Micah didn’t like going home after school, so he would avoid it as long as possible. He joined several activities at school, even subjects he wasn’t interested in like theater and chess club, because both met after school. If he had been any good at sports, he would have tried out just to have a reason to hang around at the school long into the evening. When he didn’t have an activity to attend, he would hang out in the library, reading or just playing around on his laptop to pass the time.
Occasionally, his mom would notice his absence and text to ask him if he was coming home for dinner. On those rare occasions, he would usually lie and say he was eating dinner at a friend’s house, but his hunger often got the best of him and he would have to go home eventually. He didn’t have enough money to keep himself fed and the skipped meals caught up with him. And it wasn’t like his mom kept the kitchen stocked with food so it wasn’t like he could sneak into the pantry later in the evening to make up for his skipped meal. Bruce ate whatever groceries she did manage to stock up on, so there was never much left for Micah anyway.
Bruce was his mom’s live-in boyfriend. He’d shown up about a year after Mile’s dad died, and he hardly paid attention to Micah most of the time. Which was good, because when Bruce did pay attention to him, it never went very well for him. Bruce had a temper and the triggers that set it off were inexplicable to Micah. Sometimes it took no more than a look to send Bruce into a rage like he was simply waiting for Micah to do something to give him an excuse. Other times, Bruce sat on the couch with a beer in his hand and toyed with Micah, asking him questions and knowing that he wouldn’t like the answers as if he needed help working himself up for a fight. Micah usually remained silent in situations like that, but even his silence was enough to make Bruce angry.
Today was not a normal day. A freak blizzard had blown up out of nowhere and all the students got sent home early. Because of the storm, not only was the school closed early, but also the library, the coffee shop, the comic shop and every other building Micah used as a refuge and escape from the house that used to be his home.
Trudging home in the snow, he wracked his brain for alternatives to going home, but none came to mind. He used to have a lot of friends, but after his dad died, he’d started pushing them away one by one. They’d been more supportive than ever at the beginning, but grief was a slow process and not something that moved through a simple progression from one point to another. As his friends lost patience with his slow recovery, he drifted apart from them, losing interest in the things that they used to have in common. Losing interest in everything.
He had been really close to his dad, closer than he’d ever been to his mom who was too superficial and flighty to understand his obscure interests and analytical mind. His father had been a brilliant engineer and even patented several breakthrough inventions, but they were all boring and practical, not the type of invention that made you famous. Plus, his father had been too trusting and lost the rights to his most successful invention. His best friend had sold the plans to a big company and he’d been cut out of the profits over a technicality.
After the car crash, his father had died on the operating table and he’d left Micah and his mother with a totaled car, a house with a second mortgage, and no life insurance. His father had never been good at planning for the future, preferring to live in the present—and mostly in his own head. Debts from his mother’s shopping addiction had left them in a fragile position, so she had been eager to welcome Bruce into their family when he showed up and was willing to help pay for part of the mortgage in exchange for a place to stay.
While Micah had never thought his mother was worthy of his father, he had thought better of her than to fall in love right after his father died. But he wasn’t sure it was love. His mother was insecure and Bruce was arrogant enough to hold her under his sway. So now they shared the bedroom she had shared with Micah’ dad, and Bruce ran the house like his own personal fiefdom. Micah was both servant and whipping boy but he was too smart to simply accept the situation and move on. He was counting the days until he could get a part time job and earn enough money to gain some independence. He would move out as soon as he could manage it. School was important only from the standpoint of getting good scholarships so he could get into a school far away and escape this place.
But he was still a few years away from that bright future. And at the moment the only future ahead of him involved an icy trip through the neighborhood to a house that his mother could no longer afford and a night of dealing with Bruce’s temper. The only thing that gave him relief was that Bruce was probably still at work so he’d have a few hours to hide out in his room and hopefully stay out of sight long enough to evade his attention.
That tiny bit of hope came crashing down into the pit of his stomach when he turned the corner onto his street and saw Bruce’s massive truck crouched in the snowy driveway like a panther lurking in the undergrowth in preparation for a strike. His mother’s junky old Honda was nowhere to be seen. He stopped on the corner and considered turning around and heading back. Surely there was some store, some restaurant or cubby hole where he could hide until the storm blew over. But he couldn’t think of a place and he wasn’t tough enough to sleep under a bridge in this sort of weather and survive.
Steeling himself for the inevitable confrontation, he hunched his shoulders against the cold and the impending doom and walked as slowly as he could down the street, his heart pounding harder with every step. He opted for the front door in the hopes that Bruce had already settled himself onto the sofa in the den. The door wasn’t even locked when he tried the knob, and he winced as he pushed it open and the hinges squealed.
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The front room was empty. Releasing a breath, he closed the door and stamped his snowy boots as quietly as he could on the rug inside the door. Shrugging out of his coat, he hung it on the coat rack as far from Bruce’s parka as he could and set his boots in the cubby below it, shouldering his backpack and practically tiptoeing toward the stairs in his damp socks. He made it to the third step before Bruce’s husky voice made him pause.
“Home early from school, are you?” Bruce asked from the kitchen. “Your mom’s still stuck at work for another hour or so. She wants you to get dinner started.”
Micah suspected that his mother had asked Bruce to start dinner, but Bruce’s chores always inevitably ended up on Micah’ plate. “I have some homework to do,” Micah said, continuing up the stairs as quickly as he could.
He could never figure out how a man Bruce’s size could move so quickly, but before Micah had made it up two steps, he’d felt Bruce grab his backpack and pull him back down the stairs in one fierce yank. Falling to his knees to catch his balance, Micah winced as his knees came down hard on the wooden step, trying to shrug out of his backpack and escape before Bruce could make another attack. If he could only make it up to his room and lock the door…
But Bruce was too fast for that. He clamped an iron grip on Micah’ bicep and yanked him back to his feet and toward the kitchen so quickly that he could only stumble along beside him. “Your homework can wait,” Bruce said, pulling the backpack from Mile’s shoulders and tucking it under one arm. “I’ll hold onto this. Now get to cooking.”
Micah huddled against the refrigerator in fear until Bruce finally walked away, unable to catch his breath until the man was out of sight. When his massive shoulders had turned the corner, Micah returned his attention to the kitchen. The refrigerator was nearly empty. He couldn’t make much from a container of orange juice and a curdled carton of milk. All he could find in the cabinets was a box of Kraft Mac and Cheese, so he filled a pot with water and set it on the stove to boil. A quick look around the freezer yielded some fish sticks and a package of ice cream covered in crystals. The fish sticks appeared to be equally freezer burned, but he didn’t see any alternatives.
The fish sticks were waiting on a cookie sheet while the oven preheated when Bruce returned for another beer. “What the hell is that?” he demanded, nodding at the pan.
Focused on separating the pasta from the orange cheese-like powder pouch inside the Mac and Cheese box, Micah didn’t even acknowledge the question.
Bruce sniffed the tray and coughed in disgust. “Is that fish?” He slammed his newly opened beer down on the countertop and foam overflowed the top. “You know I hate fish.”
Still ignoring him, Micah kept his head down and began to pour the pasta into the boiling water, trying to keep his heart from pounding out of his chest.
“Hey! I’m talking to you.” Bruce grabbed his arm in the same spot he’d gripped before and Micah realized it had already formed a bruise. Reacting in pain, his hand jerked and the macaroni went flying all over the kitchen. Bruce clucked his tongue. “Now look at what you’ve done.” He shoved Micah back against the counter so hard that the edge felt like it was cutting into his back.
“Leave me alone,” he snarled, no longer able to contain his outrage at the treatment.
“You little brat.”
Micah saw Bruce winding up for a slap and braced himself for the blow, but it still stung fiercely and knocked him off his feet. If Bruce hadn’t still been gripping his arm he would have fallen to the ground. Staring down at the linoleum in a daze, he saw a few specks of blood and realized his lower lip was bleeding on the inside. Before he could recover from that thought, he felt Bruce haul him back to his feet and pin him against the countertop again, this time with his hip. Switching his grip from Micah’ arm to his wrist, he twisted it until he had positioned Micah’ hand over the pot of boiling water.
“No. Don’t,” Micah gasped, looking up into Bruce’s wild eyes in terror, realizing what he was about to do. He could feel the steam rushing over his skin as it escaped the pot and even that was unpleasantly hot.
Adjusting his position so he could plunge Micah’ hand into the water, Bruce managed to hold Micah still in spite of his squirming.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Micah barked, trying to stop the inevitable punishment, but Bruce’s expression only intensified and Micah realized in horror that nothing could stop him from following through. “No!” he cried out in panic.
Just as Bruce’s hand tightened on Micah’ arm, the utterly ordinary rumbling of the garage door opening made them both fall silent.
Releasing him abruptly as if he were the one who had almost been burned, Bruce snatched his beer off the counter and walked out of the kitchen as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And in truth, it hadn’t. His attack had been utterly ordinary behavior for him. “Clean up that mess or I’ll make sure you have an accident later.” he growled.
And then the kitchen door was opening and Micah’ mom’s voice was echoing warmly through the house in greeting, shocking in its normalcy. She hugged Bruce as she walked in, her black peacoat dusted with snow and her cheeks pink from the cold. “Hi sweetie,” she said to Bruce who gave her a kiss and asked her about her drive as if he hadn’t just threatened to shove her son’s hand in boiling water.
Turning his back on them both, Micah crouched down on the floor and began collecting macaroni, wiping at the blood on his lip with the back of his hand to hide the damage.
