The banging continues. It echoes through the car, endless and savage. I planned everything in advance. Just not that. I never thought someone could have the strength, the stamina. My fingers grip the wheel, trying to crush the vibrations out of my body.
“Shut up!” I scream.
The banging just gets louder. Could she kick open the trunk? Should I have taped her legs down?
“Shut up!”
I jam my finger down on the power button for the radio and scroll through the options until I find the metal station I have preset in my truck. A Metallica song comes on, a remake of an old classic. I crank up the volume. The bass rattles the windows. The screaming lyrics irradiate my thoughts, mutating them into something more primal.
The pounding continues. I have to turn off the radio; it only makes it worse. Instead, I focus on the yellow lines and the lightening of the eastern skyline. Day is coming. Faster than I want it to.
Bangbangbang
At first, I picture her in the trunk, her Nike running shoes slamming against the interior of the car. As I weave through the traffic on the interstate, though, something changes. The banging sharpens.
Bangbangbang
As I listen, a cold sweat slides down my face. It burns my eyes. I try to wipe it away and slip out of my lane and across a rumble strip.
“Shit,” I hiss.
Bangbangbang
The sound seems to change again. Sharpen, like knuckles on a door.
Knockknockknock
Almost like she wants me to let her in, instead of let her out.
KNOCKKNOCKKNOCK
The knock on my bedroom door was firm but not overly loud. My door didn’t open right after it. Instead, I had time to get up off my bed and walk across my room. I felt sick to my stomach as my hand reached out for the handle. I remember thinking how strangely polite the whole thing was, considering.
I opened the door and Drew was standing in the hallway. He was not smiling, not exactly, but he seemed to bounce on his toes as he spoke.
“Dad wants us in the basement,” he said.
“I don’t—”
“Okay,” he said, too quickly. “I’ll go tell him.”
“No,” I shouted. Then more softly. “No.”
That’s when my brother definitely smiled. It was timeless in that I have seen that same expression on his face dozens of times. And it always takes me back to that moment, the way half of his mouth rose but his eyes remained the same. Just like Dad’s.
I followed him down the stairs and around to the cellar door.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked.
Drew laughed. “In her room.”
When I took the first step down, I reached for the railing. Wet with sweat, my hand slipped on the polished wood and I stumbled.
“Don’t be stupid,” Drew muttered in front of me.
The light above the stairs was off but the glow from our father’s work area was enough to see Drew’s hockey stuff, which littered the floor like wreckage. Carelessly, Drew bent and picked up one of his sticks as we passed. He took a swipe at a tennis ball, sending it into the goal by the closet.
“Goal,” he said.
When he dropped the stick to the poured concrete floor, the sound rattled me and I startled. My father’s voice followed the jolt like thunder.
“Get in here.”
Drew’s pace quickened. So did mine. We walked into his workroom, my brother’s head up. Mine down, staring at the red-painted floor.
Our father sat on a high stool beside his workbench building an intricate model of a World War II battleship. The harsh smell of paint and glue hung thickly in the air, stinging my eyes. At first, he acted as if we weren’t there. When I glanced up, I saw him hunched over his work, small tools moving deftly in large hands. When he finally turned to look at us, he pulled off his glasses. Using a perfectly clean black cloth, he breathed on the lenses and cleaned them while we stood there watching him. When he was done, he put his glasses on and cleared his throat.
“Drew, turn on the lights out there,” he said, carelessly gesturing to the main room of the basement. “And clean up that mess of yours.”
“Yes, sir,” Drew said.
When Drew left my father’s room, I felt a shiver run through my body. I felt alone and raw, as if the air down there was burning my skin like acid. My father cleared his throat again. I knew I had to look at him. I knew that was what he expected. But I couldn’t get my head to move. I couldn’t stop staring at the blood-red floor.
“How’d it feel?” he asked.
I tried to ask him what he meant, but I couldn’t get the words out.
“Look at me,” he snapped.
That was enough. The cut to his voice broke whatever it was that had me paralyzed. My head shot up and my eyes met his, struggling to hold his gaze for more than the shortest of seconds. It felt like he sliced right through me, opened me up and left me naked and unprotected.
“I asked you a question,” he said.
“What?”
He laughed, a bitterly judgmental sound. “How did it feel apologizing to that boy?”
“Good,” I said, whispering.
“Don’t lie to me,” he snapped.
“I—”
“I said, don’t lie to me.”
He rose from his chair. He moved to me. I looked up at him only because I didn’t want him to touch me.
“I hate him,” I said.
I don’t know where those words came from. I don’t think I meant them. Or if I did, I didn’t know it. But they hung there between our eyes.
He smiled, just like Drew. “I don’t care.”
My eyes shook in their sockets. I blinked over and over again, forcing myself, fighting with everything I had to keep looking at him. I felt dizzy, disembodied.
“It’s ready,” Drew called from behind me.
My father walked past me, his shoulder bumping mine, causing me to spin with him. Without looking back, he laid out the rules.
“Three rounds. Taped knuckles. Nothing below the belt.”