Nowhere to Land

The night your father and uncle guzzle a thirty-pack of Miller Lite and ride your glittery bike shirtless through the neighborhood, you punch through your screen and tumble into the mulch. You have no plan, no destination, just a vague ache that launches you out the first-floor window. Your father started saying no to things, making the world feel close and small, but your limbs expand, and your grief stretches into shapes that slip through cracks.

Leah’s house gleams from across the street. The porch light always on, a bluish light flickering from an upper bedroom. Leah told you her mother is afflicted with a touch of insomnia, making her snappy and distant. You said, “beats having a mother who…” But you didn’t finish. You couldn’t.

Leah left that afternoon to attend a birthday sleepover across town. She isn’t there when your father and uncle swerve around the corner, howling with laughter that sounds sad somehow, like it’s floating above your house with nowhere to land. That’s how you imagine your mother sometimes, hovering above you, saying, “I know, dear.” Saying, “things will get better soon.” Sometime after midnight, the cops swarm your driveway, corralling your father and uncle inside. You crouch near the shrubs and watch Leah’s mother’s TV blink with faint light. Earlier, Leah bragged about her new flock of friends, the slabs of cake she’ll devour without you, the dumb scary movies. You nodded, as if you already believed you’d spend your whole life missing out. But deep in the empty hours of night, after your father and uncle sink into sleep, you wish you could tell Leah how solitude sometimes fills you with relief, how each day you need her a little less, how you’re not thinking of her at all as you shiver through the hazy dark and wait for morning.