“Hey Bubby, out for a run in this heat?”

“You betcha.”

“I don’t see how you do it.”

“Sometimes I don’t either, Momma.”

“I’m going shopping in a bit, maybe go to the mall. You interested?”

“Umm, I was planning on going to Jason’s.”

“No problem, just figured I’d ask.”

“What are you going for?”

“Just browse around, maybe buy a new outfit. Been a long time,” she says.

I find it odd that she’d go to the mall. The only times we ever go are for school shopping, and while that’s still a few weeks away, nothing has been said about it yet. And besides, things are tight around the house, as they always are. Disconnection notices arrive monthly, and my parents, the models of perpetual insolvency that they are, are never less than a month behind in bills, sometimes two. But I shrug it off.

I take a cold shower, and when I finish, my mother has already left. I quickly dress in shorts, a tank top, and sandals. Jason and I have planned on shooting guns today, and I grab the shoebox in which my father keeps his and take it out to my car. I’ve had my license for a month and no longer have to pedal the eight miles to Jason’s house. I’m still dehydrated from the run, and I go back in to grab a Gatorade from the fridge. I drink the whole thing and throw the bottle away, and as I turn to leave, my father arrives in his rickety pickup truck. He comes into the house, and I can tell immediately that there’s something wrong, his eyes red-rimmed as though he’s been crying, or maybe they’re merely watering from the heavy smell of urine and manure wafting into town. I can’t tell which. But I can see that he’s tense. He pulls his shirt off, sweating profusely, the faded wolf tattoo with its teeth bared glistening and looking alive on his right pectoral.

“Have you seen yer mom?” he asks, fixing me with a cold stare.

“No,” I say. I’m not sure why I lie. Something in the way he’s carrying himself, the rigid way that he sits. From the opposite side of the room, I can feel anger rolling off him in torrents. And I know how volatile he can be when he gets like this. Whatever the cause, he’s been this way for a month or two, always angry and yelling, poised to snap in a flash.

He goes into the kitchen and grabs two beers from the fridge and sits at the dining room table. He pops the top of the first and drinks the entire thing without once pulling it away, and then he smashes it down on the table and throws it across the room but misses the garbage can.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.