She didn’t tell how she met Jason’s father: at the end of a party with at least a hundred people, few of whom she even knew; by the end of the night, most were slumped around on the furniture or delivering nonsensical monologues, or so it seemed to her, and then there was this quiet boy on the couch, staring at an album cover—Fleetwood Mac—and without thinking, she went and sat beside him and said how it bothered her that they sang, “Thunder only happens when it’s raining,” because that isn’t true. In fact, she once heard it thunder during a snowstorm, and many times she has heard it thunder without a single drop of rain. “A damn single drop,” she said, and then repeated it when he laughed and offered her a hit off of his joint and then a sip of his drink. And she drank the whole thing out of sheer nervousness. It was raining, and she thought of being in a pup tent with her brother and how much fun they had once out in the yard and away from where their parents could hear their laughter. Their father had to get up early in the morning and would sometimes fly into a rage if he heard a floorboard creak or a commode flush or, God forbid, someone laughing. But there in the pup tent in the driving rain, they could relax and laugh and tell stories. Her brother was nice to her almost all of the time, like Jason with Harvey. These days, if she told how much she loved her brother, there would be some sicko trying to make something ugly of it, but that would be so wrong. He was like a parent to her; he was her best friend. He was all she had, her brother. His thick brown hair was wavy, and he pulled it back in a ponytail, which their dad hated.

Her brother told her to never touch the canvas of the tent when it was raining, because it would make it leak in that spot, something she still thinks about. She thought of all those times her brother got beaten; she knew lots of people who got whipped, and they used words like spanked or switched. Her parents always said that shit that tons of parents said about spare the rod and spoil the child, but her brother got it worse than anyone she had ever seen, their father doubling his belt over, letting the end with the buckle bite her brother’s skin. When he came out of the room after the awful sounds, his face would be red but dry, not a tear shed, and she wanted to touch him but she didn’t, because it seemed like touching that canvas tent during the rain. It seemed one touch might bring him crashing down, which it eventually did.