This house doesn’t feel safe, but that’s nothing new. I’m used to feeling like this, because, too many times, Mum mistook prisons for sanctuaries. Every time, she thought we were escaping. And, every time, it was worse.

But this feels different. I’m not scared of Jay; not anymore. I’m scared of the doors. I’m afraid of what they’re trying to tell me. Every house has a history, and this one doesn’t seem good.

I get out of bed and touch the holes in my door, then go online and order what I need to be sure. If I ask Mum to do it, she’ll tell me I’m being paranoid. That’s her way of saying things are different, now. But I’m only paranoid because of before. I’m only thinking the worst because I’ve seen it happen.

I imagine Amy lying in the bed that was here before mine. What did she think? I could ask her, but how do you bring up something like that? How do you say, “I was in bed thinking of you last night, and I wondered if we shared the same ceiling”?

I can’t shake the feeling that she’s hiding something. She was happy today. But, when I told her about Simon Marlow and the head-start line, about the grief we all felt that day, her face slipped, and something dark crept out. For a split second, she forgot to hide. For the tiniest moment, she looked like Mum used to, before she banished her final monster.

10

There are loads of reasons for never having a girlfriend.

There’s shyness…or bad luck…or, maybe, you have better things to do. And, sometimes, it’s because your mum had too many goes at a happy ending before she got the hang of it. That’s my reason.

My parents got divorced after six years together, just like that. One day, they changed their minds, which confused me at the time, because you change your mind about what you’re having for dinner or what to spend your birthday money on.

Some decisions, the biggest ones, take the kind of planning I never saw. Not because it didn’t happen, but because my parents did it in secret. They hid their problems behind smiles I was too young to see through. And, when even the fake smiles stopped, it was too late.

A few years after that, Mum’s latest bad boyfriend full-stopped their relationship with a garbage can lid, and I learned that, whether love ended fast or slow, calmly or violently, on screen or off, it always ended.

When that happens, when most of your Mum-memories involve her crying, you lose faith in the soppy stuff. Love and all its alter egos work for a while, but never forever. People who don’t believe that—they haven’t fallen asleep while their mum sobs through the wall every night.