Brooklyn already fell asleep with Olaf curled against her on the couch in the playroom, but Ella is on the stairs, huddled down in the shadows, watching the kitchen from between the clean white spindles of the banister. Brooklyn thinks that when they do this, Daddy is hugging Mommy, because Brooklyn is five, just a little kid who still plays with Barbies. She makes Ken hug Barbie like this sometimes, even though their arms can’t really bend the right way.
“I love you so much,” she says as Ken smashes against Barbie. “So much you turn pink.”
But Ella knows exactly what is happening. And she knows what it feels like, because Dad did this to her once, too, when she stuck around too long after dinner on a Bad Beer Night and he yelled at her for getting a C on a math test and she rolled her eyes when he could see it. At first, she thought it was a hug, but when you tell someone to stop, they’re supposed to stop hugging you, and Dad didn’t stop. He whispered, “Shhhh,” in her ear, and then, “I bet you can’t escape.”
Ella remembers what it felt like, her fingers curling around his arm, pulling gently at first and then desperately, her nails digging in when she couldn’t make it budge. She remembers how she wanted to cough but couldn’t, wanted to scream but couldn’t. She remembers the feel of his curly arm hairs, the way thick muscle shifted against bone in her grasp. She remembers focusing on her mother’s face, seeing Mom’s eyes all big and bulgy like the goldfish Brooklyn loves in the big tank at the Chinese restaurant; her mind went oddly childish, at the time.
“That’s enough,” Mom said, more begging than warning.
But Dad didn’t stop, and things went very strange. Ella saw colors behind her eyes, dark red and then gray and then black, and she went to sleep, and when she woke up she was on the couch, and Mom had a hand on her forehead like she was sick. Dad didn’t apologize, and Mom didn’t explain it. They never spoke about it, and Ella figures her mom is probably as embarrassed by it as she is.
“Hurry up to bed,” Mom said that night, and then, softer, “Lock your door.”
And although Ella felt woozy and strange and her feet were wobbly, and although she felt like some small part of her died and she’d never say the word Daddy again, she skittered up the stairs and scrambled into her room like she was still a good girl doing the right thing.
Since that night, she knows: Don’t go downstairs when Dad’s drinking. And she doesn’t let Brooklyn go, either. Sometimes she sits on the stairs like this, both guarding them from her little sister’s interest in a bedtime snack and watching to make sure Mom is okay. She knows she can’t stop Dad, but somehow watching makes her feel safer. If something really, truly bad happened, she could call 9-1-1 and the police would come. But most of the time, Dad just talks and drinks, and Mom listens and says very little, and eventually Dad sways his way upstairs to bed, and by then Ella has already hidden in her room, her door locked. She knows the sounds of his feet on the steps, though, and she’s glad her room and Brooklyn’s room are on the far end of the landing instead of right next to her parents’ room.
This time, though, it’s worse than usual, and Ella has to keep watching. It’s like staring at a car wreck in slow motion, waiting for the right moment to run over and help. But Ella feels completely numb as she watches her mother’s face go deep mauve and then the sickly white of skim milk. If she called for help, things would only get worse, but if she doesn’t call for help when…if…
She types 9-1- into her phone and then lets her finger hover over the 1, waiting.
Finally, after he lets Mom go, Dad goes to his man cave, but Ella doesn’t move. Her mother just stands there for a moment, then doubles over and shakes for a while, then slowly comes back to life like she’s been frozen in ice. Her shoulders hunch up, her hands make fists, and she fixes her hair, tucking the blond strands back behind her ears. Muttering softly to herself, she cleans up the kitchen, quietly, swiftly. Once the dishwasher is running and everything smells like lemons, Mom opens her laptop, and her eyes glaze over. She calls this “doing work,” but Ella knows how to check browser history, so she knows that her mom is looking at her Dream Vitality numbers and scrolling through the Missed Connections forum of some old website called Craigslist and posting bullshit memes and pics of their great life on social media, which doesn’t seem like work at all. Ella asked her about the Missed Connections once, because she thought her mom might be cheating on her dad. But Mom explained that she was always looking for her high school best friend who basically disappeared.
Ella wouldn’t blame her mom for having an affair, though. She would almost welcome that if it meant her parents would get divorced. Then there would never be another night like this.
From here on out, nothing will happen. It’s safe. Dad will do whatever he does in the man cave until well after midnight. Ella covers a yawn and hurries to her room.
When she wakes up in the morning, her phone is still on the Dialer.
9-
1-
One day, she thinks, she’ll have to press that final 1, but for now she just erases everything, almost like it never happened.
Downstairs, Mom stands at the kitchen window, but Ella doesn’t think she’s looking at the pool. She has the lunches made and breakfast ready. The small trash can they use for recycling is empty of beer bottles. Ella wonders if she actually slept at all. Mom is so pretty, and really young compared with plenty of the other moms, but she does look a little tired. Ella watched some YouTube videos about makeup that could help with that, but she doesn’t want to hurt her mom’s feelings—especially after Dad’s bullshit about how she needs to get Botox and go to a spa and look like Uncle Brian’s wife, Marissa, who idolizes the Kardashians.
“Good morning, Smella,” Mom says with an apologetic smile.
“Morning, Momster,” Ella replies, glad that this little ritual they’ve had since she was even younger than Brooklyn is still intact. “Morning, Brookie.”
When she sits at the table, her mother brings over a stack of pancakes for her, the syrup and butter melted in a mug, just the way she likes it. She almost feels guilty, that Mom has to put up with so much and still takes the time to do nice things. She has no idea how to put this into words, so she just says, “Thanks.”
“Mommy, you look sad,” Brooklyn says through a mouthful of pancake, and Ella is glad her sister just put it out there, because she’s still young enough that it’s not quite an insult.
“I had bad dreams,” Mom admits with that Sad Mom Smile.
“I did, too!” Brooklyn almost shouts, as if it were a good thing.
“Me, too,” Ella murmurs, because it’s true.
Mom draws Brooklyn into what must be a very sticky hug and smooths the little baby hairs around her forehead. Ella watches, her face a mask, hating that Mom doesn’t really touch her like that anymore but knowing full well she can’t help flinching away from anything that intimate.
“Everyone has bad dreams sometimes.” Mom’s voice is soft and sweet and low. “Just try to think happy thoughts today.”
“Can we get frozen yogurt on the way home?”
Mom’s sigh suggests that the answer will be no. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. All that sugar is bad for you. You don’t even get yogurt there—just candy toppings.”
“I like the yogurt,” Ella can’t help adding. But of course she doesn’t need Mom to agree; she could just drive there in her car and get yogurt anytime she wanted with her babysitting money.
Mom shakes her head and pulls out of Brooklyn’s hug. “Maybe tomorrow. It’s time to go to school now.”
As they hurry outside, Mom glares up at the sun, frowning, before fumbling in her purse for her big sunglasses. Ella pauses at the door to her car, an older but respectable Honda Civic. She knows she’s lucky to have a car, and she knows that it must’ve sucked for her mom to drive fifteen miles back and forth to her charter school for the year and a half of high school before she turned sixteen, but just now she hates the fact that Brooklyn gets to drive to school with Mom and get all that time with her while Ella has to drive alone.
“You sure you’re okay?” she asks, one hand on the door.
Mom gives her a smile, but not a real one. “Of course, honey. Why wouldn’t I be?”
And although Ella knows exactly why her mom shouldn’t be okay, can’t be okay, the words dry up in her throat and she nods and gets in her car.
That day at lunch, the strangest thing happens.
Two boys get in a fight. But something about it is deeply wrong.
One of them, Jordan Stack, is kind of an asshole and gets in fights all the time, so it’s no surprise that he’s involved. But the other one, Thomas Canton, is a scrawny, dorky kid who can’t even run laps without wheezing. He barely speaks in class and when he does, his voice is a whispery mumble, but now he stands, his chair squealing as he pushes back from the table. Ella looks up at him, wondering what’s gotten into him, and he jumps at Jordan like a lion leaping on a gazelle—no, no, like a trusted chihuahua launching itself at an unsuspecting toddler, so sudden, so feral, so blindly furious—driving the larger boy to the floor between the tables. Now Thomas is on top of Jordan, straddling his chest, slamming the bigger boy’s head into the ground again and again. All the kids gather around them, as keen as sharks smelling blood. The boys start yelling, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” while the girls first command them and then beg them to stop. But they don’t.
The sound Jordan’s head makes, bouncing off the speckled floor, is like a watermelon being dropped. Red droplets scatter and the sound changes a little, goes squishier, and Ella notices these small details only because she is sitting at the next table over, frozen in place. Some people are recording the whole thing on their phones, but she is doing the same thing she does at home when Dad winds his arm around Mom’s neck, just watching, numb, still and silent, in horror.
Mr. Brannen and Ms. Baez show up and pry Thomas off Jordan, who isn’t moving. Thomas doesn’t attack them, though—he keeps lunging away to get at Jordan, his small white hands curled into bloodied claws. Mr. Brannen carries him out of the room like an angry cat, the boy twisting and thrashing in the big man’s grasp. Ms. Baez falls to her knees with a heavy thump, gently tapping on Jordan’s cheeks and lifting his head to inspect the bloody spot on the ground as Shelby Miller loudly explains that you’re not supposed to move a hurt person’s neck. Soon the teachers arrive and herd everyone back to class with their half-eaten lunches to watch nature documentaries as they mechanically chew at their desks.
Thomas and Jordan don’t come back to class. Jordan’s friend Stevie tells everyone that he’s in the hospital in a coma. The evening news talks about it without naming names, and Mom asks Ella a bunch of questions that she obviously doesn’t know the answers to about The Boys in Her Class and bullying and drugs and the school’s discipline issues.
The weirdest thing, though, is that Ella was right there, sitting with Hayden and Tyler and Olivia and Sophie, and she saw the whole thing herself. Before it happened, the boys weren’t talking or even paying attention to each other. Jordan wasn’t bullying Thomas, didn’t steal his lunch or threaten him or laugh at him or even look at him. He was talking to Stevie and eating a sandwich, just being normal. They were all just being normal. And for all that Jordan is a total jerk, she’s never actually seen him go after Thomas; it’s like they never even acknowledged each other’s existence before that moment. Thomas was reading a book and eating a bag of crackers. He didn’t say anything. Nothing was said to him. He just dropped his crackers, stood up, turned, and attacked.
The whole thing makes no sense.
The scariest part, to Ella, was the look in Thomas’s eyes.
It was like…no one was there at all.