No, she wanted to tell him. My mom’s a drunk and my dad wants to get into my pants. And you think I should give a flying fuck about how I’m doing at school?

Except for math. I like numbers, Miranda thought. At least there’s some order there. Some predictability. You don’t wake up someday and find out that somebody decided fuck it, we’re making two plus two equal five.

So she went home, dumped her backpack at the door, opened the cupboard and looked for something to eat. Her mother was sitting in the living room, a Camel in one hand and a scotch in the other, watching One Miserable Life to Live or As the Fucking World Turns. Didn’t say anything when Miranda came in the door. It was nothing short of a miracle that there was some peanut butter. The Wonder bread was probably a week old, but Miranda managed to find a slice or two without green spots on them, and dropped them into the toaster.

That’s when he came in the door. He was early. He didn’t usually get home from the plant until after six.

“Well, look who’s here,” he said. “I got a call about you today.”

Miranda ignored him, stared at the toaster, watched the tiny elements inside glow red as they browned her slices of stale, white bread.

“Your guidance counselor says you’re flunking everything except math. Here’s what I don’t get. Why do you even try at math? Why don’t you be a total fuckup, instead of a 95 percent fuckup? It’s like you can’t even get that right.”

No wonder he was angry. She’d been blocking her door with a chair every night for weeks. Sometimes, during the day, he’d take the chair out, and she’d have to find one and take it to her room right before bedtime.

“Hey,” he said, slapping her ass, but not too hard, so it was almost a pat. “I’m talking to you here.”

She didn’t know she was going to do it. It just happened. She doesn’t even know how she had the presence of mind to first yank the plug from the wall. But once she’d done that, she reached her fingers into the two slots of the toaster. Her fingers would have been burned worse than they were had the two slices of bread not been there. She jammed her fingers in, almost like it was a rectangular bowling ball, and came around swinging.

Swinging hard.

The toaster caught him just above the right eye, and the connection of metal against bone made a hell of a noise. The move was so unexpected, so out of the blue, he didn’t have time to bring his arms up, but he had them up when she came at him a second time. The toaster bounced off his arm, and Miranda was thrown slightly off balance, staggered up against the counter.

The blood was pouring out of her father’s head and through his fingers as he put his hand up to the wound.