Needing 13 - Johnny Kavanagh

ALL BECAUSE I LIKED A BOY

TARA

Dad was dead.

I'd just killed my father, and instead of relief, all I felt was this sickening urge to vomit. The hate I thought I'd feel was missing, leaving me hollow. Everyone else saw him as a heartless monster, but I couldn't shake the image of a broken child—one who'd never had a whisper of compassion, a hint of love, shown to him.

How could he love anyone if no one had ever taught him how?

How could he show compassion if he'd never seen any himself?

For him, love was tangled up in fists and belts.

Obedience? "My house, my rules."

Respect? "Do this or else."

I knew because I'd met the people who raised him—his brothers and his parents. Compared to them, calling Dad a saint felt almost fair. No wonder he ran from that house as soon as he could.

My grandfather, Declan—"Dick," Dad and I called him behind his back—was cold, ruthless, with hair and eyes as black as his soul. He was a self-obsessed gobshite who cared for nothing and no one but his reputation. Family? Just another extension of himself, like ornaments he polished to perfection for public display. No mistakes were allowed. Step out of line, make him look bad, and you signed your own death warrant. His house was his fortress, and he ruled it with an iron fist, every ounce of power wrapped up in his icy glare.

And my grandmother, Saraid—or "Slut," as Dad called her, not that I'd disagree—was no better. Blonde hair, brown eyes, and a spirit as dead as a rock. A heartless bitch, she was always ready with criticism or complaints, picking us apart like we were nothing. She and Declan barely spoke, only managing to mutter insults or snide remarks at each other. In public, though, they were the "perfect couple." He was the esteemed businessman; she, the trophy wife. Twenty-five years of "happy marriage" and four "perfect sons." What a fucking joke.

His brothers, Jack, Charlie, and Adam—or Jerk, Cunt, and Arsehole, as we called them—were exact replicas of their da. Each had his own God complex, and each disgusted me. They lived to humiliate Dad, constantly tearing him down. Every time we stayed at his parents' after Mum kicked us out, Dad just took it, hanging his head while they tore into him, cutting him down to pieces.

When I was young, I couldn't understand why he didn't fight back, why he didn't strike them the way he did us. I'd asked him once, and he looked away, his voice so quiet it barely sounded like him. "I don't want them to hurt ya," he said. He could've knocked any one of his brothers out cold if he'd wanted. "If I hurt them, my father will hurt you. I can't let that happen."

The transformation in him at their house terrified me. At home, his eyes burned with anger, a rage that felt endless, but in that house, his anger disappeared, replaced with something so much worse—sadness, grief. The sight of his tears, hidden as he thought I slept, broke something in me. I didn't know why he was making us suffer the same way he'd been made to suffer.

Hurting us wasn't going to dull his pain.

Or so I thought until one night, drunk off his face, he admitted, "It dulls it," his voice low and slurred. "The pain, you see? My control..." His hand shook as he raised it, like he didn't know whether to grab the bottle or hit something. Maybe both.

"That's no bloody excuse," I spat. "You promised Mam you'd never hurt her. You swore you'd be different, that you'd never be like him. Or them."

There were photos of him and Mum from their school days, kept in a drawer like a secret he didn't want anyone to see. They'd met when Mum was just fourteen, him nineteen, and though it disturbed me, there was a genuine happiness in those photos. Mum's only mistake was thinking she could change him.