A Breath Too Late - Rocky Callen Page 0,1

that crying. It isn’t your fault.” Father stands up and Momma flinches just as she hiccups the tears down. He’s dragging his chair behind him until he pushes it next to Momma. The scratches against the floor grate against my ears. He sits down slowly and says, “Shhhhh, you know I don’t like to hear you cry.”

A warning. A warning cloaked in comfort. He is about to strike. I can feel it. I start to shift away in my chair. About to run. He doesn’t like to hear her cry and when she does, he gives her a reason to cry harder.

She ignores the warning.

The sobs come, fierce and splintering like an earthquake. My eyes widen as I jerk my gaze to her. I stand up and lunge for the doorway. I have to get away, to escape the pull of the crevasse she is creating with her tears. She is going to drag me down. I can feel it. It isn’t normal, the way she cries. It scares me.

Momma clutches the bear to her chest. She knows what’s coming, but she doesn’t stop crying. Father growls and pushes her against the wall, her chair tipping back underneath her, and then puts one massive hand over her throat. His own body is crushing her against the wall. He’s always crushing something. Momma wheezes out her stuttering sobs and she’s shaking.

“Shhhhh, shhhhhh. It’s okay. I got you. You just have to listen to me. Okay? Shhh.”

Mom’s jerkily shaking her head side to side. She’s saying no. She’s saying stop. She’s saying help.

But I don’t.

I run. I run outside. Momma must have pushed or resisted because now I hear her wails again. Father is shouting. Glass is shattering. There is a tornado behind me and I don’t stop running. I gulp in the air, heaving frantically. I must’ve been holding my breath.

There are no bruises, or secrets, or screams out here on the sidewalk. I sigh and pull out my headphones. I turn up the volume all the way, ignoring the warning about hearing loss that pops up on the screen. I keep my finger on the volume button even though it says MAX, just in case I can squeeze out a bit more noise. C’mon, I think. Just a little louder. Just make the world go away.

My shoulders relax as the electric guitars roar, the drums thud ferociously, and the lead singer screams into the mic.

It doesn’t get louder. The world doesn’t go away and within ten minutes, I face my school.

I rub my arms. It is cold for May. It’s overcast. The sky somehow seems bright, but filtered, like an Instagram photo where they offset the image so it has softer, muted colors. I cock my head to the side and try to blink it away, but as I make my way up the school steps, I glance to the right.

He is there.

I don’t pause or even let my eyes linger. I just catch him looking up and staring, searching the sidewalk. I grit my teeth for a minute as I charge up the stairs.

Of course, he is searching for someone. Someone else. Someone without bruises under her T-shirt or death-metal music companions to drown out the world. He is of this world—wholly. Some strange mix of geek and rocker, intelligent and artistic, cool, but not so cool as to be an ass about it. August Matthews.

I kind of like the fact that his name is a month of the year, a month of sunlight, humid air, lightning bugs, last parties, beach trips, and my birthday.

I chance one last glance at him as I open the door. He is still there, expectant, waiting. Just not for me.

I walk inside and don’t look back. It seems like yesterday that it was me he was waiting for on the sidewalk.

That strange, uncollected feeling hits me again.

A loss of time, of a sequence of events. Was it really yesterday? I feel like I am midstep and losing my balance, unsteady. I try to remember clearly, but the memory feels hazy. No, of course not. That was years ago. But even as I accept that teetering thought, it feels uncertain.

Students are already filing into their first period. The first alarm blares. I frown. How am I late?

I make my way to English Lit, the only bearable class in high school—partly because I want to be a writer when I leave this hellhole and partly because I like the teacher, Ms. Hooper. When she recites