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Michael watched as Sam disappeared up the stairs, on the hunt for a TV—which Michael doubted existed, based on the state of the rest of the house—and likely planning to stake a claim to half their room while he was up there.
He turned back around, taking in their new house—the wood-paneled walls and antique-looking furniture, taxidermied animals covering almost every space available, from the walls to the kitchen table, and the everyday clutter of mail, dishes, and knickknacks.
Jesus, this place was going to need some work.
Outside the window, the first signs of sunset were dusting the sky with pink.
Michael had no intention of sticking around when night fell; he wanted to see the boardwalk, see the new people.
He needed out, even if it was just for a night.
He needed to be someone else, just for a little bit.
A few feet away, his mom sorted through boxes on the floor, separating things by which room they belonged in.
They hadn’t had time for that kind of organization when they’d left.
Based on the fact that his house looked like a church basement consignment sale, though, Michael wasn’t sure their grandpa had even heard of organization.
His eyes landed on a large stuffed deer head that took up the entire couch, its long antlers poking their way underneath the shade of a nearby lamp.
He looked over his shoulder at his mom. “Hey, I’m gonna take this guy out to the garage,” he said, not waiting for a response before kneeling down, wrapping one hand around the deer's neck and using the other to support it from below, holding it under its chin.
When he went to lift it, though, a flash of pain shot up his ribs, and a gasp slipped out before he could stop it.
His mom looked over, eyebrows furrowed. “You alright?” She asked, pausing her sorting.
Michael clenched his jaw as he stood up, and the words sounded strained as they left his mouth. “I’m fine.”
His mom stood up, wiping her hands on her skirt as she moved toward him.
“Are you sure?” She tried to meet his gaze, but he looked away.
“I said I’m fine,” he repeated, moving to carry the head to the garage like he’d said he was doing.
“Oh, hey,” his mom put a gentle hand on his arm, and Michael froze, shoulders tensing.
Damn it, he needed to put this thing down soon.
“I was thinking about ordering some take-out for tonight,” his mom offered. “Maybe Chinese?”
Before Michael could answer, a smile of excited realization lit up her face.
“Oh! I bet some of my old board games are still upstairs somewhere; that could be fun, right?”
The pain in Michael’s ribs was starting to flare again, the weight of the deer head feeling greater and greater with each second. He swallowed a wince, pivoting to face his mom. He was tired. His side hurt more with every inhale and exhale. He wanted to be anywhere but here.
“Yeah, sounds exactly like what I want to do with my Friday night, Mom,” he said dryly.
He turned and continued to the garage, Sam’s fretting about the lack of a TV distracting their mom from following.
He set the deer down clumsily, then let his body follow it to the floor, his legs stretching out in front of him and his hand coming up to hold his side—as if he could hold his ribs in place from the outside until the cracks had closed. His eyes darted toward the door to make sure he was alone before closing as he took shaky breaths.
He was fine.
Michael wondered if his mom could see through the words. He wanted to think she couldn’t, because it would make the fact that she never pushed further sting a bit less, but he had a feeling she had to have.
After all, she was the one who'd taught them to him.
Their dad had been a nice man at some point. Michael knew his mom wouldn’t’ve married him if he hadn’t been. And Michael himself still held a few good memories from childhood—of his dad playing with him, laughing with him, of when the faint smell of cigarettes and aged whiskey felt like something safe rather than an impending storm.
But eventually something changed. His dad changed. Into someone who got mad easily, who yelled, and cursed, and broke things.
The first time Michael saw him get mad enough to raise a hand, it had been toward Lucy. An open-palmed slap that had stunned both her and a young Michael, who’d been on his way to the kitchen to get a snack.
He’d ran forward, a wave of protectiveness coming over him.
“Don’t touch her!” He shouted, pushing in front of her, his stature at twelve years old skinny and more than a head shorter than his dad.
His mom put a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back toward her. When he turned to look at her, her cheek was red, and her eyes held barely concealed fear, but she shook her head.
“I’m fine, honey,” she assured him. She looked back and forth between him and his father.
“Don’t worry about me; I’m fine.”
His dad stormed out after that.
🏍️
The next time it happened, Michael was by himself—working on homework at the table. Sam had just finished his, retreating upstairs to read, when their dad walked in, slamming the door behind him and heading straight for the cabinet where Michael knew he kept his alcohol.
He’d been drinking more lately. A lot more. It made him even meaner. To Michael mostly, because he seemed to be around the most, but also to their mom, and even sometimes Sam.
Watching amber liquid fill a glass put Michael on edge now.
His dad looked up from his drink and caught Michael eyeing the glass warily.
“What are you looking at?” He spat.
Michael shook his head.
“Nothing.”
His dad finished the drink, noticing the way Michael watched the whiskey disappear.
“You got a problem?” He asked.
Michael shook his head again, looking back toward his homework and starting to gather it up.
“No,” he said.
“Where are you going?” His dad asked.
“Upstairs,” Michael answered without looking.
“Are you just that desperate to get away from me? Am I scaring you now?” His dad straightened up to his full height, his tone mocking.
Yes, Michael thought.
“No,” he said.
“Then look at me while I’m talking to you.”
Michael looked up just in time to see the glass leave his dad’s hand. He raised his arm over his face right as the glass shattered against the wall next to him.
His mom came running at the sound, entering the room to see her husband, still in his work clothes, standing across from her son, who had a tiny trickle of blood on his cheek and on the forearm he hadn’t quite lowered all the way yet.
A bottle of alcohol sat on the counter next to her husband, and pieces of broken glass peppered the floor around her son.
She looked at them both, wide-eyed.
“Everything’s fine, Lucy,” his dad said, barely any emotion in his voice.
Lucy looked to Michael, like she was asking him to confirm his dad’s claim.
Michael remembered the last time his dad had hit his mom, and he took a breath, shaking his head.
“I’m fine, Mom.”
She’d frowned, but she hadn’t pushed further. Michael wasn’t sure if he wanted her to.
He wondered if part of her was relieved that it was him and not her.
Part of him was.
🏍️
Michael hit a growth spurt when he turned thirteen, and with it came a heightened sense of protectiveness over his mom and brother.
He also developed a heightened sense of how to push his dad’s buttons when he wanted his dad to focus on him rather than anyone else in the house.
It was a responsibility no one put on him. But no one else had taken it from him, either.
He stood between his dad and the hallway leading to Sam’s room—tall, lanky, and determined not to let him pass.
Sam had gotten sent home early from school because a group of boys had cornered him during recess, and he’d ended up crying in the nurse’s office while she bandaged his knees and picked gravel out of his palms.
Unfortunately, the school had called their dad to let him know, instead of their mom.
Sam was in his room by the time their dad walked through the door, and when Michael had heard the heavy footsteps heading for the stairs, he practically flung himself off the couch, hurrying to beat his dad there.
“Move, Michael,” he growled, taking a step toward him.
Michael didn’t budge. “Leave him alone, Dad.”
“I will not have the school calling to tell me my son is a pansy who can’t defend himself.” Their dad pointed over Michael’s shoulder toward Sam’s door.
“He’s ten,” Michael argued.
“He needs to learn to be a man.” Their dad pushed him, and Michael stumbled back a step before catching his balance.
Michael pushed him back. “Hard to teach what you don’t know yourself.”
Their dad’s face darkened, and his hand shot out, gripping Michael’s bicep tight enough that Michael was sure there’d be bruises the next day.
Their dad tried to yank him forcibly out of the way, without realizing how close he’d gotten to the top of the stairs.
When Michael woke up, his dad was telling his mom he’d been “making a fuss over nothing,” and had tripped and fallen.
Michael told her he was fine.
She didn’t look like she believed either of them.
His dad made a nice breakfast the next morning, and told his wife how much he loved her, and no one brought it up again.
🏍️
Michael was sixteen when he realized he was strong enough to hit back.
His dad still hit harder.
He took Lucy out to dinner the night Michael took himself to the local urgent care.
His wrist was sprained, but his nose wasn’t broken, so he told his mom he was fine.
His dad hadn’t bothered trying to make up a lie.
But his mom didn’t ask, either.
The next weekend, he’d found his dad on the driveway, fixing up a beat-up Honda motorcycle.
He said it was for Michael.
Michael thought it was a little ironic.
But he’d accepted the bike, and the lessons on how to ride and repair it.
The first time he took it out by himself, he stopped at a gas station to wash the blood out of his eye from the wrench that had split his eyebrow after Michael had knocked over his dad’s beer while putting away tools—he hadn’t seen the can sitting next to the back tire.
He’d felt free that night.
🏍️
When Michael was seventeen, he’d gotten home to his parents arguing about something Sam had supposedly said.
Their dad raised his hand, and Michael acted before he could think, pulling his mom behind him and letting his head snap to the side with the momentum of his dad’s swing.
“I’m fine, Mom,” he assured her without taking his eyes off his dad. He could feel the bruise already starting to darken on his cheek. “Go check on Sammy.”
🏍️
A few days before Michael’s eighteenth birthday, his dad was served divorce papers and the news that Lucy planned to leave and take the boys with her.
It was a weeknight, and Michael was lost in thought to the point that the sound of the door slamming behind their dad was enough to startle him. The container of milk he was holding slipped from his hand, falling to the ground and spilling across the linoleum. It reached his dad’s shoe and elicited a disgusted sound.
“What the hell?!”
Michael backed away on instinct, already reaching for the paper towels. “It was an accident, Dad.”
His dad scoffed at the excuse, grabbing a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and unscrewing the cap.
“Did I ask if it was an accident? Clean it up,” he demanded.
Michael used a stack of paper towels to wipe up the milk. As he turned to throw the wad into the trash, he saw his dad picking up the divorce papers, laughing bitterly before tossing them back down onto the table.
“So your mother thinks that she can just throw away everything we had? Forget everything I did for her? For this family?”
Michael ignored him.
“I’ll give her something to remember me by,” his dad muttered, and Michael felt his blood run cold.
He dropped the soaked paper towels into the sink and turned back to face his dad.
“Hey, you stay the hell away from her,” he warned.
His dad froze, looking back at him as he put his bottle down on the table. Something on his face was a warning Michael hadn’t felt before. Something that told him the night was about to get much, much worse. But he couldn’t back down.
His dad crossed the room faster than Michael was used to him moving, and suddenly there was a hand around his throat, squeezing.
“What did you say to me?”
Michael grabbed his dad’s wrist with both hands and wrenched it away from him.
“You heard me, you son of a bitch,” he bit out.
His dad recovered quickly, immediately pulling his arm back before driving it into Michael’s stomach, knocking the breath out of him.
He shoved Michael to his hands and knees, not giving him time to catch his breath before his foot was burying itself against Michael’s ribs with enough force to knock him over fully.
“You think you can talk like that to your father?” His dad spat.
Michael could help the choked cry that escaped his throat. His ribs were on fire.
“Oh, are you crying now?” His dad asked, half-mocking, half-incredulous, stepping over Michael to get back to his drink. “Jesus Christ, you’re soft.”
Michael pushed himself off the ground, breaths coming fast and painfully, his arms shaking.
His dad noticed, and laughed, setting the bottle back down and pointing at Michael.
“You’re gonna have to learn how to stay down, son,” he said, walking back over and pushing Michael down again. He kicked him in the same spot, and Michael’s vision went white.
In his grandpa’s garage, miles away from Phoenix and his dad, Michael lifted his shirt to examine the nearly black bruise covering most of his right side.
He groaned, letting go of the fabric and closing his eyes again.
The bruise would fade within a few weeks, but it’d probably take a few months for his ribs to stop protesting at his every breath.
As he slowly picked himself off the ground, Michael wondered if he could find some Tylenol to take before heading out for the night.
He was fine.
He’d been fine for years now.
He’ll be fine in this new place.
He reached into his pocket, feeling the cold metal of his bike keys against his fingers.
Maybe, if he let himself get a bit lost tonight, he could be something better for once.