All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(25)

As fast as I could, I showered and changed. With one shirt ruined from the morning’s events, I had two left. I grabbed the blue button-down and my khakis and the only pair of shoes I had. I had a good routine, and I almost made it out of the house in time, but then the bedroom door opened.

Dad leaned against the frame, scratching an armpit and yawning. When I saw him, every time I saw him, I thought of Mom. Mom loved telling me that I looked like him. She loved telling me that when the cigarettes weren’t enough, when the vacuum cord wasn’t enough, when her fists weren’t enough. You look like your dad, she’d say, and towards the end, before they took me away from her, her voice had this syrupy thickness when she said it. Just like your dad, the same stupid forehead, the same stupid eyes, the same fat, stupid face. You look just like him. And then she’d really get going, all about Dad and about what he’d done and what I’d done, and she’d start getting sprung. That’s what she called it, getting sprung, and I could see it: the way everything about her tightened, compressed, gathered kinetic energy until boom. So when Dad opened the door and propped himself against the peeling wood, when he picked under his arm and stared at me like I was shit that wouldn’t stay flushed, I thought of Mom. And I thought of the cigarettes, and the vacuum cord, and her hands tight and pink and packed, and I thought this mother-fucker, this human piece of shit, he left me with her. You left me with her. I wanted to scream it. But instead, I grabbed for the front door.

“Where’re you going?” he said. Just a question, maybe. But maybe not.

Since that night with Luke, the night I’d been hauled out of a basement, the night that Samantha Oates’s killer had been caught—at least, as far as most people were concerned—since that night, Dad and I had been circling each other like two strange dogs. The hitting had stopped. The demands for money too. But not forever. Not for good. It was little things: his face growing more and more pinched, the fresh scabs around his mouth and fingernails, the jittery way he surged around our small apartment, rushing up to the windows like he meant to crash out of them and keep running. Maybe he needed crystal. Maybe he needed something else, whatever fresh drug or drink he was into. Maybe he just needed a bang. But this nagging part of me, deep inside, said that it was something else that he needed, something in the way he looked at me, something about his hands. Those hands that, right now, he planted on each side of the doorway like he meant to give a good shove and split the building in half. Big hands.

“Austin’s.”

He sneered. That expression had been constant since Austin and I had started dating, a curl to his lip that made him look younger, like a glimpse into what he had been like when he was my age. “Fuck, baby,” he said, his sneer growing. “That’s still going?”

“Yep. Still going.”

“What’s Deb think?”

This was new; it was the first time he’d mentioned Austin’s mom, and something about the way he said her name put my hackles up. “How should I know?”

“Watch it, baby. Watch that mouth. What’s she say then? And don’t say you don’t fucking know. What does she say? When you show up, when you knock on that door looking all—” he paused, and the sneer flashed again, “—all fucking buttoned right to the top, what does she say?”

“Nothing.”

“Like Christ she says nothing. What does she say?”

“What do you think? Hello, goodbye, nice day. Whatever normal people say.”

“Oh yeah? Well what did I say?” He staggered forward, and those big hands swung up and clutched the back of the sofa, his fingers digging deep into the vinyl. “What did I just damn well tell you?” We stared at each other, and he leaned his weight forward until his beer belly settled onto the ledge of the sofa. His voice dropped. “What did I say, babe?”

“Watch my mouth.”

Another moment passed, and Dad nodded and picked under his arm again.

“Can I go?”

“Not yet. Something I want to talk to you about. Sit down.”

I shook my head, stayed near the door, and kept my hand on the knob.

Rolling his eyes, Dad said, “Jesus. Can I just talk to you? Can I talk to my only goddamn son for one minute before he rushes out the door again?”

“What?”

“You’re old enough that we need to talk about some adult things. And maybe you won’t like it, but you need to hear it. You can’t be making stupid decisions, not now, not when it can ruin the rest of our life. You’ve got to be safe, you’ve got to—”

My face was so hot it felt like it was on fire. “Dad. Please—”

“No. You need to hear this, and I’m the one to tell you.”

“Dad, I swear to God, I’m safe. I don’t—we haven’t even—”

“What? Jesus Christ, Vie, I’m not talking about that, although you goddamn better be using protection if that little shit is anything like his mother was in high school. No, I’m talking about something real, something serious.” He scratched at a sore on the corner of his mouth, and a drop of blood welled there and came away on his finger. He wiped it on his bare chest without looking at it. “I’m talking about Lawayne.”

“What?”

“Lawayne Karkkanew. You know goddamn well who I’m talking about.”