Page 9 of We Redeemed the Rain

Maybe tragedy. Betrayal. Trauma. Abuse.

The door is pushed.

It might slam shut. It might inch shut.

But once that door closes, only a miracle can open it again.

Sitting in that closet, I couldn’t name what I felt. The emptiness licked up and consumed what was left of my insides. I watched myself from a distance. I didn’t know that kid in the closet. He was a shell. A big nothingness.

And my door…it was closing.

TWO

My seventh grade year came with a lot of changes.

While we were at Meadowbrook Ranch over the summer, Sloan lost his job. And Mama wasn’t rising up to be better because of Sloan anymore. Instead, Sloan had stooped to her level of living. While we were gone, she went back to her bum ways, and from all appearances, it looked like he followed her. When I got home, the house was a mess, the food was depleted, and there was a crack pipe in the sink. New alcohol stains decorated the couches and crumbs were everywhere.

Had Mama written all over it.

That was how she existed, making just enough cash to pursue her next high. Then she wasted away between them. It disgusted me.

Watching them drinking, laughing, and slurring words made my stomach turn. I swore to myself I’d never be that.

The other change in my seventh grade year was far more problematic than food and intoxicated adults—Sloan’s lack of a work schedule.

Cooper’s days were a good deal shorter than mine, and Sloan kicked around the house all day, unemployed and purposeless.

The first day of school, I stressed myself outuntil I got sick. Cooper would beat me home. How would I protect him if I wasn’t there?

My fingernails dug into my palms every time my bus stopped. I chewed my lip, my thighs bouncing with tension. I silently prodded and prayed the bus forward. Asked the universe to speed up the driver and keep the lights green.

When it stopped at the end of my street, I squeezed out of the doors before they were even fully open. The bus driver yelled at me to cool it, but I didn’t look back.

Cooper was home and perfectly fine.

But he was hungry. So I walked with him to the corner market where I bought him some candy with the money I’d earned from Judd, the foreman at Meadowbrook, over the summer.

Sloan remained content with me.

Until he wasn’t.

One chilly Friday in January, I got home from school and went into the house. Sloan was sleeping on the couch and it took me several minutes to find Cooper. He was curled on the top bunk in our room, covered head to toe with a blanket. His whole form startled, a tiny jump of his body beneath the fabric, when the door clicked behind me.

“Coop? You alright?”

His gray eyes and overgrown mop peeked out. When our gazes connected, knowledge passed between us. I saw something in him that I’d never seen there before. Something hot and alive I knew like the back of my hand, because it ruled like a tyrant within me every waking moment of every single day.

Fear.

And I knew I failed him.

If I hadn’t been such a coward, if I’d known what to do, if I’d known how to get us out of this mess…it wouldn’t have happened. I could’ve stopped this. I could’ve protected him.

But I didn’t.

And Cooper’s life was never the same.

Neither was mine.

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