I stop at the pay phone on the corner of my block that sometimes gives free calls and punch in the number for Dial-a-Daze.

This number is disconnected, the recording says.

I hold my breath for a minute, but what washes over me is relief. I guess I have to make my own future now.

What do you have to say for yourself?

I’m not sure what wakes me, my father’s booming voice or the sunlight that clobbers me in the face when he pulls open my curtain.

At the moment, not much, I mumble.

He rips the comforter off my bed. I’m surprised, given that he did the same thing to Connor once, and my brother, probably still drunk from the night before, punched him in the face.

I roll over and shade my eyes. Dad, seriously, I say. I’m sorry I didn’t call.

In truth, I’m not sorry. In truth my entire body is still buzzing, and once I sleep off the fact that I was awake all night, I’m looking forward to figuring out what this all means. How it’s changed me.

Because I’m sure it must have. I hope so, anyhow.

My father’s face doesn’t relax, which comes as no surprise. Where the hell were you? he asks. Is this how I raised you? Your mother was frantic.

I interrupt him and say, I was at David Hayne’s on 86th. He had a party and…

Here, I’m forced to think quickly. What is going to piss him off the least? I go for the most frat boy of options and say, I had a couple of beers and crashed. I know it was stupid. I won’t do it again.

A voice in my head says, Tell him. I’m not sure he can really kick me out because, unlike Connor, I’m under eighteen.

I’m tired of hiding, even if it’s just from my father.

I’m tired of being dismissed, even if it’s just by my father.

And now I need to figure out what to do about it. Even if it just means confronting my father.

I open my mouth, but then my father snorts and walks out of the room.

My shoulders relax. I might have missed an opportunity to take a stand, but at least I’ve survived to fight another day with a roof over my head.

That night, I pop one of Connor’s antibiotics, even though I believe Becky when she tells me that Andy’s mom says they won’t do anything to fend off getting sick, and stand in front of the full-length mirror in the bathroom, examining my skin. The birthmark on my ankle. The scar on my arm from an unfortunate run-in with Connor’s G.I. Joe figure when I was five.

I crane my neck to look at my back.

This is me. This is my baseline. This is what everything in that pamphlet on Connor’s counter is trying to protect.

I sit next to Becky in the park, but decide not to tell her about River yet. For a little while, I want what happened to belong to me alone.