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Dad’s expression hardens. “Don’t take that tone with me. I’m still your father.”
The laugh that escapes me is bitter. “Yeah? When’s the last time you acted like that?”
Mom steps between us, her hands fluttering nervously. “Don’t fight. Please. We need a little help, Gage. That’s all.”
“What kind of help?” I ask though I already know. I want to hear them say it. To ask me, once again, to bail them out. To help them get their next score. Maybe one day they’ll hear how pathetic they sound.
“Money. A loan,” Dad corrects quickly, wetting his lips. We’ll pay you back.”
My hands clench at my sides. “What happened to the money I gave you last time?”
They exchange a look. The same guilty expression I’ve seen a thousand times before.
“That was different,” Mom says, features pinching. “We had some unexpected expenses—”
“Bullshit.” The word cuts through her excuse. “You spent it on drugs and booze.”
Mom shakes her head. “I swear we didn’t.”
“Do you even hear yourself? You’re such a shitty liar.”
Dad’s face goes red. “Watch your mouth!”
“Or what?” I step forward, and he actually takes a step back. Good. I’m not the scrawny kid he used to push around anymore. “You’ll hit me? Ground me? Take away my allowance?”
Mom starts to cry. Those manipulative tears that used to work on me when I was younger. Not anymore. She’s burned me too many times. “Baby, please. We just need enough to get back on our feet. To get clean.”
That lie lands like a dead fish on the ground. She’s been promising to get clean for fifteen years. Nothing has ever changed.
“I can’t help you.” The words feel like glass in my throat.
“Can’t or won’t?” Dad snarls. Suddenly he’s the mean drunk I remember from my childhood. “You think you’re too good for us now? Living in your fancy house with your friends?”
Mom grabs my arm, her fingers digging in with surprising strength. “Gage, please. I’m begging you. We need six hundred dollars.”
“Are you kidding me?” I stare at them both. “Last time it was three hundred. Before that, it was a hundred. Now it’s six?” Next it’ll be a thousand.
“We’re desperate,” she whispers, and her smile, the one that’s supposed to be sweet and pleading, is all wrong. Twisted. The drugs have carved away everything soft about her face, leaving behind sharp angles and hollow spaces.
My chest aches as I study her, remembering her reading me stories before bed, back when Dad still came home sober most nights. Those parents existed once, but they’ve been dead for years. These people are just wearing their faces.
“Please, Gage. For me?” she pleads.
“I said no.”
Dad explodes. “You ungrateful little shit! After everything we did for you, this is how you treat us?”
“What did you do for me, huh?” I round on him.
“Everything!” He tosses his hand into the air.
“Oh, that’s rich. What, like teaching me to lie to teachers about why I had bruises? Like showing me how to hide empty bottles so the neighbors wouldn’t know? Like making me get a job at fourteen so I could help pay rent?”
“We gave you life!” Mom screams, her voice cracking. “We fed you, we clothed you. You had it good!”
“The state fed me!” The words rip out of my throat. “School lunches, free breakfast programs, food banks! You want to know what you gave me? Trust issues and abandonment problems and the knowledge that the people who are supposed to love me most will always choose drugs over me!”
The parking lot falls silent except for Mom’s theatrical sobbing. Other customers are openly staring now. Heat creeps up my neck as I spot familiar faces pausing to look over. All the locals know how my parents are; most people hate them.
