Too Late

I throw my backpack of completed homework in Asa’s car and walk through the front door. I just keep walking until I get to the kitchen. I’ll do like I do every night and take something to eat and drink up to my room. I’ll stay there alone and try to sleep amidst the sound of music and laughter and sometimes the occasional muffled screams. I’ll fall asleep and hope that Asa gives me at least four good hours before he wakes me up again.

I set the timer on the microwave and fill my cup with ice. I shut the freezer and go to open the refrigerator door when the familiar handwriting on the dry-erase board catches my eye. My breath hitches when I read it.



Worries flow from her lips like the random words that flow from her fingertips. I reach out and try to catch them, clenching them in my fists, wanting nothing more than to catch them all.



I look at his words, written clearly out in the open for anyone to see, but I know they’re meant only for me. It’s obvious he played the game wrong. He actually thought about what he was going to say before he wrote it this time. Cheater.

I erase the words, but not before imprinting them on my mind. I pick up the marker and press it to the dry-erase board.





My hands are wet from sweat. The air conditioner is broken again and it’s too hot to go outside. I run my sweaty palm along the leather arm of the couch, leaving a streak of sweat behind the path of my hand.

I wonder where sweat comes from?

I wonder where leather comes from?

My mother told me it’s made from cows, but I know she’s a liar, so I don’t believe her. How could leather be made out of cows? I’ve touched a cow before and they’re sort of fuzzy. They don’t look like leather to me. Leather looks more like it’s made from dinosaurs than cows.

I bet leather really is made out of dinosaurs. I don’t know why my mother always lies to me. She lies to Daddy, too. I know she lies to him, because she gets in trouble for it a lot.

Daddy always tells me not to trust whores. I don’t know what a whore is, but I know it’s something my Daddy hates.

Sometimes when he gets mad at my mom, he calls her a whore. Maybe a whore is another word for liar and that’s why he hates them so much.

I wish my mother wasn’t a whore. I wish she would stop lying, so she wouldn’t get in trouble so much. I don’t like watching her get in trouble.

Daddy says it’s good for me, though. He says if I want to grow up and be a man, I need to see what a woman looks like when she cries. Daddy says a woman’s tears make men weak, and the more I see their tears when I’m younger, the less I’ll believe their lies when I’m older. Sometimes when he punishes my mother for being a whore, he makes me watch her cry so that I’ll grow up knowing that all the whores cry and it shouldn’t bother me.

“Don’t trust anyone, Asa,” he always tells me. “Especially the whores.”





I grasp the leather strap tethered around my arm and pull it tighter, then slap at my skin. I realize now that leather isn’t made from dinosaurs.

My mother wasn’t lying about that, at least.

I don’t remember a lot about the fight in their bedroom that night. The yelling had become a daily occurrence, so it wasn’t new to me. What was so different about that night was the silence. The house had never been so quiet. I remember lying in bed, listening to myself breathe because it was the only noise in the entire house. I hated the quiet. I hate the quiet.

No one found out what he did to her for a few days. They found her body wrapped in a bloody sheet, shoved under the house and half-covered in dirt. I know this, because I snuck outside and watched them pull her out from under the house.

After the cops arrested my father, I was shipped to my aunt’s house where I lived until I ran away at fourteen.

I know he’s in prison somewhere, but I’ve never looked for him. I haven’t seen or heard from him since that night.

I guess you shouldn’t trust the men who marry the whores, either.

I press the tip of the needle into my arm and apply a little pressure. Once it pierces my skin, I draw the process out as long as possible. The initial insertion and sting is the best part for me.

I push my thumb down, feeling the warm burn move from the point of insertion, down to my wrist and straight up through to my shoulder.

I slide the needle out and drop it to the floor, then untie the strap of leather, letting it fall as well. I curl my arm up to my chest and hold it with my other hand while I lean my head back against the wall. I close my eyes and smile to myself, relieved I didn’t end up with a whore like my mother.

Thinking Sloan was with another guy today made it crystal clear why my father hated whores. I don’t think I truly understood him until that moment—when I felt the hatred for Sloan that he felt for my mother.

I’m so relieved Sloan isn’t a whore.

I let my arm fall limp to the mattress.

Fuck, this feels so good.

I hear Sloan’s footsteps ascending the stairs.

She’ll be pissed that I’m doing this in our bedroom. She thinks I simply sell the shit—that I don’t actually sample it.

After what she put me through today already, she better not say a damn word about this when she walks into this bedroom.

Fuck...so good.





She returned home about ten minutes ago. I saw the lights turn on in the kitchen.

I’m sitting by the pool with Jon, Dalton, and some guy named Kevin. They’re engrossed in a live poker tournament, watching it on a laptop that Kevin has propped up on the table. Apparently they’ve somehow got stake in it.

I’m aware that Dalton is mentally taking notes, following the conversations like it’s a ping pong match. I let him. My mind is too exhausted from this day to keep up, and I can’t stop worrying about where Asa disappeared to, and what Sloan is doing right now.

My gaze is fixated on the house. I watch the windows as she moves around the kitchen, making herself something to eat. Once it looks like she disappears upstairs, I use the opportunity to take a breather. I need to regroup—place my focus back on the conversation around me. I just need a few minutes alone in order to do that. Some people recharge by having the energy of other people around them.

I am not one of those people.

I read once that the difference between an extrovert and an introvert isn’t how you act in a group setting. It’s whether or not those group settings give you fuel or drain you. An introvert can outwardly appear to others to be an extrovert, and vice versa. But it all comes down to how those interactions influence you internally.

I am definitely an introvert, because people drain me. And now I need silence to refuel.

“You want a beer?” I ask Dalton. He shakes his head, so I stand up and head inside to the kitchen. I don’t even want a beer. I just want silence. How Sloan lives with this on a day-to-day basis and still functions is unbelievable.

I walk through the back door and the first thing I notice when I get to the kitchen is the new sentence scripted across the dry-erase board. I take a step closer and read it.



He unclenched his fists and dropped her worries, unable to catch them for her. But she picked them back up and dusted them off. She wants to be able to hold them herself now.



I read it over and over, until the bedroom door upstairs slams and breaks me out of my trance. I take a step away from the fridge, just as Sloan rounds the corner into the kitchen. She stops suddenly when she sees me. She pulls her hands quickly up to her face and wipes at the tears. I see her glance at her words on the refrigerator, then back at me.

We both stand silently, just two feet apart, staring at each other. Her eyes are wide and I watch as her chest heaves up and down with each breath she takes.

Three seconds.

Five seconds.

Ten seconds.

I lose count of how much time passes while we both just watch each other, neither of us knowing what to do about the invisible rope between us, tugging and pulling us together with strength so much stronger than our willpower.

She sniffles and then rests her hands on her hips as her eyes fall to the floor.

“I hate him, Carter,” she whispers.

I can tell by the hurt in her voice that something happened when she went upstairs. I look up at the ceiling toward their bedroom, wondering what it could have been. When I look back at her, she’s staring at me.

“He’s passed out,” she says. “He’s using again.”

I shouldn’t feel relieved that he’s passed out, but I am. “Again?”

She takes a couple of steps toward me and then rests her back against the countertop, folding her arms together. She wipes at another tear. “He gets...” She inhales a breath and I can tell it’s hard for her to talk about. I walk over to her and stand next to her.

“He gets paranoid,” she says. “He starts to think he’s about to get caught and the pressure gets to be too much for him. He thinks I don’t notice these things, but I do. And then he starts using and when that happens, things...things turn bad for all of us.”

I’m warring with myself right now. Part of me wants to comfort her—part of me wants to selfishly push her for more information. “All of us?”