“So,” Al said. “Hit you up tomorrow?”

“For sure,” Henry said, climbing out of the Pontiac. “Let me know what Meghan’s dick tastes like.”

So much of Henry’s boozing and sniffing had been made possible by the fact that Papa fell dead asleep by nine o’clock every night. His snores were a chainsaw to fresh birch, coming in husky screeches that rumbled from the bedroom and past the thin walls of their house. To Henry sneaking in at all hours of the night, Papa’s snoring functioned like a siren, though it wasn’t a warning. Instead, its cry promised safe passage, just so long as he steered clear.

But he couldn’t hear a thing from the front door tonight. He checked his watch—quarter past ten—then pressed his ear to the door. The wood was cold, as if left chilled without the heat of its typical nighttime pulse. Was it a trick of the brain? Of sobriety?

He was sober. A current of self-righteousness tickled him, rolling his shoulders back and cocky. On the off chance Papa was still awake, Henry wouldn’t have to slither down to his bedroom to wait the old man out. Instead, he could look Papa dead in the eye, proving that he’d adhered to the tenets of his parole by getting a job, working every single day after school, and had done so (for the most part) sober. There was no reason to prevent Papa from forking over the truck keys just for one night, so Henry could, again and at long last, see Michelle.

Even stranger than the quiet were the lights: they’d been left on upstairs. A mortal sin in this household, where no room was lit unless occupied, no square of paper towel disposed of until on the verge of disintegration.

“Papa?”

Henry went to the living room. Books caked the walls from floor to ceiling, giving the room a subterranean, cavernous air, with un-shelved stacks growing out of the ground like rectangular stalagmites. Their density seemed to be pulling all the lamp’s light into the walls, casting hard shadows over the spines like rows of narrow teeth. Framed photographs sat bracketed between books. Mom had always played the role of family chronicler and so only appeared in a few of the snapshots. Not a single photo had been taken following the diagnosis. Should some future archaeologist stumble upon these photos, it would appear their family had died abruptly. It was for the best neither he nor Papa had picked up the camera in her place, hadn’t captured any images of her so gaunt, so frail, so unlike herself. He preferred to remember her how she was in this one, the photo of them leaning against a magenta jeepney.

“Got something for me?”