Lion Boy is snoring away when I get back to his room. I layer on the rest of my clothes, leaving my wet shirt hanging over his desk chair. There are two rolls of quarters on his desk. I take one, telling myself it’s fair payment for the shirt. His guitar is just lying there in its case, shiny and clean. Can’t be more than a few years old, so there’s no great history. But you can’t do that. You don’t take someone else’s guitar. It’s like a code.

When I walk downstairs, the fighting couple is gone. I dig my screwdriver out of my bag so I won’t have to fumble for it in the dark, snake it up my shirtsleeve, and slip out the door.

— Chapter 11 —

The screws on the license plate are rusty. I can’t see well, but I smell the breakdown of old metal and feel rust in the way they turn. It makes me think of pulling nails from scrap wood with my dad, back when he had illusions of building us that house. He’d yell at me if I bent the nails too much so they broke before they came out of the boards. And I remember that he didn’t yell at me when I stepped on one. It went right through the sole of my old ripped sneakers into the middle of my foot. It hurt so bad I stopped feeling the pain. I tried to hide it, because I thought he’d be mad and scream something like Damn it, Ape! We’ll never get this house finished if you don’t stop fucking around! But the blood soaked through my sneaker and it was impossible to hide. My dad turned white when he noticed. We couldn’t get my shoe off because the nail was still stuck in my foot and neither of us could stomach the pull, so he scooped me up in his arms and we went to the ER.

When he carried me in through the automatic doors, everyone in the waiting room looked at us, and I felt more important than I ever have otherwise. The tetanus shot hurt like hell, but my dad held my hand, and the nurse gave me apple juice and way more tissues than I actually needed. That night, my dad tucked me in and checked my bandage, smoothed my hair, and played Cat Stevens songs on his guitar until I fell asleep.

I hum Wild World under my breath while I work the second screw. When I get to the chorus, I whisper the words to myself because they’re the only lyrics I remember. My hands are raw. R.S.’s screwdriver sucks ass. The metal part is bent at a funny angle and the handle is full of splinters.