Mandy’s dad used to get mad.
Really mad.
He’d scream, throw things, do whatever it took to get that extra surge of testosterone from his veins. Yesterday, on my daily walk around the block, I remembered the time Mandy came to my house, late at night. Even the crickets had fallen asleep.
She snuck right in through the window. Usually, girls don’t arrive wearing a baggy sweatshirt that barely covered their butts, but Mandy did. She wasn’t wearing pants, only underwear. At first, I thought it was some devious ploy to get me in bed—well, technically I was already half-asleep—but then she just broke down in tears. As the moonlight shone bright through the glass of my window, I saw pink expanses of skin covering her thighs, burns. Boiling water, having dug their vicious fangs into her flesh.
Apparently, pants hurt too much.
They rubbed up on her skin.
That night, quietly, her bare feet creaking along the wooden floors of my uneasy house, Mandy crept up by my side, and slid into my single bed. We fit together perfectly, two cigarettes in a pack.
For all the night, she cried.
And cried.
And cried
After a while, it became nothing but a sweet, sweet lullaby.
