Two Cans and a String

Driving home, all I can think about that tiny moment we’d shared.

I’m furious at my parents for forcing me to think of other things as soon as I walk into the sunlit foyer of our home. They’re standing across from each other at the dining room table. My mother is the same spot where Jameson nearly drowned in his own blood. The remnants of a ceramic bowl are scattered on the ground. Neither of them acknowledge it, but they do acknowledge me.

As I step into the house, they both look up at me. My mother with tears in her eyes and my father with his palm pressed to his wide forehead. He sighs at the ruckus I create as I heave my canvas bag off my shoulder and scatter the neatly laid out line of shoes. His heavy breathing is like a tsunami and my shoulders are the beach. My dimples are washed away from the shore of my cheeks.

It’s awkward and my refusal to acknowledge the tension multiplies the discomfort. But it is my house, too.

“Imogen,” My father says, his voice gruff and thin, “Please leave.”

I want to tell him that I know the feeling. I want to redirect their conversation. I want to talk about the pressure of the boy next door’s hand on my thigh or the sunburn on the back of my neck. I want to be able to transform the despair on their faces but it is no use because I am as desperate as I am terrified.

There are good things, I want to say. It is not all bad.

I suddenly feel guilty for having fun while my parents have been shouting at each other, getting nowhere. So I only mutter, “Okay,” as I back out through the door, tail between my legs.

Mom simultaneously sniffles and smiles tightly, “Things will be figured out soon, baby.” Her eyes are dull eyes and her face is strangely lacking emotion. It is the calm before the storm. Neither of them will look at me, refusing to take their eyes off the wall or the spilled cereal or whatever it is that they’re focussing on. We all breath once. Twice. Three times. And then I am closing the door but it doesn’t matter because I can still hear the shouting through its surface.

I focus on the sound of my own breathing and stare at the single speckle of dirt on the wooden door. I think of the grandfather clock I’d destroyed. It’s swinging. golden medallion and booming song. “Okay.” I say it again numbly.

The sky fades from pale blue to indigo to black. I do not move from the front step. Even when the screaming has stopped and the house grows quiet, I stay there. It’s almost as if the concrete I’ve been sitting on has seeped through my cold skin and into my veins. My eyes are unblinking and my mouth is dry and I’m no longer sure if I have a pulse until it’s jumpstarted by the burning headlights pulling into the driveway next door.

Some of me does not want the boy’s attention— that part wants to simmer in in its own distrust and frustrations and terror. The rest of me urgently needs him. Maybe this entire time I've just been waiting for him to come home.

He almost doesn’t see me perched in the darkness, but when he does, the bag slung onto his shoulder slides onto the ground. The hollows of his face are pits of darkness until he saunters closer, almost hesitantly, as if he knows I am on the cusp of surrendering the to sadness the swells my heart. There is the swish of fabric and the grinding of rocks on pavement and then he is there, bent forward with his hands resting on his thighs, peering into my parched eyes.

“Hey there,” He says, the corner of his mouth quirked. “Why so glum, chum?”

I can’t breathe. I can’t think. Everything inside me is churning. I don’t know what’s happening. Somehow I am lost and somehow I am exactly where I want to be. I am an acid and he is a base and when I reach forward, tangle my fingers in the damp hair at the base of his neck and pull his lips to mine, the bitterness coursing through me is neutralized.