Chapter 1: Blood on the Walls
The world was the muffled thump of bass through floorboards, the sour smell of old beer, and the sticky feel of peeling band posters against his skin. Then it was glass.
A shattering roar, a screaming metal animal, and the wall just dissolved.
Robby’s body left the bed, or the bed left him. The universe folded. Something hard and final smashed the breath from his lungs, pinned his legs under a cold, heavy weight. Dust and plaster snowed down in the sudden, terrible silence after the impact.
His ears rang. A high, thin sound cut through it. A wounded-animal sound.
It was his mother, sobbing.
“Robby? Robby!”
He tried to answer. A wet, ragged cough was all that came out. Something warm and coppery filled his mouth. In the jagged new hole where their living room wall used to be, a sedan’s crumpled hood gleamed under the still-spinning beam of a single headlight. The other was smashed dark. The flickering desk lamp from his floor cast long, crazy shadows.
Shannon appeared in his doorway, her silhouette swaying. The smell of vodka and panic hit him before she did. She fell to her knees beside the wreckage of his bed, her hands fluttering over the beam pinning his thighs.
“Oh god. Oh my sweet boy, oh god.”
Her touch was frantic, useless. Her fingers, usually stained with nicotine, were now slick and dark with his blood. He could feel it, warm, soaking his jeans. The pain was a distant, thrumming promise. Shock, he guessed. That’s what this numb, ringing quiet was.
“Get it off,” he grunted, his voice a stranger’s.
She grabbed the splintered wood, her shoulders straining. A raw, guttural cry tore from her throat. The beam didn’t move. Not an inch. She collapsed against it, her forehead pressing into the grimy wood, her sobs shuddering through the debris into his bones.
He’d seen her cry before. Slurred, self-pitying tears over spilled bottles. Hysterical tears during fights with landlords. These were different. These were pure, undiluted terror. They were clean.
Her face, when she lifted it, was stripped bare. The heavy eyeliner was smudged into caverns around her eyes. In the erratic light, she looked ancient, and younger than him all at once.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the words bubbling. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
He believed her. For the first time in years, he absolutely believed her. She was finally looking at him. Not through him, not past him at some looming disaster of her own making. At him. Seeing the blood, the ruin, the son.
“S’okay,” he mumbled. A lie. Nothing was okay. The pain was starting to whisper, building to a scream. He could see the letter on his desk, half under a fallen textbook. Dad, I’m sorry. The irony wasn’t lost on him. He tried to focus on Shannon’s eyes, to anchor himself there.
Her hands found his face, cradling it. They trembled violently. “Stay with me. You stay right with me. Help is coming.”
He could hear sirens now, a faint wail in the distance. Something dripped from a severed pipe, a steady plink on twisted metal. The car’s engine hissed.
“My legs,” he said.
“I know. I know, sweetheart. Don’t you worry about that.” She was brushing his hair back, over and over, a gesture from when he was little and had nightmares. Her thumb smeared blood across his temple. “Just look at me. Keep looking at me.”
The weight on his legs was immense, eternal. The numbness was receding, replaced by a deep, wrong burning. He felt clarity, sharp and terrible. This was it. This was the moment his fucked-up life had been circling. He saw his own choices—the stolen bikes, the fights, the raging silences—flashing like the headlight beam. Stupid. All of it so stupid.
Shannon’s tears fell on his cheeks, mixing with the dust and blood. “I love you,” she said, her voice breaking on each word. “You hear me? I love you so much.”
He’d waited his whole life to hear it sound like this. Not a weapon, not an apology, not a sleepy mumble. Like a truth.
“Love you too, Mom,” he choked out.
The sirens were louder now, painting the room in pulses of red and blue. Shadows leapt and danced. Shouts came from outside, boots on broken glass.
Shannon’s head snapped up, her body tensing to shield him. “In here! He’s in here!” she screamed, her voice raw with a fierceness he’d forgotten she owned.
The last thing he saw before the paramedics with their bright lights and cracking jaws of life swarmed the room was her face, etched with a desperate, holy love, her bloody hands still holding his, refusing to let go.