash of a black wedding ring.
It doesn’t match Mom’s, but it fits him.
“Aren’t you two tired of this yet?” Dad asks in that level, almost bored tone of his. “There are much better ways to spend your time, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t evendoanything!” Foxe snaps, growling when Dad wrenches us apart. “Ash-tree is just a freaking psycho.”
Swallowing, I slide my fist over my bottom lip, tasting blood. My knuckles are already throbbing and turning purple; I tuck that hand beneath my armpit, glaring at my sister Noelle, who’s at the back gate watching everything, because she’s a nosy bitch.
