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Still searching for distraction, I pull out my phone and check my DMs on Rock Bottom. Burnedoutgirl is online, but I don’t have a message from her. The last thing she said to me was I’m also eighteen, which I’d only given a thumbs-up to, because the lunch bell rang. I’m sure she’s expecting a response like Sweet! Nude city! or Awesome. Let’s bang it out. I’m not going to do that, but I’m also not sure what I’m going to do. I scroll through her posts, looking for some sort of in.

MOM SAYS

It’s a phase

Like corduroy.

Something I wear,

Or a different way

Of parting my hair.

Same old scalp, newly visible

In a different place.

Mom says

Eat something.

As if I could

Take this off

Shave it away

Or fill this hole

With food.

I check the date and see it’s from last month, so mentioning it won’t make me look like too much of a creeper, like I’m going through all her old posts. Which is exactly what I’m doing, but I don’t want to slide into her DMs with a casual hey.

averageamericanmale: I read “Mom Says.” Another banger.

averageamericanmale: You’re brave.

A couple minutes pass before it’s marked as read, but an ellipsis pops up immediately, her response coming in seconds later.

burnedoutgirl: That’s not the usual b-word that people use to describe me.

averageamericanmale: Fuck them.

burnedoutgirl: lol, well that’s not my plan.

I laugh a little, and Dad sighs. “You wanna look at your phone, we’ll just go home.”

“Sorry,” I say, and try to look him in the eye.

It’s harder now. I used to, all the time. Back when I was a kid, I damn near studied my dad. I wanted to walk like him, talk like him, do whatever it took to gain the respect I saw in people’s faces when he spoke to them. Then in junior high I found out the reason Mom drinks is because of a dispatcher half his age. One of my notebooks from back then holds long, written-out arguments with myself about whether this meant he was still a good man or not.

And then he showed me that he wasn’t, and now I can’t look at him.

My gaze bounces off his, back to the woods where the only thing we’ve seen is other hunters, all of us looking for something we can’t find. Next to me, Dad shifts as he clears his throat, his crossbow knocking against mine.

“You been doing okay, son?”

I bite down on the side of my mouth, unsure if I’m trying to stop myself from laughing or crying. I haven’t been okay for a long time, but I thought I did a good job of hiding it.