As Adam stepped up the three steps to the house, the front door opened, light flashing down across his legs and feet. His father left the door hanging open as he stood in it, staring down his son.
"Hi, Dad," Adam said.
"Don’t ‘hi, dad’ me," his father replied. He was already revved up. He smelled like cigarettes, although he didn’t smoke. "Come home at midnight. Trying to hide from your lies?"
Warily, Adam asked, "What?"
"Your mother was in your room today and she found something. Can you guess what it would be?"
Adam’s knees were slowly liquefying. He did his best to keep most of his Aglionby life hidden from his father, and he could think of several things about himself and his life that wouldn’t please Robert Parrish. The fact that he didn’t know precisely what had been found was agonizing. He couldn’t meet his father’s eyes.
Robert Parrish grabbed Adam’s collar, forcing his chin up. "Look at me when I’m talking to you. A pay stub. From the factory."
Oh.
Think fast, Adam. What does he need to hear?
"I don’t understand why you’re angry," Adam said. He tried to keep his voice as level as possible, but now that he knew it was about the money, he didn’t know how to get out of it.
His father drew Adam’s face a bare inch from his, so that Adam could feel the words as well as hear them. "You lied to your mother about how much you made."
"I didn’t lie."
This was a mistake, and Adam knew it as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
"Do not look in my face and lie to me!" his father shouted.
Even though he knew it was coming, Adam’s arm was too slow to protect his face.
When his father’s hand hit his cheek, it was more sound than feeling: a pop like a distant hammer hitting a nail. Adam scrambled for balance, but his foot missed the edge of the stair and his father let him fall.
When the side of Adam’s head hit the railing, it was a catastrophe of light. He was aware in a single, exploded moment of how many colors combined to make white.
Pain hissed inside his skull.
He was on the ground by the stairs without any recollection of the second between hitting the railing and the ground. His face was caked with dust; it was in his mouth. Adam had to put together the mechanics of breathing, of opening his eyes, of breathing again.
"Oh, come on," his father said, tired. "Get up. Really."
Adam slowly pushed himself to his hands and knees. Rocking back, he crouched, knees braced on the ground, while his ears rang, rang, rang. He waited for them to clear. There was nothing but an ascending whine.
Halfway down the drive, he saw the brake lights on Ronan’s BMW.
Just go, Ronan.
"You’re not playing that game!" Robert Parrish snapped. "I’m not going to stop talking about this just because you threw yourself on the ground. I know when you’re faking, Adam. I’m not a fool. I can’t believe you’d make this kind of money and throw it away on that damn school! All of those times you’ve heard us talking about the power bill, the phone?"
His father was far from done. Adam could see it in the way he pushed off his feet with every step down the stairs, from the coil in his body. Adam drew his elbows into his body, ducking his head, willing his ears to clear. What he needed to do was put himself in his father’s head, to imagine what he had to say to defuse this situation.
But he couldn’t think. His thoughts crashed explosively across the dirt in front of him, in time with the rhythm of his heart. His left ear screamed at him. It was so hot that it felt wet.
"You lied," growled his father. "You told us that school was giving you money to go. You didn’t tell me you were making" — he stopped long enough to withdraw a battered piece of paper from his shirt pocket. It shook in his hand — "eighteen thousand, four hundred and twenty-three dollars a year!"
Adam gasped an answer.
"What’s that?" His father came in close. Grabbing Adam’s collar, he pulled his son up, as easy as he’d lift a dog. Adam stood, but only just. The ground was sliding away from him, and he stumbled. He had to struggle to find the words again; something was fractured inside him.
"Partial," Adam gasped. "Partial scholarship."
His father bellowed something else at him, but it was into his left ear, and there was nothing but a roar on that side.
"Do not ignore me," his father growled. And then, inexplicably, he turned his head from Adam, and he shouted, "What do you want?"
"To do this," Ronan Lynch snarled, smashing his fist into the side of Robert Parrish’s face. Beyond him, the BMW sat, the driver’s side door hanging open, headlights illuminating clouds of dust in the darkness.
Ronan, said Adam. Or maybe he only thought it. Without his father holding him up, he staggered.
Grabbing Ronan’s shirt, Adam’s father propelled him back toward the double-wide. But it only took Ronan a moment to get his feet under him. His knee found Parrish’s gut. Doubled over, Adam’s father snatched a hand toward Ronan. His fingers passed harmlessly over Ronan’s shaved head. It set him back just half a second. Parrish crashed his skull into Ronan’s face.
Out of his right ear, Adam heard his mother screaming at them to stop. She was holding the phone, waving the phone at Ronan like that would make him stop. There was only one person who could stop Ronan, though, and Adam’s mother didn’t have that number.
"Ronan," said Adam, and this time he was certain he said it out loud. His voice sounded strange to him, stuffed with cotton. He took a step and the ground slid out from under him entirely. Get up, Adam. He was on his hands and knees. The sky looked the same as the ground. He felt fundamentally broken. He couldn’t stand. He could only watch his friend and his father grappling a few feet away. He was eyes without a body.
The fight was dirty. At one point Ronan went down and Robert Parrish kicked, hard, at his face. Ronan’s forearms came up, all instinct, to protect himself. Parrish lunged in to rip them free. Ronan’s hand lashed out like a snake, dragging Parrish to the ground with him.
Adam caught bits and pieces: his father and Ronan rolling, dragging, punching. Red and blue flashing strobes bounced off the sides of the double-wide, lighting the fields for a second at a time. The cops.
His mother was still yelling.
It was all just noise. What Adam needed was to be able to stand, to walk, to think, and then he could stop Ronan before something awful happened.