Fem

Part 28

I wasn't meant to see it but I saw it. I just happened to be in the hallway when my mom was coming out of the bedroom. She closed the door fast but not before I saw what I saw.

My dad was sitting on the bed. His shirt was unbuttoned. He took a deep breath in and shuddered. There was tears coming down his face. He was crying.

I saw all of that in a quick sliver of open door.

A tickle of panic flared up, then died.

My mom made dinner even though it was a weeknight. It was grilled cheese and tomato soup. Everything was made properly. She cut the sandwiches diagonally. My dad never did that. I missed it, the symmetry of it.

Katherine asked if dad would be joining us. No, my mom said, he's not feeling well.

While we were eating, he slipped out the front door. We heard the car back out of the driveway. We all looked into our tomato soup. I wondered what it was like to be a man crying. It was something I'd never seen before in real life. I'd seen it in movies. When a man cries in a movie, you laugh at him. This was different though. It scared me. It froze me right up.

The next day, they were back to normal. My mom had a new box of Black Magic in her underwear drawer. I helped myself to an orange cream. There was space in the house to breathe again.

*

If you look up twilight in a big dictionary, it says dusk, halflight, gloaming, and the blue hour. It makes sense to have so many words for twilight because you need lots of words to describe magic.

The old man on the corner is in his twilight. For him the word doesn't matter anymore, but I sure hope he can see the deep blues and purples before the black comes down.

I went over to mow the grass even though it didn't need it. The old lady was showing him photos in an album. The photos were black and white and clipped in with little holders at the corners.

There were pictures of men in weird bathing suits, ladies in puffy skirts, people on farms and in cities. It was the same as any old photo album. Only the faces were different.

The old man looked at the photos as though maybe there was some easy joke he was missing. But then he closed his eyes and kept them closed.

He smiled and frowned and cried out sometimes. Whatever golden show that was going on in his head was way better than any old forgotten memory.

*

Wayne's dad believes what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. He says it all the time. Whenever Wayne gets hurt, he says it, What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

It's not the truth though. Sometimes, a lot of times maybe, a thing doesn't kill you and it doesn't make you stronger. It makes you hurt, and the hurt gets froze inside you, even after the bruise fades.

The last time Wayne got hurt, he said he walked into a doorknob with his eye open. Maybe Wayne's dad thinks that as a long as he doesn't kill Wayne, he's making him stronger.

*

I could be brave sometimes. We climbed up on top of a fence and hoisted ourselves onto the roof of the school. We had fireworks. Lots of them. We stuck them in some grates on the roof and lit them. We watched red sparks, green fountains, and silvery rainbows fall out of the sky. We held the roman candles in our hands and aimed them at each other. If they hit us, there was this noise like foomp. We screamed in joy and in pain. It was like getting hit by a giant firefly.