15-05-2021-052358It-Ends-with-Us

Then I wasn’t.
I don’t really know what happened, but I’m guessing he threw me off of him.
I just remembered one second I was on his back and the next second I was on
the ground and my forehead hurt like you wouldn’t believe. My mom was
sitting next to me, holding my head and telling me she was sorry. I looked
around for my dad, but he wasn’t there. He’d gotten into his car and drove off
after I hit my head.
My mom gave me a rag and told me to hold it to my head because it was
bleeding and then she helped me to her car and drove me to the hospital. On the
way there she only said one thing to me.
“When they ask you what happened, tell them you slipped on the ice.”
When she said that, I just looked out my window and started crying.
Because I thought for sure this was the final straw. That she would leave him
now that he had hurt me. That was the moment I realized that she’d never
leave him. I felt so defeated, but I was too scared to say anything to her about
it.
I had to get nine stitches in my forehead. I’m still not sure what I hit my
head on, but it doesn’t really matter. The fact is, my father was the reason I was
hurt and he didn’t even stay and check on me. He just left us both there on the
floor of the garage and left.
I got home really late last night and fell right to sleep because they had given
me some kind of pain pill.
This morning when I walked to the bus, I tried not to look directly at Atlas
so he wouldn’t see my forehead. I had fixed my hair so that you couldn’t really
see it and he didn’t notice right away. When we sat down next to each other on
the bus, our hands touched when we were putting our stuff on the floor.
His hands were like ice, Ellen. Ice.
That’s when I realized that I forgot to give him the blankets I had pulled out
for him yesterday because my mother got home sooner than I expected. The
incident in the garage sort of took over all my thoughts and I completely forgot
about him. It had snowed and iced all night and he had been over there at that
house in the dark all by himself. And now he was so cold, I didn’t know how he
was even functioning.
I grabbed both of his hands in mine and said, “Atlas. You’re freezing.”
He didn’t say anything. I just started rubbing his hands in mine to warm
them up. I laid my head on his shoulder and then I did the most embarrassing
thing. I just started to cry. I don’t cry very much, but I was still so upset by