Hailey

My dad has a gun he thinks I don’t know about. 

I found it yesterday in his bedroom. Technically, the place is supposed to be "off limits", but I’m not too good with imaginary lines. I snuck in when he was out. Golf and midday bourbon keeps him distant most afternoons. Those are the golden hours. Makes sneaking around a cinch, and I like life easy.

Dad stepped out at around noon and by the time he’d dragged his ten-irons out the front door I’d bobby-pinned my way into his supposedly tamper proof lock. He had it manufactured special, "senators-with-expensive-secrets special", but I can pop it open in about thirty seconds on a good day, and yesterday felt like one of those—for a little while, at least.

I didn’t start off snooping for secrets. I broke in for the books. Reading anything rare or out of print is a guilty pleasure, but perusing private auction bought first editions is a new addiction. Dad’s got a case full of them near his desk. They’re perfect. Perched-behind-glass perfect.

He doesn’t read any, just collects them—an old money habit of his. Sneaking a peak at his first edition of Alice in Wonderland is one of mine and I'll violate his privacy until I finish it. That book and I have a long standing love-affair, mainly because it’s crazy, and when you’re as bored as I’ve been lately, crazy seems pretty exciting. Maybe it’s the magic doors and rabbit holes, but I like the idea that life comes with those things. 

Little doors and rabbit holes.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m no real life Alice, and seriously believing in magic at eighteen probably makes you schizophrenic, but I needed something out of the ordinary, and the idea that popped into my head after finishing the book was it. I started digging around my Dad's room for a real life rabbit hole on the off chance that I’d find one.

And I did. 

Not an actual rabbit hole, but a place in the floor vent behind the desk where Dad must’ve taken off the grating one too many times. I jiggled the top a little, popped off the metal covering, and there it was—an old polished box big enough to keep the vent grate from fitting into the ground properly. 

Figuring out the lock combination was as simple as my Mom’s birthday. Dad still uses it as his password for everything. He’d deny that if you asked him, though. He denies a lot of things lately. 

Anyway, that's how I found it—the gun in the vent grate.

And as quickly as I found it, I left it alone. I’d have it coming if Dad caught me. But, at least now I can say that I know what his secrets look like. 

My Dad’s kind of a big wig in D.C., so I guess he felt safer with a gun. But I didn't. Maybe it's the pacifist in me from my Mom's side, I don't know. I tried un-freaking myself out about the whole thing, but, when weird things like gun stashes show up, you're supposed to pay attention, or you pay for it later. I watch a lot of movies, so I know these things. 

I had a Colt 45 stuck in the back of my head for the rest of the day. Dad came home, dinner was awkward and silent, but it always is. He doesn’t pay attention to much of anything, so picking up on how tense I was didn't even register. 

I skipped out on reruns of Gossip Girl later that night, popped a couple Benadryl and knocked out early. I wouldn’t have fallen asleep otherwise. Secrets aren’t easy to sleep on. 

I passed out on my bedroom floor and woke up nervous. Sweat-through-my-tank-top nervous. I shouldn’t have been, though. Summer was starting and today was gonna be too hectic to worry about an old gun in an air vent. So, I made a point to drop the whole thing, forced myself to forget, which was tougher than I thought, but I did it to keep myself sane. 

I shouldn’t have forgotten though, ‘cause bad things happen to forgetful people.

And bad things happen when you don’t pay attention. 

But maybe that’s just a movie thing.

Fingers crossed.

***

“Dad?” I called into the hallway and my house was still. 

It was another ugly day—a pale blue-grey on an overcast summer morning. Muggy. Mosquito-ridden. Swamp-tastic. The weather alone made leaving this city easy, too easy to believe I'd really be gone for good this time.

Typically at this hour, I'm about as energetic as an jumbo jet trying to lift off a tarmac at half-speed. I’m definitely never a morning person, but today was special, and I was chipper enough to outdo Jiminy-cricket on crack.

Three beautiful months with the better of two parents waited for me on the other end of a southbound Amtrak train. In a couple hours, I’d be back in green and gorgeous Virginia, celebrating my future at UVA and a life outside of outside of dull city skylines. 

The grey-walled shoebox I’d lived in for most days of the year was pleasantly empty—as sparse as the silver spoon lifestyle I’d be leaving there. Good riddance didn’t even cut it. When you hate a place long enough, the goodbye isn’t bittersweet, just bitter, the sweet part comes once you’re miles away. 

My phone alarm's marimba bounced across the burgundy and gold patterned walls and into the darker corners of the house.

It was 6:30 AM. 

I had a train to catch at 7:00, and my selectively forgetful father was M.I.A. 

I dropped my bags, and tiptoed down the hallway to his bedroom door—finding it open—which seldom was the case when I was home. I felt a little weird out about it, but not weird enough to worry. Not too much, anyway. 

The state of his room, however, freaked me out. The usually flawless king canopy somehow managed to transform itself into a cluttered mess of expensive sheets and silk duvet covers half-draped on the floor. Pillows were thrown in every which direction, and his clothes hung like jungle vines on the lamp rungs.

He’d either turned into Donkey Kong, or hit the bottle again. I kept my fingers crossed for the former. If he had been drinking, it was unlike him to be this messy. He was a quiet drunk with quieter problems. Clutter wasn’t his thing. 

Neither was stink. The carpet reeked of cheap liquor—which he never drank much less spilled on his impeccably clean floors. Like a regular Watson, I followed the stains and stumbled over one of my Mom’s gold vials of lipstick in lying in Dad’s doorway. He’d hardly touched her things since she left; at least, that’s what I thought was the case before this morning. Something was awry in the Anderson house.

Pots and pans crashed hard and loud against the tile floors downstairs in the kitchen. I’m usually the culprit behind cooking related accidents so I recognized the sound, but Dad’s never clumsy. A gritty silence settled in and I held my breath in the quiet until my lungs couldn’t take it anymore. A new wave of panic set in once the clanking started up again, even louder this time than before. I choked down a scream and thought about escaping the house through the nearest window, until I remembered Dad’s ugly little secret. 

I ran right back into the rabbit hole, and hopped out with a handgun.I didn’t have a clue how to use it. I didn’t even know if it was loaded. But it felt safe. I felt safe—safer at least.

I tiptoed back down the hallway, praying to God that by some miracle our crotchety l wooden floors would keep my footsteps a secret. No shoes, no problem. I got back to my room, grabbed my things, and headed downstairs without a creak.

The first floor was dark except for the low light flooding into the living room from the kitchen like eerie dawn. I followed the florescence, hands shaking like a jackhammer, and fingers clammy and unsure of themselves, unsure of the situation around the corner.

I stepped into the kitchen, and ten hesitant toes felt naked against the white marble tile. Two bodies were half naked in the half-light, one my fathers, the second a strawberry blonde's who'd sprawled herself across the black granite counter top.

She couldn’t have been much older than I was. She couldn’t have been more shocked than I was to see her legs wrapped, ever so innocently of course, around my father while he taught her the basics of bare-assed “domestic policy”. 

Something like embarrassment flickered across her face at first, then died away as quickly as it lit up her cheeks. She composed herself, and then she smiled at me, mocked me, flashing her pearly white teeth through my mother's Chanel rouge lipstick. 

So, I shot at her. 

Twice. 

With my eyes closed. 

I don’t know what I was thinking. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I was thinking—just reacting. Click. Click. Bang. Bang. Now, I didn’t go as far as to kill anybody. I blew up a box of Corn Flakes on the counter, and grazed a pretty sensitive part of my Dad’s body I won’t mention. But I didn’t think I’d hurt him that badly, until he screamed loud enough to set the neighbor’s dog on full alert.

Bimbo-the-make-up-thief got pretty hysterical after that. She kept shouting things about me being crazy, while my Dad tried to figure out a way to sit down in a kitchen with nothing but sixteen-inch high barstools. 

Honestly, I would’ve thought this situation was a riot if I wasn’t the girl with the gun, watching her family fall to pieces. I would’ve laughed if I could’ve made a sound. But I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t breathe either, I just stood there with sweat rolling down my face turning whiter than vanilla ice cream.

Maybe I was crying, I don’t know. Sweat and tears aren’t all that different. The adrenaline sloshing around my bloodstream didn’t have too much time left to run it's course. I could feel it, the raw numbness tapering off and “reality the heavy hitter” winding up to knock me out.

And it did just that, ‘cause everything hit me all at once, and hard. I started crying, really crying this time. Not ‘cause I was sorry that I shot him, ‘cause I wasn’t, but that this situation really happened. I had a feeling dad was messing around behind my mom’s back, but seeing it sucked. He sucked, and to tell you the truth he deserved what he got.

He deserved being left behind. By my Mom and me. I shouldn’t have expected better from him, but I guess there’s an inner fourteen-year-old Hailey who still had her hopes up that her parents would eventually work things out. Four years later, nothing’s changed and hope’s turned out to be a shitty investment.

Took him a while, but my dad eventually stopped carrying on, and turned around to face me. He knocked Malibu Barbie out of his way and stumbled in my direction, shouting combinations of curse words I didn’t ever think I’d hear him say. I dropped the gun, turned on my bare heels and booked it like a bat out of hell out the front door. 

And, I was gone. 

Lickity-split.

Bags in hand, and heart wedged in my windpipe, I sprinted ten blocks to the nearest bus station—feet colder than the pavement.