Lance leaves his room cautiously, the way a cowboy on the black-and-white shows his dad likes would leave a saloon when shots have already been fired in the street. The house is small—a single-story box with a triangular roof, the way a child would draw one. That means Lance’s father is never far away.

From the narrow hallway outside his door, Lance immediately looks to the sofa in the living room. His father sleeps there in the summer, in front of the window-unit air conditioner, which is the only thing in the house that can banish the summer heat. A couple of wadded-up pillows are the only sign his father was there. He must already be in the kitchen.

Lance only goes into the kitchen because he’s too thirsty to wait until he gets to school for a drink of water. The old, orange-ish carpet in the living room ends in one step, and the cracked linoleum of the kitchen and covered porch begins in the next. As Lance knew he would, he finds his father in a chair at the round table in the middle of the room, slumped on his elbows. The small fan on the countertop is plugged in and whirring, but the room still smells wet and dank. Nothing can beat the steamy heat of an August morning stuck between hundred-degree days.

Lance’s boots are set by the back door, next to the washing machine. The sight of them makes him miserable all over again, but he shoves his knuckles against his right eye before a tear can fall. He’s eight—almost nine. Almost nine is way too old for crying.

His father looks up at him. “The fuck are you still doing here? You miss that bus and you can walk into town. I ain’t driving you.”

Hating his father is a familiar feeling. But right now, it’s got substance and weight, his hate. It feels like an animal that’s barely contained by the cage of his body. He can practically feel it clawing at his chest from the inside, determined to get out.

But when he speaks, his voice is weak, almost a whisper. “Can’t find my shoes.”

He hates how soft the words sound—how scared. It’s nothing like the roar that angry animal in his chest would make if it got free, but although his body is a feeble container, somehow the hate doesn’t escape him. None of Lance’s feelings ever do.

He’s watching his father closely. Closely enough that he notices his father flinch faintly at the word “shoes.” But that reaction is as good as a confession. He’d already been fairly sure his dad had swiped his school shoes, but now he’s certain. He wonders where he sold them, and for how much. Hopefully, it was close to what they’d cost new, at least; they’d still been in their box, with those wads of paper stuffed inside them to protect their shape. As soon as he’d tried them on, Lance had immediately packed them back up exactly the way they’d come, paper and all, and put them carefully under the floorboards.