My mom gave me a rag and told me to hold it to my head because it was bleeding and then she helped me to her car and drove me to the hospital. On the way there she only said one thing to me.

“When they ask you what happened, tell them you slipped on the ice.”

When she said that, I just looked out my window and started crying. Because I thought for sure this was the final straw. That she would leave him now that he had hurt me. That was the moment I realized that she’d never leave him. I felt so defeated, but I was too scared to say anything to her about it.

I had to get nine stitches in my forehead. I’m still not sure what I hit my head on, but it doesn’t really matter. The fact is, my father was the reason I was hurt and he didn’t even stay and check on me. He just left us both there on the floor of the garage and left.

I got home really late last night and fell right to sleep because they had given me some kind of pain pill.

This morning when I walked to the bus, I tried not to look directly at Atlas so he wouldn’t see my forehead. I had fixed my hair so that you couldn’t really see it and he didn’t notice right away. When we sat down next to each other on the bus, our hands touched when we were putting our stuff on the floor.

His hands were like ice, Ellen. Ice.

That’s when I realized that I forgot to give him the blankets I had pulled out for him yesterday because my mother got home sooner than I expected. The incident in the garage sort of took over all my thoughts and I completely forgot about him. It had snowed and iced all night and he had been over there at that house in the dark all by himself. And now he was so cold, I didn’t know how he was even functioning.

I grabbed both of his hands in mine and said, “Atlas. You’re freezing.”

He didn’t say anything. I just started rubbing his hands in mine to warm them up. I laid my head on his shoulder and then I did the most embarrassing thing. I just started to cry. I don’t cry very much, but I was still so upset by what happened yesterday and then I was feeling so guilty that I forgot to take him blankets and it all hit me right there on the ride to school. He didn’t say anything. He just pulled his hands from mine so I’d stop rubbing them and then he laid his hands on top of mine. We just sat there like that the whole ride to school with our heads leaned together and his hands on top of mine.

I might have thought it was sweet if it wasn’t so sad.