Accept Me

ONE (introduction)

DANNY,
There are leftovers in the fridge
Home late
—Your Pap

I crumple the note and kick it on the floor.
When I grip the fridge and it gives in, and creakily opens I only see stacks of sodas and beers. Some already half way consumed and drank. In the bottom compartment there's half a salad and a single piece of bread. I ignore the salad, and reach for the bread. The salad was mostly just dressing with the occasional lump of cucumber anyway. No thanks.
I fist the bread in my hands.
I'm ripping the crusts, watching them fall to the floor by my bare feet. When the bread is clean off crusts I kick the remaining crusts under the fridge.

***

There's something about a quiet house...
Something about it...it's too quiet.
It's lonely.
Eye-opening.
Of course metaphorically eye-opening.
It really makes you see. See how unbelievably weak you really are. It isn't brave here it's lonely. I need some sort of ambience...sound? Something to scare the thoughts away. The thoughts that scare me, that take over my mind. When Papa isn't around I feel different. I feel like myself. When he's around, he makes me the boy I don't know. The boy I'm not. The boy I don't want to know— the boy....the boy...
I don't feel is me.
Why am I crying?
Why?
Again?!
I wonder how to spell cry.
C
R
I
E
?
I don't know.
Crying isn't brave. My Papa is brave. He's the only brave man I know. He doesn't want his little boy crying. He doesn't want his little boy being who he truly is.