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

what happened yesterday and then I was feeling so guilty that I forgot to take
him blankets and it all hit me right there on the ride to school. He didn’t say
anything. He just pulled his hands from mine so I’d stop rubbing them and
then he laid his hands on top of mine. We just sat there like that the whole ride
to school with our heads leaned together and his hands on top of mine.
I might have thought it was sweet if it wasn’t so sad.
On the ride home from school is when he finally noticed my head.
Honestly, I had forgotten about it. No one at school even asked me about it
and when he sat down next to me on the bus, I wasn’t even trying to hide it
with my hair. He looked right at me and said, “What happened to your head?”
I didn’t know what to say to him. I just touched it with my fingers and then
looked out the window. I’ve been trying to get him to trust me more in hopes he
would tell me why he doesn’t have a place to live, so I didn’t want to lie to him.
I just didn’t want to tell him the truth, either.
When the bus started moving, he said, “Yesterday after I left your house, I
heard something going on over there. I heard yelling. I heard you scream, and
then I saw your father leave. I was going to come check on you to make sure
everything was okay, but as I was walking over I saw you leaving in the car
with your mother.”
He must have heard the fight in the garage and saw her leaving to take me
to get the stitches. I couldn’t believe he came over to our house. Do you know
what my dad would do to him if he saw him wearing his clothes? I got so
worried for him because I don’t think he knows what my father is capable of.
I looked at him and said, “Atlas, you can’t do that! You can’t come to my
house when my parents are home!”
Atlas got real quiet and then said, “I heard you scream, Lily.” He said it
like me being in danger trumped anything else.
I felt bad because I know he was just trying to help, but that would have
made things so much worse.
“I fell,” I said to him. As soon as I said it, I felt bad for lying. And to be
honest, he looked a little disappointed in me, because I think we both knew in
that moment that it wasn’t as simple as a fall.
Then he pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and held out his arm.
Ellen, my stomach dropped. It was so bad. All over his arm he had these
small scars. Some of the scars looked just like someone had stuck a cigarette to
his arm and held it there.