“I . . . I, uh, hit Mom. When Trisha crumpled to the ground, I lost it and I just . . .” He looked down and I saw him swallow hard.
“Did your mom leave?” I asked him.
He nodded.
Motherfucker. Why did her mother hit her? Sick f**ks didn’t need to reproduce. God should have made that a rule.
“Yeah. She was angry but she was bleeding. She left and wasn’t back this morning. Trisha was in a lot of pain and I convinced her to stay in bed. She needs to get better.”
“I’m taking you home,” I told him, and grabbed his arm and headed for the exit doors. I wouldn’t get any f**king sleep tonight if I didn’t see Trisha with my own eyes.
Krit tried to jerk his arm free. “Dude, let go. I’ve already missed my bus. I need the ride. You don’t have to break my arm.”
I wasn’t aware my grip was so tight. I let go of him.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
He shook his arm as if to get feeling back in it, but he continued to walk beside me.
“Don’t you have football practice?” he asked, glancing back at the field I had been due at twenty minutes ago.
“Yeah,” I replied, jerking open the door to my dad’s beat-up truck. I only got to drive it when he was working nights and sleeping all day. That was this week. I just had to fill it with gas and wash it.
“You gonna get to play Friday night if you miss? I heard that you had scouts watching you all season.”
If my dad found out I’d missed a practice, he’d be furious. The only reason he hadn’t kicked me out was because I could play football. He liked knowing his boy was going to be something.
When I was younger, he had left me with my mom and had barely come to visit me. Then one day in middle school I had begged him to let me play football and he’d been excited about it. When the coaches praised me and I became the star of the team, Dad had taken me away from my mother more and more.
The day I had come home from school to find all my things packed up in the back of his truck, my mother had been standing on the porch with the man she was dating. She explained that she needed a life and it was my dad’s turn to take care of me. Plus, she couldn’t afford it anymore.
The next month she moved to another state, and I hadn’t heard from her since.
So Dad was all I had. A man who only loved what I could do. Not me.
“If you don’t get to play, everyone’s gonna be pissed. We can’t beat the Dolphins without you.”
I would get to play. Coach would be mad and he’d make me pay for it with longer practices. But he’d let me play.
“I’ll play. Tell me how to get to your house.”
Krit pointed to the left. “Take the main street until you’re almost out of town. Then turn right onto Forts Road. Fifth trailer on the left.”
Forts Road was in the bad area of Sea Breeze. I’d been on that road once before with my mother when I was a kid. She’d been buying pot from someone there. We didn’t live in a great part of town, but it wasn’t this bad. And Dad had an apartment that wasn’t so bad. It was better than the house I’d lived in with Mom.
But Forts Road . . . Shit. Trisha shouldn’t be there by herself.
“It ain’t all that bad. Stop looking so damn horrified,” Krit grumbled.
I started to argue with him, but I let it go. No need to make him feel bad.
Chapter Ten
Trisha
From my bed, where I had lain all day, I could hear the school bus pull up by the road. Mommie Dearest came home sometime after noon. She stumbled down the hall, and I heard her door slam. Then nothing else. She was hungover or still high and sleeping it off. The door to my room was closed, so she never thought to look inside.
I waited for the front door to open and Krit to come in, but I never heard it. Once the bus was gone and he still hadn’t come inside, I knew I had to get up. Something was wrong. If he missed the bus, he’d need me. I held my breath and tried not to groan as I sat up and slowly moved my legs off the bed. Once I had them both on the carpet, I stood up and took short breaths.