I stood in the living room, looking down. I'd told Joey it was okay, he could come in. I licked my lips. Joey and Ang were in the kitchen, and I knew Joey was keeping his eye on us.

"Craig," he said, and I wouldn't look at him. I could see his hands, though. I saw the ring that had cut my face. I saw the hands that had grabbed me so many times I'd lost count. The hands that had balled into fists and punched me. What could he say to make me forgive him?

"Listen, I'm sorry," he said, and I just kept looking down. This sucked. I didn't forgive him. I didn't want to ever see him again. It made me mad that he came to Joey's house like this. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Joey looking over with his critical look. I saw Ang with her mouth opened like a little o.

"Yeah," I said, not committing to anything.

If we were alone that response, and the tone of my voice could make him angry, could make him grab me and shake me and demand things from me. It was always like that with him. Things had to be his way. I was sick of it. I'd been sick of it for a long time. I hadn't been staying with Joey all that long. A school year, that was it. I was just getting over feeling like I had to second guess everything I did. I was just starting to feel like a regular kid and now he wanted to take it all away from me. I looked at Joey with this pleading, wide-eyed look. 'Help,' my look said. Then I looked down at my dad's shiny dress shoes.

Joey walked over to us, Angie kind of stared at him.

"Um, okay. Albert, I think you should go now," Joey said, and I took a deep breath, closed my eyes. My dad might argue with him, might yell, might demand that he had a right to see me. I felt sick.

My dad looked at me and I kept my expression blank. Go, just go, I thought. I couldn't take it. I couldn't take his anger and his yelling and his sarcastic questions. Just go.

"Okay," he said, resigned. I heard the sadness in his voice. But I didn't care. I just didn't care. It was all his fault. He left, and I felt the tightness in my chest loosen. I could hardly breathe when my dad was around. I sat on the stool in the kitchen and looked at the linoleum floor.

"Sorry, Craig. You were right. It was your dad," Joey said, and I nodded and laughed a little shaky laugh.

"Yeah, well, just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they're not after you," I said, quoting the Nirvana song I'd just been listening to. I liked that line.

I couldn't see going back to live with my dad. What had changed? Nothing. I liked it here. I could breathe here.

0000000000000000000000000000000000

"What happened?" Ashley said at school Monday morning, reaching out to touch the cut under my eye. I let her, tensing up as I felt her fingertip brush my skin.

"Nothing," I said, and realized that nothing didn't explain the cut and the black eye. She looked at me with a critical puzzlement and I hung my head.

"Okay. I got in a fight,"

"With who?" she said, and it was just like the discussion about it with Joey.

"My dad," I said, confessing, sicking it up like poison. My dad.

"He hit you?" she said, and I saw Sean near us, listening in.

"Yeah,"

"I told you not to go with him," Sean said, his eyes narrowed at me.

"I thought things might have been different," I tried to defend it to Sean. He shook his head.

"It's never different, man. Never,"

"That's why you live with Joey?" Ashley said, looking all concerned and sad, "because your dad hits you?"

"Yeah, he did. But he won't anymore," I said.