On the ride home from school is when he finally noticed my head.

Honestly, I had forgotten about it. No one at school even asked me about it and when he sat down next to me on the bus, I wasn’t even trying to hide it with my hair. He looked right at me and said, “What happened to your head?”

I didn’t know what to say to him. I just touched it with my fingers and then looked out the window. I’ve been trying to get him to trust me more in hopes he would tell me why he doesn’t have a place to live, so I didn’t want to lie to him. I just didn’t want to tell him the truth, either.

When the bus started moving, he said, “Yesterday after I left your house, I heard something going on over there. I heard yelling. I heard you scream, and then I saw your father leave. I was going to come check on you to make sure everything was okay, but as I was walking over I saw you leaving in the car with your mother.”

He must have heard the fight in the garage and saw her leaving to take me to get the stitches. I couldn’t believe he came over to our house. Do you know what my dad would do to him if he saw him wearing his clothes? I got so worried for him because I don’t think he knows what my father is capable of.

I looked at him and said, “Atlas, you can’t do that! You can’t come to my house when my parents are home!”

Atlas got real quiet and then said, “I heard you scream, Lily.” He said it like me being in danger trumped anything else.

I felt bad because I know he was just trying to help, but that would have made things so much worse.

“I fell,” I said to him. As soon as I said it, I felt bad for lying. And to be honest, he looked a little disappointed in me, because I think we both knew in that moment that it wasn’t as simple as a fall.

Then he pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and held out his arm.

Ellen, my stomach dropped. It was so bad. All over his arm he had these small scars. Some of the scars looked just like someone had stuck a cigarette to his arm and held it there.

He twisted his arm around so I could see that it was on the other side, too. “I used to fall a lot, too, Lily.” Then he pulled his shirtsleeve down and didn’t say anything else.

For a second I wanted to tell him it wasn’t like that—that my dad never hurts me and that he was just trying to get me off of him. But then I realized I’d be using the same excuses my mom uses.

I felt a little embarrassed that he knows what goes on at my house. I spent the whole rest of the bus ride looking out the window because I didn’t know what to say to him.