Page 2

IN THE BEGINNING

The living room was covered in shit.

Dad had told us—my younger twin sisters, Grace and Lucy, and me—that the dog was our responsibility.

He said if we didn’t clean up after it, walk it, feed it, he’d take it to the shelter and have it put down.

And for months— months! —we had held up our end of the bargain like good little soldiers, exactly the way Dad wanted it to be.

We were always exactly how Dad wanted us to be. Always .

Between my little sisters and me, we kept Smoky fed, bathed, and brushed.

We trained him diligently, made sure the scruffy little mutt could listen better than even us.

We walked him twice a day, made sure his poop was cleaned up before Dad even knew it had happened at all, and I still managed to get the rest of my chores done.

The bathrooms were sparkling. The floors were swept. The beds were made. The homework was done. I made sure of it, even if Grace and Lucy were too young to do much. That wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t their fault I did nearly everything.

But it was Lucy’s fault for dropping all the bologna. And it was Grace’s fault for not picking it up before Smoky ran away with the whole freakin’ bag.

I’d had nothing to do with it. I had been at baseball practice. They were here with Mom—whatever good that was. They were supposed to watch the dumb dog.

No. Smoky wasn’t dumb. It wasn’t his fault. He was just a dog, doing what dogs did.

And now …

Oh my gosh. It really was so much shit .

Dad would yell at me for even thinking that word. But there wasn’t any other word for it. And Dad wasn’t in my head. That was the one place he couldn’t get into.

“What are we gonna do?” Grace whispered.

Both of my sisters flanked my sides, staring at the mess of diarrhea smeared across the expensive beige carpet with the same horror reflected in my eyes.

“Daddy’s gonna kill Smoky,” Lucy said, her bottom lip wriggling.

“No,” I said, shaking my head with determination. “I’ll clean it up. It’s okay. I’ll—"

The car door closed outside.

The hairs along my arms stood on end.

“Daddy’s home,” Lucy squeaked, her voice quivering as she held on tight to my arm, her little fingers digging into my skin.

The sound of Dad’s shiny black loafers came from the porch, and we all turned our heads toward the door .

We were in this alone. Mom was upstairs, probably sleeping in her bedroom, as usual.

Dad would deal with us in the way he saw fit.

He’d never beat Lucy or Grace—he saved that for me—but their punishments would be worse than any other six-year-old should have to deal with.

I was bigger. I could handle the beating, going to bed without dinner, having to take on an extra load of chores, whatever he thought was fair, even if nothing ever was.

“Go upstairs,” I said quietly as a key slid into the lock. “Go. Now.”

They looked at me with identical bewildered eyes, but said nothing. They ran past me to the stairs and clambered up the treads louder than two little girls ever had in the history of the world.

The door opened, and there was my father in his shirt and tie, a briefcase in his hand. I didn’t think I had ever seen the man smile in all my ten years, and he definitely wasn’t smiling now.

“It smells like shit in here,” he said, his voice an eerie calm as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Why does it smell like shit in here, Maxwell?”

“I was just about to clean it up,” I replied, holding my voice steady. Looking right into his cold eyes as he put his briefcase down onto the table beside the door.

“I’ll ask you again. Why does it smell like shit in here?”

He walked toward me, taking one step at a time in what seemed like slow motion. I knew what was coming before his hand even fell to his belt buckle.

“Smoky is sick,” I answered, unwavering .

He snickered, then cracked his neck. I watched him sigh, listened as he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Acting like I was the biggest disappointment of his entire life when I already knew I was—he reminded me regularly.

“You remember what I told you,” he said as he dropped his hands to undo his belt. “Do you remember, Maxwell?”

“I remember.”

“Daddy’s gonna kill Smoky.” I heard my sister’s small, panicked voice in my mind.

“So, you know what I need to do now, don’t you?”

I must’ve taken too long to answer. He swung the belt, striking the middle of my back. It stung, but I only winced for a second before gritting my teeth, fighting back the need to cry.

“Don’t you?!”

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

He turned his attention back to the dog shit. A low, frustrated growl rolled over his throat as he shook his head.

“Useless,” he muttered, swinging the belt again. “Worthless, miserable, disobedient waste of breath.”

Every word, every insult, was enunciated by another strike of the belt across my back, my thighs, my butt. Tears stung the back of my eyes, but I bit my tongue to keep them from falling.

His breath came in loud, heavy puffs when he was finished, his striking arm limp at his side.

He stared me down, his eyes boring into the side of my head.

My entire backside was on fire, blinding pain searing through to my aching bones beneath the skin.

He wanted a reaction. He wanted the satisfaction of my pain.

He wanted to know without a shadow of a doubt that my lesson was learned.

But I remained expressionless, strong, just the way he had taught me to be.

Then his hand came down on my back, and he shoved me—hard. My knees buckled, and I fell forward, landing on hands and knees in puddles of Smoky’s diarrhea.

“Clean up your fucking mess.”

I swallowed against the urge to heave. “Yes, sir.”

“And when you’re done, go to bed, and don’t you dare think about leaving your room. You can think about what you did wrong while the rest of us eat dinner.”

“Yes, sir.”

“One day, Maxwell, you’ll understand the importance of following the rules. And maybe that’s when you won’t be such a pathetic disappointment to me.”

He said it—he said it all the time—but somehow, I doubted it. I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do that could make my father happy, that could make my mother care .

They hated me. But, gosh, I did everything I could to change their minds.

He turned around and headed up the stairs.

When I was sure he was out of earshot, I let out a trembling breath, lifting my palms from the shitty carpet.

I didn’t know how to clean up a mess like this.

I didn’t know how to get the smell out, and was it going to stain?

Gosh, I didn’t have a single clue, and who would I ask anyway?

So, I washed my hands and went to the closet in the hall where Mom kept the cleaning supplies, not like she used them—that was what the cleaning lady was for—and dug out whatever I thought might help.

Then, as I entered the living room to get started, Dad came down the stairs.

Smoky was struggling to escape his arms.

Dad looked right at me as his hand gripped the front doorknob. “Remember, Maxwell, this is your fault. You are the reason your dog will die, and one day, you’ll thank me for this lesson.”

Then he opened the door, stepped outside, and slammed it behind him. My sisters screamed and cried for the entire twenty minutes that our father was gone.

I never shed a tear.

***

I never went back to baseball practice after that. Dad said he wouldn’t waste money on extracurricular activities when I obviously couldn’t handle my responsibilities at home.

I never cared much about baseball or any sports really. I had been forced to join the local team because Dad said so.

“Boys should play sports,” he always said. “Helps them to grow into men who can follow the rules.”

And don’t get me wrong; I didn’t totally hate it. It was kind of fun, and it was something to do away from the house. Plus, it gave me a chance to hang out with a couple of kids my age outside of school ‘cause it wasn’t like Dad ever let me have friends.

But even still, I always felt like there was something better to do.

Like reading.

I loved reading.

I didn’t really have any books of my own. Dad didn’t think they were worth money unless they were for educational purposes. But he approved of the library because the library meant learning, and if there was something Dad liked more than a clean, orderly house and God, it was good grades.

But to my father, reading was something not to be enjoyed, but endured, like you would anything else you had to do. It wasn’t for fun ; it was just a tool meant to help you succeed further in life.

So, I never told him I liked to read. I never told my father much, but especially not that.

He would ask what I did after school, and I would tell him I went to the library.

He assumed it was to study—he never asked for confirmation—and I figured, as long as my grades were kept up, he would never suspect that instead of studying, I was hiding in worlds that existed only between pages and within my mind.

Narnia. Middle earth. Oz. Wonderland.

I became friends with hobbits and fauns and lions, tigers, and bears—oh my!

I stifled my laughter and hid my tears and clutched my hand to my aching heart as I devoured the words.

But more than anything, I was desperate to find a place where I belonged.

Somewhere far, far away from Massachusetts and the house I had grown up in, that looked so big and nice and beautiful on the outside, but inside, it was anything but.

Dad had no clue. He saw my report cards and remained indifferent at the rows of A-pluses, and that was as good as it was going to get. His indifference was his approval, and it was as close as I would get to him being proud.

But then a handful of years went by and my fourteenth birthday rolled around. A friend of mine—a kid named Ricky Tomson—who had spotted me reading in the local library, handed me a book between classes.