Unraveled

On My Own

My father hit me once. Only once. He'd taken me fishing when I was about fifteen. I hadn't wanted to go with him since I'd already made plans with my friends for that day, but he thought it would be a good life skill for me to know.

"Matthew 4:19," was all that he had said to me.

I'd reluctantly texted my friends and told them that I wasn't going to be able to hang out with them, and I'd sulked in the car as my dad drove to the river.

I hadn't voiced any complaints to my dad as he handed me a rod and I put the bait on. I already knew how to fish. My grandpa had taught me when I had been little, so I didn't understand at the time why my dad thought that I needed to know how to fish.

I'd stood on the edge of the bank; the only sounds were the birds and the water rushing by. It wasn't a good place to fish. The sun was out and there wasn't any shade in sight.

Still, my father and I stood there like two idiots, waiting for a fish.

Then my father slapped me across the face. I remembered dropping my pole and backing away from him in shock. He stood on the bank, acting as though nothing had even happened.

"What the hell?" I asked finally.

My father reeled in his lure before he recast it. "That was what I wondered when I found a bag of pot in your room."

"So you just decided to hit me?"

He turned to face me slowly. "Let it serve as a reminder that the dreams drugs let you escape to will get you nowhere in life but to meet the Lord sooner than you are meant to."

I thought of that story as I stuffed everything I had in my car into my school backpack and my gym duffel bag. I closed the trunk and locked it, leaving it in a grocery store parking lot. I had a loose plan for where I was going to go.

I took the bus to Deryk's house. I'd been there once with Jase when we'd been looking to get high in the middle of the week. It was a rougher part of town. Not as rough as the old business district, but still not a place I had ever really wanted to spend time in.

He lived in a yellow two-story house that had the paint peeling off it. The screws holding the steps on were broken off, which had almost put Jase on his ass when he'd slipped on them. Trash was piled in the corner of the porch. A few of the windows were broken, but someone had tried to piece them together with duct tape before giving up and just putting a clear shower curtain over them.

I didn't plan to stay there long. I just needed to get my bearings and then I would be out. At least, that was what I was telling myself. I would have had a better plan if I'd had actual time to think it through.

I could have just turned around and gone to face the horror that would have been happening at home, but I'd already taken a stand. I had to follow it through. Maybe in the future I could go home, but for now I needed to ride it through.

After taking a deep breath, I reached up and knocked on the door. The sun was setting and I knew my dad would be wrapping up his service. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that he wasn't at the church, putting on a brave face. I wondered what he would say about my appearance that morning and my disappearance that night. How would he explain the way my mom just showed up? Would he play it off as I had become sick and they were standing strong together to get me well? What secretive illness would he come up with?

It wouldn't be the truth. I knew that after what we went through with my mom. The truth would be hidden in his sermons. First Corinthians chapter fifteen verse thirty-three? Proverbs chapter twenty-two verse three? First Corinthians chapter six verses nine through eleven? Matthew chapter six verse thirteen? One of the dozens of others he could choose?