Nothing.
Don’t be a shit. I won’t tell Dad.
(nothing)
Did you steal something? You can’t be—
I found it.
Where?
Outside.
————What is it?
(nothing)
It better not be a mouse or a squirrel or something. Or like a shrew? Is it a shrew? You can’t keep that in here.
It’s not.
What is it? Tell me?
(nothing)
I could rip it out of his hands and look inside, but I won’t. I could hit him and then take it away from him but I won’t. I don’t hit him, not ever, but that awful terrible no-good thought flickers through my brain like someone waving a flashlight in my face (I see myself hitting him and what I see is more bright than what I normally see and then it goes dark in my head when I shake the thought away or say no no no but then it flashes bright again when I see myself hitting him again and again), and maybe because I don’t hit him I think about hitting him more (and I’m afraid I’m thinking about it more and more because I’m getting older and I’m afraid that’s what goes on in all adults’ heads. I’m afraid all they think about is doing violent, terrible no-good things, and especially to the people they’re supposed to take care of, I mean all the violence in the world has to start in our heads first, right, and I’m mostly afraid I’m thinking like Dad when he stabbed Owen’s Nerf dart gun through the plaster in his bedroom and I’m thinking like Mom when she would tell me what an awful stupid fat-ass daughter I was or like when she wouldn’t say anything to me and just stare at me with her mouth closed so tight and I could hear her saying nothing to me). I won’t ever hit Owen (I’d chew my own hand off first) but it’s hard, it’s all so hard, but I can’t believe he won’t tell me what it is, whatever it is inside the cardboard shoebox that is dark green and doesn’t have a logo, which is weird, I mean, everything has a logo on it, so maybe it isn’t a shoebox (or sneakerbox, I think they should call them sneakerboxes) and is just a rando box. It’s smeared with dirt and mud and there are dark spots on the cover and on the sides, and those dark spots look like the grease spots on the inside cover of a pizza box, so now I’m thinking that whatever is inside the box is nasty and leaking through the cardboard, and I want to tell Owen to wash his hands, but then he’s scurrying past me, or trying to, and I block him, tickle his stomach with my left hand (there really isn’t any stomach to tickle, only his sticklike ribs) and grab for the box with my right, and it works, kind of, because he flinches and for a second I have the box balanced in my hand, only it isn’t very balanced and whatever is inside of it shifts, and whatever it is inside of it feels blob-like, oozy, and it’s so gross I might throw up. Actually, it’s so gross I’m past throwing up because my stomach turns to goo and sloshes down into my toes, and more gross, the bottom of the box, the underside, feels damp, and then, oh my god, the smell, worse than the smell that comes out of the laundry room on a hot day, worse than the septic tank being pumped, and even worse than opening that garbage bag I didn’t realize was full of months-old garbage (because it was sitting in the hall coat closet we never use anymore and I only looked in it because Dad left the doors open and I thought it might be the dolls and toys that manic-phase Mom collected in a “Morgie” bag (and she never told me what Morgie meant or stood for but only that was where your old stuff went to give to the poor people (like us now))), and then Owen whines like a puppy, swats my hand away, and his eyes are all red like he’s been crying and they’re sunken into his head too, and then he is past me and running down the hall, bouncing between all the bags and junk like a miniparkour pro. I yell after him and then Dad slur-shouts something from the TV room, so I stop running, frozen in place, and I don’t want to talk to him now and I tell him to go back to sleep in my head, which I know never really works but it works this time, but it doesn’t matter because Owen gets away and locks himself in his room. I wait until Dad is out again and I tiptoe past him down the hall to Owen’s closed door and I smell the box’s smell (and still feel the box’s feel on the tips (and the insides, I swear) of my fingers).
Owen. Come on.
(nothing)
Can I see it?
No.
Why not?
(nothing)
This is stupid. Just let me in.
No. Go away. Please.
You can’t stay in there forever. I’m gonna get in there and I’m gonna see it.
(nothing)
I go to my room and shut the door and instead of screaming or crying or trashing everything, I neaten (old-Mom’s old word) it some more (the room is already clean, so clean you could eat off it (something Mom, old-Mom, used to say with a smile) so it’s like straightening, or picking up stuff and putting it back where it was), and, I’m telling you, neatening is something I never did before Mom left, before things got worse-worse. When I was Owen’s age my room was a pit and I loved it, owned it and it really was a beautiful pit, but now it isn’t. Clothes are in my bureau and hanging up in my closet and books are on the bookshelf and everything has a place (the glass in my two windows are cracked and have pieces missing but you can’t really see it (but you can feel it on cold nights) unless you open the curtains, and I would fix it if I could, but I don’t know how to unbreak broken glass), and none of it makes me feel better, and it makes me feel anxious because my room is the nexus of the universe (something me and Stacey came up with, or she came up with it because the word nexus was in a book she read, she loves to read (I have too much time to read so I don’t and I can’t stay in my head that long without other stuff creeping in so I draw sometimes but most of the time I shut off my brain watching music videos on YouTube and videos that show ghosts are real even though I think most of them are faking even if I want them not to be), or if I’m not that important to be the nexus of the universe, my room is the nexus of this house, which means I have to keep my room like this or the worse-worse will get even worse (it can always get worse) and everything will come crashing down). I try to FaceTime Stacey but she isn’t answering and I hope she isn’t mad at me and I think about making my own video to show her what the rest of the house looks like (besides my room, which she sees every night when we talk) but I hear Dad up and creeping around the house like a creep, and the wooden floors creak and groan and are so tired under him, and then it’s already dinner time, or what is supposed to be dinner time, and I leave my room (with one of my clean bowls, and I hold it like a shield), and Dad is back on the couch eating Pop Tarts and drinking beer, and we still have these plastic one-serving cups of mac ’n cheese and I make one for myself, three minutes thirty seconds in the microwave and add the radioactive yellow cheese dust, and I pour the stuff into my clean bowl (I won’t eat out of the microwaved plastic cup because I don’t trust it’s not melted) and toss the plastic into the full sink because I don’t care if the kitchen is clean or not because the kitchen isn’t the nexus. I stand and eat quickly even though the mac ’n cheese lava burns my tongue and the roof of my mouth and I think about making Owen a bowl and bringing it to him because a good big sister would do that, but I don’t feel good right now, and I’m going to wait him out of his room, like waiting is some action, a thing that I can throw against his door and break it open, but I don’t want to wait, I so don’t want to wait I even go into the TV room to talk to Dad.
Owen won’t come out of his room for dinner.
I’ll take care of it.
He needs to eat.
Worry about yourself.