On the Flip Side

James never remembered his mother's face.
All he ever had was a photograph folded inside his father's wallet - faded around the edges, cracked through the middle where it had been bent too many times. In the picture, she stood in front of a small yellow house, one hand over her stomach, smiling as if the world had never hurt her.
She died the same night James was born.
People in the town whispered that his father, Richard Hale, had never recovered from it. Before her death, Richard had been decent - a mechanic who worked long shifts and came home with grease on his hands and laughter in his chest. Afterwards, something inside him collapsed. The grief hollowed him out until gambling became the only thing that made him feel alive.
At first, it was cards in the back room of bars, then horse races, then debts and finally the lies.
James grew up in a house that always felt one bad night away from disaster. He remembered waking at three in the morning to hear his father shouting at strangers on the phone. He remembered eviction notices stuffed into kitchen drawers. He remembered empty cupboards and promises that never lasted more than a week.
But most of all, he remembered the night they lost the house. James was fourteen.
Rain hammered the windows while his father sat at the kitchen table, staring at a pile of betting slips with trembling hands. There was bloodshot panic in his eyes - the kind that made him look less like a man and more like an animal caught in a trap.
"I can win it back," Richard kept muttering. "One more game and I can fix it."
James already knew. The silence outside was too heavy. The strangers parked outside in black cars were too patient.
They lost the house before sunrise.
After that, life became smaller.
A cramped apartment above an old convenience store, wearing second-hand clothes, eating the cheapest meals.
Teachers who looked at James with pity, but he hated pity more than anything.
By the time he entered high school, James had already learned