I have a little body. For one, I'm twelve, or thirteen. A relatively little body is typical. But I'm also short for my age, my dad's said so. And I'm very skinny, much too skinny, with bones jutting out in places they shouldn't be, places where nice, healthy layers of fat should be cushioning them and keeping those bones and everything about me in place. I'm little. And all of the things inside of me right now should be shattering my body, just in one instance, BAM – and my body would go in a billion different pieces, like a lightbulb blowing up.

But I stay intact. Numb. I feel it all move inside of me, but it doesn't cause pain. Doesn't hurt at all.

Don't mistake that for a lack of self-loathing. Self-loathing consumes me.

But I'm far enough away from me to notice the hatred like I'm a scientist behind a glass wall. And not even an observant scientist. A bored one that's ready to go home.

We've made it to an alley. Locked away behind a nice fence, it wasn't even that hard to find. Dad and Carol are on one side of the alley, the side farthest away from me. I'm on the side closest to the street. Owen is in the middle, a little closer to them, holding his arms above his head, latched onto the chain link while his head hangs low. He hasn't moved in at least five minutes. His hands must be screaming.

Dad comes over and sits next to be on the big metal box that must be a generator or power box or air conditioner or I don't even know or care what, because it isn't that anymore, all it is is a big metal box.

"How's Carol?" I ask.

"Her chest, side's pretty banged up."

"I thought I saw her limping."

"Just having trouble standing up straight. She's doin' better."

We sit for a while.

"She ain't gonna hit you again," he says.

"I deserved it."

We sit.

Then, "I think I'm crazy, Dad."

He doesn't say anything.

"I don't want to die," I say. "I'm just starting to think maybe I don't care if I do."

He puts his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

"You told me once that Mom's head doesn't work right all the time. Neither does mine. Am I like her?"

He's quiet.

"You can say it," I promise. "I'll be okay."

He lifts up his head. Sniffs. "Right before you were two," he says, "She took a bottle of pills."

I nod at the concrete ground. Dad doesn't say anything more.

"Owen's going to leave now," I say after a while. "We made a deal. No, he made a deal. He gave me an . . . is ultimatum a word?"

Dad nods.

"He gave me an ultimatum, then, if I'm thinking of the right thing. He said either he would stay and I would never bring up Tyler or he would go but he would tell me the truth. Now he's told me the truth."

"You sure it's the truth?"

"Yeah," I say, and I have no proof but I'm completely sure anyway. "So he's going to go. Only I don't want him to."

"So tell him."

"He won't care."

"Gotta try."

I look at him then, and I say, "I'm sorry."

He stares at the ground.

"Whatever happened out there, while you were with Beth and LC and I was with Owen and Joe, I can't blame you for that anymore. I've lost any right I had to blame you for that."

"No, you ain't," he says, even raspier than usual. "I'm the father and you're the kid. You puttin' a gun to your head? That's my fault as much as anything."

"No, it isn't."

"Yeah, it is. You don't get it. When you're a parent, it's always as much your fault as it is theirs. Even when it ain't."

"Well, it ain't."

"Still is."

The funny thing about being this far away from yourself, this disconnected? Everything becomes so goddamn clear.

"I know you would do anything for me," I say. "I also know you didn't look for me while we were apart. But I know you, and I know whatever reasons you had, they were good. And they didn't mean you didn't love me."

I sound so damn calm. It's strange, but nice. Disconnect – the film around me – it's nice. God, I wish I could control it.

Dad straightens, then curls up again. Rubs his face, or wipes it. Rakes his hands through his greasy hair, straightens again and looks at me. "We're about three blocks from Grady."

"The hospital you and Carol think Beth might be in."

"We're gonna go find a place close as we can, get a look in, see –"

"– what we can see."

"Yeah, but no matter what happens, we're headin' back to the church before sundown. And in the morning, you and me, we're gonna go find a spot in the forest. Maybe by the river. We're gonna sit . . . we're gonna talk. And I don't care if we gotta stay there a week." He clasps onto my face to make sure I can't help but look at him, "And you and me, baby girl, we're gonna get back to someplace good. 'Cause no matter what happens out here, you and me? We got control over that. How good it is. How good we are." His thumb pins back some of my hair, and, looking into those eyes that are simultaneously nothing like his and exactly, exactly like his, I start to connect with me again, and it hurts like hell, that one little connection, but I make myself keep it, because I know it has to be better, in the long run, than the disconnect. Disconnected people put guns to their heads. "We were good, Little Bit," Daddy mutters. "And we've both done a lotta shit, to each other and to everyone else and to ourselves, but we can make it better. You and me . . . if everything's good 'tween us, we can deal with whatever."

I swallow. "Whatever?" I say, because being able to deal with whatever is a pretty tall order.

He pushes his free hand under my greasy hair and rubs my neck. "Whatever," he says, so fiercely that, for the first time in a long time, I believe in something.

I have to.

Because if I can't deal with what Owen said on the bridge – if I can't deal with Tyler . . . or if I can't deal with LC – Leah, Mom, I don't know what to call her – or Len or the voices that like to talk to just me sometimes . . . I might as well have pulled the trigger when I had the chance.

But I don't want to do that to him. To Dad, I mean, I don't want to do that to him. And I don't want to do it to Carl, either, or Carol, or anyone.

I don't want to do it to the man-child standing stock-still ten steps away. No, all I want to do, when it comes to him, is pull him into my group, into me, and embed him there so he has to stay.