I slipped through the fence and headed up the street, watching the insides of people’s houses, the glow of domestic tranquility playing out behind painted shutters and flowered curtains. The air smelled like evening barbecues and the eucalyptus trees that dotted the sidewalks. As I got closer to the Strip, the lush green lawns faded to brown, the concrete littered with cigarette butts. I passed late-night bottle shops and express markets with their big fluorescent signs, teenagers huddled at street corners smoking and shrieking with drunken laughter. A bum spat on the street and kicked pieces of broken asphalt at the sides of parked cars, muttering to himself. He scared me.
I was getting tired and my feet hurt. I wondered if my parents were worried, if I should have left a note or something. But then I remembered I was running away and picked up the pace. I couldn’t give up now. I ended up in front of Grandpa Jack’s apartment building and hit the buzzer.
“Hello? Who—who the hell’s out there? What you want?”
“It’s me, Grandpa.”
“Who? Who is this?”
“Grandpa, it’s me. Jack.”
I could hear him wheezing over the intercom, some sports game on in the background. “Jack? Is that you?”
“Yes, Grandpa.”
“Well, what the hell are you doing out there? Do you know what time it is?”
“Grandpa, can I please come in?”
“Does your father know you’re here?”
“No.”
A pause.
“He with you?”
“Nope.”
A few moments passed, then the door gave a sharp buzz and I went inside to the smell of mold and cats. Someone was playing the radio too loud down the hall, the noise bouncing through the paper-thin walls like a boomerang.
Grandpa was in his old checkered bathrobe, his wrinkled face unshaven. He shook his head and let me in.
Inside, the TV was blaring and it smelled like mold and pipe smoke, a comforting and familiar scent. I took a seat in his EZ boy and propped my feet up, watching the poker game.
He turned off the TV and took a seat across from me, lighting his big, funny pipe. We sat like that for a while, me getting sleepy in that big comfy chair, him puffing away. We didn’t say anything. Nothing needed to be said.
Our silence was broken by the ringing of his landline. He’d never quite figured out how to use a cell phone.
Grandpa got up to answer it, and I closed my eyes tight and clenched my fists, praying it wasn’t who I thought it was.
“Yeah…yeah, Jim he’s with me. Don’t you worry. Huh? What was that? Oh, I invited him over. I told him to visit me tonight…in my letter!…well, how you would know that, you don’t read his damn mail! Uh-huh. Mmhm.”
I imagined Mom pacing in the kitchen, screeching questions at my father about where I was, what had happened. My stomach did a somersault.
“Oh, well okay…I know, you had a long day, Jim, I hear ya…mhm. Maybe you should think about heading off to bed, hmm? No, I didn’t see that one, I was watching the poker game. Alright, well I’ll tell him. You tell Ellie to calm herself down, alright?”
He hung up and turned to me, studying me carefully.
“You just stay here tonight, alright Jack?”
Early the next morning he drove me home, but didn’t even walk me to the door. I knew he wouldn’t go in with me, even though I had hoped with all my might he would, and when we reached my driveway he just gave me a sad little shrug and a smile and said “You know how your daddy is,” before driving off.
I felt my teeth chattering as I softly knocked on the front door. No answer. I waited a while before trying the knob and found the door was unlocked. Inside, it was dead silent, not even a peep from our noisy puppy in his crate. Then I noticed the mess.
Shreds of paper were scattered all over the living room floor. Mom’s favorite lamp was sideways on the ground, the beautiful lavender globe cracked open. As I passed the kitchen, I spotted the broken bottles and something shiny and red on the cheap linoleum. I took a few steps over, feeling hot and shaky. There was broken glass and a trail of dried blood.
I tiptoed upstairs and climbed into bed, the blue-tinted darkness of the cloudy morning pouring through my blinds.
I lay awake, unable to sleep for what felt like hours. Then I flinched at the creaking sound of my door opening, but in a moment, there was only the sound of it closing softly.
When I woke up, the house was empty of my parents, the living room now eerily pristine and tidy, as if last night had never happened. Our puppy had been let out and was lying on the sofa, wagging his tail at the sight of me. I found a packed lunch on the table—Mom’s work, no doubt—and a note in Dad’s jerky handwriting: “You can walk yourself to school from now on.” They’d left without me.
I took the lunch bag and our puppy Gunther and headed down to the creek a few blocks away, a little forgotten stream that fed into the storm drains. I folded up the contents of the lunch bag and skipped them across the water, letting Gunther lick the wetness from my face.
17.
Connor texted me during Spanish, right around the time Mrs. Banks started droning on about verb conjugations. The difference between I have, I had. What the fuck did it matter, anyway?
Willow Park on 3rd after school?
Not the usual half-assed jumble of acronyms the boys sent me. I wrote back quickly, holding the phone down between my legs so Banks couldn’t see.
Sure.
I checked to make sure I was in the clear. The last thing I needed right now was to get my phone confiscated. Thankfully, Banks was busy scrawling something across
