doors and check darkened basements in horror films. Why they look for the monster. It’s because sometimes it’s the anticipation that hurts the most. So much that I want to do some awful, stupid thing to piss him off and just make it start, because if it starts, then it can end. Because somehow right after is when I feel safest. A few hours of grace. Of not feeling like my nerves have been tugged line by line from my body and replaced with hot white electric wires, burning me from the inside out.
I move to my bedroom window and pull up the blinds. He’s in the yard now, carrying a trash bag to the can outside. His truck is parked out front—a massive thing that he uses for work. The logo pressed to the side of the truck reads “BARNES CONSTRUCTION, family owned & operated for more than 50 years.”
The sign implies that he wanted his father’s business, but that isn’t true. My father wanted to leave Auburn, to go play football at state college. He had a full scholarship. He dreamed of going pro. And perhaps he could have done all of that if he hadn’t messed up his knee in his second-to-last game senior year. They were this close to a state championship. Unheard of in a school district like ours. The town still talks about it. His greatest failure a local legend. The punch line for every drunk joke at the bar.
He takes pride in that truck, though. It’s cherry red, and he keeps it shiny and clean all year. It’s probably a beautiful truck to anyone who cares. I don’t. Not when the business is failing and there’s no food in the fridge and we aren’t sure if we’ll be able to fill the oil tank when it gets cold in a few weeks.
Right now, it is not a beautiful truck by anyone’s standard. It is covered from headlight to bumper in crow shit. I want to find it funny, but I know who will face the consequences for this act of defiance, and it isn’t the birds. Mom’s car is out there, too, parked just behind the truck, but it’s clean.
He sees the filthy truck. I can almost feel his anger, the tension pulsing in his arms. He lifts the trash bag and throws it at the tree. It catches a few branches as it falls back to earth, and they tear at the bag’s underbelly, spilling its garbage guts as it descends. His rage isn’t spent, though, so he reaches for another trash bag, and another after that. Some of the crows take flight. Most of them ignore him, which only fuels his rage. The drapes move aside in Mrs. Stieg’s window across the street. Curiosity killed the . . .
Joe lands on my windowsill. I tap on the glass softly in greeting. Hello, Joe.
Downstairs, the front door slams. He finally ran out of anger. Or bags. Our garbage hangs in the branches of our tree, on full display. It’s like our own special variation of Christmas ornaments. I spy with my little eye a banana peel, a cigarette carton, the end of a loaf of bread that no one ever seems to want. Used tissues abound, and the ones caught in the trees almost look like little doves.
I tap the glass again. Why were you up here the other night, Joe? Tap, tap, tap. Why do you watch us? Tap, tap. Can you help us? TAP.
A silver line appears on the glass. I’ve broken it. I tap again, and again, and the line grows, stretching up, slowly, a little with each tap, until it branches into three. Three little slivers of air, searching for the path of least resistance in the glass. Tap. Tap.
The silver lines hit the pane. I press my finger to the line and follow it up.
Sssht. I hiss a sharp intake of breath and shove my cut finger into my mouth. I taste the metal in my blood and the salt on my skin. When I look up, I can’t find the crack in the glass, even when I shift side to side, thinking a different angle will reveal the thin lines again. It’s gone. Or fixed, I guess. Just like the wall downstairs.
I want to see it again.
I slip out of my room. As I pass the girls’ door, it opens, and my sisters’ soft faces appear.
“I’m gonna check on Mom,” I tell them. “Why don’t you