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The first time Mom doesn’t come home Kai isn’t born yet. He’s not “Grif” yet, just Dexter—Dex—and he remembers jolting awake to the sound of a door slamming in the middle of the night. He hears the hum of an idle engine and takes in the soft orange glow of the headlights hitting his walls, casting shadows on his bedspread. Another door slams, quieter this time, and Dex watches as the lights fade and slowly disappear.
And then there’s just silence. Long and dark and ominous.
Dex counts (one-mississippi, two-mississippi…) until he reaches twenty-nine. He can’t count any higher.
Then he starts over.
He counts as he waits for the sound of tires on pavement, waits for his room to light up and the front door to open.
When he finally hears the rumble of an engine outside, he rushes to his window, only to find the garbage truck rolling by. And when light finally floods his room, it isn’t from headlights, but the sun.
And as the birds begin to sing and Mom’s alarm starts to chirp in the other room, Dex crawls out of bed. He doesn’t go into Mom’s room to turn her alarm clock off because he doesn’t know how. Plus, he’s afraid to go in there, because that will make it real.
Instead, blanket around his shoulders, he makes his way to the kitchen. His blanket glides on the floor behind him like a cape, and in the darkness of the hallway, he imagines something stepping on it, holding him back so it can grab him.
Letting his blanket fall to the floor, he runs the rest of the way to the stairs leading down to the kitchen, not daring to look back.
Dex’s bare feet stick to the linoleum as he crosses the kitchen and climbs into one of the rickety chairs. He lays his head down onto the table, traces invisible shapes in the worn yellow tablecloth. Swings his feet back and forth, he waits.
And he waits.
And waits.
After an hour, his stomach starts to growl.
After an hour and a half, the protesting of his stomach is so insistent he stands up and shuffles over to the fridge.
For a moment he stands there, staring at the fridge, before reaching out and pulling at the left side of the door. It doesn’t open.
Panic, lightning fast, shoots through him and, putting as much strength as his tiny arms can muster, yanks harder at the door. There’s the sound of glass and cartons rattling inside, teasing him with the possibilities just out of reach.
Dex’s stomach growls again and tears, hot and heavy, start streaming down his cheeks. Lip quivering, he stops pulling on the fridge door and stares at the humming white box. He’s about to climb onto the counter to grab the box of granola bars Mom stashed away (these are for desert, Dex, you’ll ruin your dinner) when an idea hits him.
Reaching out with a trembling hand, he grabs the right side of the door and pulls.
The fridge opens, a blast of cool air and a white light hits his face, and he grins.
Pulling out milk, applesauce, and the last can of soda, Dex sets to making breakfast. At first, he’s worried he won’t be able to reach the bowls, but there’s one drying on a towel next to the sink. He shakes some cereal into the bowl and slowly, carefully, tips the milk on its side and begins to pour.
Milk gushes into his bowl and it quickly overflows, spilling milk all over the counter—and his pants.
“Cheesus rice!” he exclaims. A pang of guilt hits him—he’s not supposed to use naughty words, even if Mom laughed every time she scolded him.
But then he remembers the doors slamming and the alarm that’s still beeping faintly down the hall.
“Cheesus. Rice,” Dex repeats. He doesn’t feel guilty this time.
He slams the now almost empty jug of milk onto the counter, picks up the bowl of cereal with two hands, and takes it to the table. Once he’s grabbed a spoon, the applesauce, and the soda, he settles in to breakfast.
That’s where Mom’s friend, Derek, finds him ten minutes later: covered in milk, mowing down a jar of applesauce, and highly caffeinated.
Dex likes Derek, so he smiles when the guy walks in, eyes wide and mouth hanging open.
“Mom says if you stand with your mouth open, a bird will think it’s a birdhouse and come live in it,” Dex informs him.
Derek closes his mouth and shakes his head, smirking slightly.
“Your mom home?” he asks.
Dex shrugs.
Derek makes a face Dex has never seen before. It’s kind of scary—his eyes narrow and he frowns. He looks mad, and Dex, looking across the table and then at the mess he’s made in the kitchen, tries not to cry.
“I didn’t mean to spill the milk,” he rushes to say. “It slipped. I was gonna clean it, promise!”
Derek sighs, reaches up to massage his forehead with his fingers.
When he finally looks at Grif, he’s smiling. But he looks tired. Dex wonders why, because the sun is up so people shouldn’t be tired.
“I’m not mad at you, buddy,” Derek says. “I’ll clean it up, and when you’re done with breakfast, you can get dressed and we’ll watch a movie!”
“What movie?” Dex asks, intrigued.
“Any movie you want,” Derek says.
Dex looks down at his applesauce contemplatively. There were so many movies to choose from, and if he can watch anything he wants, that means there’s also grown up movies to choose from.
Turning back to Derek, who’s frowning again but smiles when Grif makes eye contact with him, Dex says,
“All of them.”
“All of them?” Derek repeats.
“Yeah, all the movies ever,” Dex says with a nod.
Derek throws his head back and laughs. Dex scrunches up his face. This is no joke. Never before has he had the opportunity to watch every movie that ever existed. He’s not about to throw this chance away.
“I mean it!” he pouts.
“Dude,” Derek says. “There are way too many movies out there—oodles of them—there’s no way you’re going to finish them all!”
“Can so,” Dex retorts.
“Okay, buddy, if you say so,” Derek laughs, kicking off his shoes. “It’s going to take a long time, though.”
“Fine,” Dex says. So what if Derek doesn’t believe him, he’ll show him!
He finishes his breakfast and goes into his room to change.
Derek’s voice drifts down the hall. Dex has to stick his ear on the door to hear, because Mom’s alarm is still going off.
“… have her new number?” Derek is asking. There’s a pause. “She doesn’t?... Well she’s not answering her phone.”
Dex’s heart begins to thud against his ribcage. Derek’s talking about Mom.
“Well, she just up and left her four-year-old kid alone,” Derek goes on, voice getting louder. “… I don’t know how long she’s been gone!... I highly doubt—Listen, I highly doubt that… You know Lani… Look, show me a body, then we’ll talk, but I think she abandoned her son to go have a good time… Yeah, well, let me know if you hear anything… Thanks… Yeah… Bye.”
Dex doesn’t move, head mashed up against his door, waiting to see if Derek is going to call anyone else.
He’s never heard Derek sound so mad before. Why did he ask that person on the phone to show him a body? What did that mean?
These questions and more spin around in Dex’s head as he opens the door to his room and walks back to the kitchen, where Derek is sitting, head resting in one hand as he types something out on his phone. Dex halts in the doorway.
“Where’s Mom?” he asks.
Derek looks at him, sighs, and smiles. Dex is confused, because Derek looks sad, and sad people don’t smile.
“She…” Derek pauses, taps his fingers on the table. “She just left to take care of some business.”
That’s not what he said on the phone, Dex thinks. But he doesn’t say anything.
“C’mon, let’s watch some movies,” Derek declares, hopping up from his chair.
“When will Mom be home?” Dex asks as Derek leads him to the living room.
“She’ll be back before you know it!” Derek says. He doesn’t sound like he believes it, but Dex trusts him, so he just nods and runs to the shelf of movies.
Mom comes home ten days later. A strange guy Dex has never met before walks in the door behind her, and, seeing Derek, gets angry at Mom. He starts yelling, and Dex runs upstairs to his room and hides under his bed.
Derek starts yelling too. He’s really really mad at Mom for leaving.
Dex wonders if Derek will come say goodbye, but he doesn’t. The front door slams and Dex scrambles out from under his bed and flies to the window. He watches as Derek storms off into the night.
Dex doesn’t think they’ll finish watching all those movies after all.
Dex isn’t home the second time mom leaves. He’s out pushing Kai around in her stroller because she keeps throwing tantrums, and this seems to be the only thing that calms her down. Mom certainly wasn’t going to do anything, so Dex took the initiative.
Even at six years old, Dex feels like the grown up most days. This morning he helped Kai get dressed, gave her some applesauce while he made Mom’s coffee—even though she wouldn’t be up until at least noon—and started laundry while Kai played in the freshly dried sheets.
Dex huffs as he strains to push his sister towards home. Kai’s almost too big for her stroller, which means he’s going to have to figure out a new way to stop her from screaming and crying when she doesn’t get her way. Maybe he can bribe her with the chocolate chips Mom stashes in her sock drawer.
Kai shrieks and points at every tree they pass, so by the time Dex wheels her stroller up the path leading to their house, he’s considering chopping down every tree on the block.
He’s so focused on getting Kai inside to where there are absolutely zero trees, he doesn’t notice the car’s gone at first. But as he half-carries, half-drags Kai into the house, he realizes the car isn’t parked out front where it normally is, which means one of three things.
One, Mom’s boyfriend left (hopefully for good).
Two, Mom and her boyfriend went out.
Three, Mom is gone.
It turns out to be option three, as Dex spends the next week and a half taking care of Kai when he’s supposed to be in school.
First grade. He might miss it if there was anything about school to miss. All the kids there make fun of him because he wears the same clothes every day. It’s not like it’s his fault laundry day is only twice a month. Plus, the teachers all look at him funny, and they don’t have anything to teach him that he hasn’t already learned from Derek.
Even though Mom and Derek fight all the time, Derek still visits when it’s just Dex and Kai at home. He used to be a teacher at a college, which is school for grown-ups. Dex thinks it’s weird grown-ups still want to go to school when they can literally do anything else.
“College is important, Dex,” Derek tells him the third night of Mom being gone. They’re sprawled on the living room floor, tuning the ukulele Derek bought for him. “You learn even more than grade school, and, if you play your cards right, you can get a good job and make good money.”
“So, if Mom went to college, she would make more money?” Dex doesn’t know what playing cards has to do with getting a good job, but he does know his Mom definitely doesn’t know how to play cards the right way.
Derek doesn’t say anything for a second, and Dex starts to worry if he’s said the wrong thing.
“Well, your mom did go to college,” Derek says.
“Then how come we don’t have any money?” Dex asks, scrunching his face. “Is she hiding it?”
“No, no she…” Derek trails off. He mumbles something too quiet for Dex to hear, and then he says, “Sometimes there aren’t a lot of jobs for certain degrees.”
“What’s a degree?” Dex asks.
“It’s like a—a specialty. The thing you learn as much as possible about,” Derek explains. Dex sort of gets it. Like when he’s the mage in his videogame and learns all about magic instead of sword-fighting, like the warrior.
“But I thought you said if you go to college you get a good job and make lots of money,” Dex points out, frowning.
“I did say that,” Derek sighs. “Look, buddy, it’s complicated. All you need to worry about is getting an education, going to college, and doing your best. If you work for it, you’ll get what you want in life. Okay?”
“Okay,” Dex says. With a shrug, he goes back to plucking at the ukulele strings, but his mind is still spinning.
Dex likes it when Derek talks to him like he’s an adult, but he also gets confused sometimes. Why didn’t college work for Mom, and how does Derek know it’ll work for him?
One more thought hits him as he starts to practice some of the chords Derek showed him:
If he goes to college, who will take care of Kai?
It only takes a few years for Dex to realize he’ll probably never go to college, let alone leave his shithole neighborhood. Not while Kai’s here, not while he’s helping Mom pay the bills. See, it isn’t smarts that get you into school these days, it’s money. And he has none of it.
Thirteen years old, working under the table as a dishwasher at the nasty diner a few blocks from home, all his money goes straight to keeping the power on, the water running, and a roof over his and Kai’s head. They all call him “Grif” at the diner, and it’s starting to stick. The only people who call him Dex anymore are Kai, Mom, and Derek. Even the kids at school—when he shows up—call him Grif.
Mom pitches in when she can, mostly covering rent, but Dex has taken more and more as he’s gotten older.
During the summer, Kai, only ten and a half, helps him out by selling lemonade. It’s more lucrative than Dex thought it would be. Though he won’t say it to her face, he’s impressed with how good a saleswoman she is. The way she talks her watered-down lemonade up, you’d think she was selling that shit with the little gold flakes in it. Last year, she was making only two or three dollars per week. Now she makes four or five bucks a day. By this time next year, Dex wouldn’t be surprised if she was making more than him.
Of course, every cent Kai makes goes right into a jar Dex has shoved behind a loose panel in his closet wall. He knows damn well Mom doesn’t have a college fund for either of them, so he keeps all of Kai’s money and whatever he’s able to squirrel away hidden for the day Kai turns eighteen. There’s only a couple hundred there right now, but when Dex is a little older and can get a better job, he hopes to put more in there.
Kai’s getting out of here, if it’s the last thing Dex does.
Show me a body, then we’ll talk.
The words echo in Dex’s ears as he approaches the open casket. It’s chocolate brown. Smooth and shiny. Lined with blue velvet and silver lace. Perched on a heavy-looking oak table and surrounded by poster board plastered with pictures him and Kai scrounged up from his tiny apartment.
Pictures of Derek.
Peering inside the coffin, Dex decides whoever coined the phrase “could be sleeping” was full of shit. Derek doesn’t look asleep, he looks plastic. Someone tried to hide the fact he was dead and failed miserably. He looks unreal and over-dressed. Whoever did his makeup used way too light a shade of foundation, and they put too much rouge on his face. If they were trying to hide how much the cancer fucked his friend up, they failed miserably.
Dex looks away from Derek’s doll-like face and down at Derek’s hands, fingers folded together like he’s praying. Derek was never the religious type. He imagines those same hands, fidgeting and full of life while he explains long division, pounds out some crazy jazz song on his shitty old keyboard, squeezes Dex’s arm the night Mom ran off to the circus for the second time.
And now he’s gone.
If you work for it, you’ll get what you want in life. Okay?
Dex wonders if cancer was what Derek wanted in life.
“C’mon, Dex, let’s go sit down so everyone else can see him,” Kai whispers in his ear, tugging at his sleeve.
Dex looks down at Kai. She only reaches up to his chin, but it’s like she’s taller than him right now. Head held high, jaw set, she nods over to their seats. Front row. Guests of honor.
“There’s only like, five other people here,” Dex mumbles, but he lets Kai lead him to their chairs. Jesus, it’s like he’s the thirteen-year-old and she’s the one who’s seventeen.
A few minutes later, everyone’s taken their seats, save for one person. Dex eyes the vacant chair to his left, disappointed but unsurprised.
“Where’s Mom?” Kai whispers as the pastor takes the rickety podium. “I hope she’s okay.”
“She’s fine,” Dex mutters, crossing his arms.
“But she should be here,” Kai insists. Two of the five other mourners turn and give her dirty looks. Dex shoots some back in defense of Kai, too oblivious to notice.
“She’s fine, Kai,” Dex hisses. “I guess…”
What does he say? Kai isn’t stupid, but Dex has done his best not to shit-talk Mom in front of her. Just because he fights with Mom all the time doesn’t mean his sister has to.
“Maybe it’s just too hard for her,” Dex suggests. The pastor coughs, and Dex faces forward, cheeks on fire.
“Maybe she’s drunk,” Kai sighs.
Hearing the defeat in her voice, Dex reaches down and grabs her hand, giving it a squeeze. Kai squeezes back and doesn’t let go. They sit this way for the rest of the service. And when Dex has to help carry the coffin to the hearse, she’s right there beside him, arms crossed and biting her lip. Trying not to cry.
Dex wishes she would just cry. He wishes he could, too, but he can’t seem to muster the tears.
They load up the coffin with little difficulty, and once the doors are shut, someone smacks Dex on the back.
“Thank you, young man,” says a broad man in a blue pinstriped suit, giving him a sympathetic smile. “How do you know Derek?”
“Family friend,” Dex says.
“I see. What’s your name, son?” Nice Suit asks.
“Grif.”
“Well, many condolences, Grif,” Nice Suit says.
“Uh, yeah. Same to you,” Grif says.
As the man walks away, Kai smacks him on the arm.
“Ow—Jesus, what?” he snaps.
“Why’d you tell him your last name was your first name?” she demands, crossing her arms.
Grif doesn’t answer right away but looks over her shoulder at the bus stop. There’s no way the bus will get them to the cemetery on time. Not that he really wants to see Derek buried anyway. Fucking depressing. Besides, he already said his goodbyes once, why beat a dead horse?
“Hey!” Kai waves her hand in front of his face, and Grif snaps out of it and frowns.
“What?”
“Why’d you tell him your name was Grif?” she asks again, rolling her eyes like he’s the world’s biggest dumbass.
“Because it is my name?” Grif answers, unable to keep the annoyance out of his voice.
“Yeah, but not your first name,” Kai says.
Grif just shrugs. Kai lets out an aggravated groan, grabs him by the wrist, and drags him over to the bus stop.
That night, they eat take out. They really shouldn’t—they don’t have the money to be spending on anything “fancy”. But Grif’s had a fucking day, and he deserves some orange chicken and egg rolls, dammit. And Kai looks so happy mowing down her lo mein, it’s worth the splurge.
After they finish eating they pass out in front of the TV, sleeping right through the night. In the morning, still riding the carb high, they don’t even care that Mom doesn’t come home.
Grif goes back to work and Kai goes back to school. With all his time and energy divided among two jobs and taking care of Kai, Grif doesn’t have the luxury of thinking about Derek. Which is honestly fine by him, he’d rather avoid that sappy stuff. Feelings suck.
The only problem with working and paying the bills is Grif has absolutely no time for school. He reads where he can, tries to take a few online classes, but in the end, he gives in to reality, and the reality is he doesn’t have time for school.
So, when the envelope from the UNSC arrives a little over a year after Derek dies, Grif isn’t surprised. He starts to laugh, glad Kai is still at school to miss him completely lose his shit.
Of course he would be chosen in a one-man draft, of course it would arrive in the mail on his motherfucking eighteenth birthday. Because that’s just how his shitty life is. He’d blame it on bad luck if he thought he had a drop of it to begin with.
“Fuck,” he hisses, laughter giving way to hyperventilation. “Kai.”
Where is she going to go? For all the state knows, Mom is around to take care of her. Grif almost starts laughing again at the thought.
Kai’s going to get taken away, and she’s going to hate him for it. Grif starts to feel the guilt creep in—if only he went to school more if only he made more money if only—and shoves it down. This isn’t his fault. It’s Mom’s.
He hates her. He hates her for leaving all the time, for all her shitty boyfriends and for spending all her money on clothes and booze. What mother leaves her children not once, but twice, to join the circus? Mama Grif, that’s fucking who. And now, as per usual, he’s paying for it, only instead of paying with his money, he’s paying with his life. Grif has seen the news. The Covvies are decimating their armies left and right, and he’s not exactly in the best shape to chase after—or run from—a bunch of aliens.
Grif’s face breaks out into a grimace at the image of his stress-eating ass speed-walking away from the enemy, because there’s no way in hell he’ll ever run. Unless there’s pizza waiting for him.
A faint humming noise below him snaps him out of it. Grif peers over the letter and down at the table at his phone, screen alight with a name flashing up at him.
Speak of the fucking devil.
Mom.
“Hello?” Grif whispers. Jesus, it sounds like he swallowed a cup of sand. He coughs, repeats, “Hello?”
“Dex!”
Grif jerks away from the phone, ear ringing.
“Yeah?” he says.
“Why are you so grumpy?” Mom whines. “Can’t I call to wish my baby boy a happy birthday?”
“No,” Grif deadpans. He almost hangs up the phone, thinks better of it, and adds, “Hey, guess what? I got drafted.”
Silence. Something Grif thought Mom was incapable of, even if it only lasts a few seconds.
“What?” There’s still a smile in her voice, as if she thinks it’s a joke.
“I got drafted. I’m off to outer space to kill some aliens,” Grif says.
“That is not funny.” Is that fear in her voice? Grif almost feels gleeful as he lowers himself into a dining chair.
“No, it’s not,” he says. “But it’s happening. Which means Kai’s gonna be here all by herself, probably get taken away.” He sighs. “Probably for the best, maybe she’ll get a new mom that actually gives a shit.”
“Dexter Grif, you watch your mouth,” Mom spits. “I’ve worked hard to—”
“You? Work?” Grif cuts her off. “Yeah fucking right. Where’s the money then? Wanna pay me back for the million goddamn times I payed off your overdue electric bills? Or how about for the rent, which I’ve handled solo since I was fifteen?
“Maybe you are working, shit, I wouldn’t know. You’re never here,” Grif continues. “But if you want Kai to stay here in this house, you better be here when I’m gone. Okay?”
Mom doesn’t say anything. He can hear her sobbing quietly on the other end and rolls his eyes. Crocodile tears. Honestly, though, at this point he wouldn’t give a shit if they were real tears.
“Okay?” Grif says again, almost yelling this time. He balls his fist, hears the crinkling of paper as he crushes the UNSC’s letter.
“Okay, Dex,” she says, sniffling.
He doesn’t know if he believes her or not, but he doesn’t have time to think about it because he hears Kai’s key in the lock.
Fuck.
“Look, just get here,” Grif snaps.
He hangs up before she can answer him.
“Hey, Dex!” Kai chirps, tossing her backpack into the corner of the dining room where it will sit, gathering dust, until Sunday night. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Grif says, smiling. “Just sorting the mail.”
Kai snorts and crosses her arms, looking over at the weeks-old pile of mail scattered across the table.
“Shyeah right, you only care about the bills and shit,” she says. “What’re you hiding, bro? And don’t lie, because you totally suck at lying.”
Perceptive little shit.
Grif opens his mouth to tell her that in two months, she’ll be all alone, and she’ll have to use all that money he hid to survive until Mom (never) gets her act together. Kai isn’t stupid—she knows how to survive. But the whole point, the whole reason Grif has been working is ass off, is that she could live, not survive.
He closes his mouth and hands her the paper instead.
Kai snatches the crumpled letter and unfolds it. Eyes darting down the page, her smile evaporates, replaced by shock and anger.
“Drafted,” she says looking up at him.
“Uh… yeah,” is all Grif can manage.
“What the fuck, that is so unfair!” Kai yells.
She balls up the letter again and hurls it at the ground. It lands, skitters away a few feet, and Kai walks over to it and kicks it off into the kitchen for good measure. Grif thinks about telling her to calm down, but what good would that do? He suddenly sees Kai, three years old again, screeching at palm trees while he pushes her in her stroller. Everything was so much easier back then.
Grif still doesn’t know what to say. Can’t seem to kick his brain into gear to churn out even a half-hearted apology. He watches as Kai glares out the window, then down at her feet, then down the hall to the living room. She glares at everything except him, and instead of being relieved, Grif feels his stomach twist as he wills her to say something, to yell at him, to give him a dirty look.
Kai screams, but nothing intelligible, and, kicking the wall, charges up the stairs. Grif looks up at the ceiling as she stomps to her room. There’s the sound of the door slamming, followed by another yell and a thud as another wall falls victim to his sister’s foot.
Grif sighs, runs his hand down his face, and gets up from the table. He should probably try and talk to Kai, but that requires energy, and he has none. Instead he shuffles into the kitchen, grabs a bag of chips and a can of soda, and makes his way to the living room. Flopping onto the couch, he turns the TV on and flips through their collection of downloaded movies.
He can’t seem to find one he’s in the mood for, doesn’t even want to watch Battlestar Galactica or Die Hard. Grif remembers telling Derek he wanted to watch every movie ever, and his vision blurs. Blinking, he pops a few more chips in his mouth and stares at the TV screen.
When he passes Die Hard for the tenth time, he stands up and chucks the remote at the wall. It hits with a clatter and a snap before falling to the floor in several pieces.
“This is fucking bullshit,” he snarls.
Kai’s pissed, the chances of Mom coming home are slim to none, and he’s probably going to be blown up by an alien. God, what a fucking world.
There’s a sniffling sound from the doorway, and Grif turns to see Kai, dragging her hand across her eyes and then glaring at him. Then, she springs forward, knocking the breath out of him as she tackles him into a hug.
“Oof—shit,” Grif huffs, stumbling back a few inches. Slowly, he returns the embrace and says, “God, why are you so fucking tall?”
“You’re just jealous ‘cause I’m gonna be way taller than you,” she says.
“Yeah, right,” Grif snorts. She’s right of course. The top of her head is already at his chin, and it’s like she grows an inch a day.
“Promise you’ll come back so I can make fun of how short you are,” Kai says, pulling away from Grif and crossing her arms.
Grif looks his sister up and down, taking her in as if it’s the last time he’ll see her. He’s got some time before he leaves, but for once they aren’t squabbling, and the feeling he has towards her isn’t annoyance, it’s pride. Kai is so fucking strong, and whether or not Mom comes home, she’s going to be just fine. She’s going to make it.
She’s going to make it, so he has to make it too.
“I promise,” he says.