I lay down beside him and stared directly into the sun. He turned on his side and propped his head on his elbow.
“You’ll go blind doing that,” he said in a low voice.
“Leave me alone.”
“Why are you in such a bad mood? You PMSing?”
“What do you know about it?”
“A lot.”
“I doubt that, and even if I were, it’s beyond rude to talk to me about it.” I hadn’t started my period yet, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
In the distance, we could hear Leila calling Jax. “Shit. I better go,” he said. He grabbed the jar of applesauce and disappeared into the weeds. I lay back, closed my eyes, and fell asleep. I woke up just before dusk and realized I had been eaten alive by mosquitos. My stomach was in knots, and my head ached. When I stood, I felt a warmth between my legs. I tried desperately to clamp my legs together as I rolled up my sleeping bag.
By the time I got to my front door, I knew there was blood all the way down the back of my jeans. I closed the door as quietly as I could and tiptoed past the kitchen table into the hall.
“Emerson? Where in hell have you been?”
I tiptoed toward the kitchen, where I could see my father sitting at the table. “I was outside. I accidentally fell asleep.”
His eyes went first to the rolled-up sleeping bag and then to the crotch of my pants. He stood so fast that the force knocked his chair over. “Dad, no.”
Before I could do anything, he grabbed a handful of hair at the base of my neck and forced my head back so we were looking each other in the eyes.
“Emerson!” This time my name was like thunder in his chest. “What in god’s name were you doing?”
“D-Dad . . .” I could feel blood running down my leg at the same pace the tears were flowing. It was going to be a bad day. “I’m having my period.”
He blinked. His mouth dropped open then closed, then he blinked again, let go of my hair, and took a step back. His eyebrows furrowed. He brushed his hand down his mustache a couple of times while he stared off into space. “Go clean yourself up,” he muttered to the floor.
I ran to the bathroom, slammed the door, and turned the shower on. With my hand under the stream of water, I waited and waited and waited. Goddammit, why now? My father hadn’t paid the gas bill, so there was no hot water. Susan, my dad’s weird friend from the motel, told me a month earlier just to take a whore bath if I ever needed to. A whore bath is where you wet a towel and clean yourself with it. By that age, I was aware of why Susan knew those things. A whore bath is what I needed.
An hour later, the bathroom looked like a crime scene. My mother hadn’t even left one maxi pad on the off chance that the prepubescent daughter she had abandoned would start her period while she was at home alone with the whiskey monster.
I was sitting on the toilet in silence, wrapped up in a bloodstained towel, adding up the days in my head until I would be an adult, until I could leave this godforsaken town. Two thousand and seven days, fourteen hours, and twelve minutes until I was eighteen.
“Knock, knock.” A female’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Who is it?”
“It’s Leila Fisher. Your dad asked me to come over.”
Figures. That fucking coward.
I opened the door very slowly and scanned the hallway. She was standing a safe distance away with her arms crossed. Leila was a thin, naturally beautiful woman with plump lips and long, straight hair. Even though her husband had left her to raise two boys on her own, she still had hope in her eyes. I envied her for that.
“Are you going to help me?” I asked as I twirled my hair nervously.
“Yes.”
I opened the door wider to let her in. “I have a change of clothes.” I held up a pair of tattered underwear. “But these won’t last long if I don’t get a pad or something.”
“I have nothing at the house. I wish I would have known.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said. I could feel the blood flowing again, so I sat back down on the toilet.
“No, I wish I would have known your mother hadn’t left anything. I would have given you some pads to keep here, just in case.”
“Well, she didn’t.”
“All right, well . . .” She stood for a moment, as if she were trying to figure out what to do, then she walked toward me and pulled out several lengths of toilet paper from the roll, winding them around and around her hand. “Put this in your underwear, get dressed, and come with me. I’ll take you to the store. Your father gave me a few dollars.”
“He did?” I was shocked.
She laughed. “Of course. He’s not a monster.”
“He kind of is,” I whispered.
“Yeah, but he loves you, Emerson. He’s still here, isn’t he?”
“He doesn’t love me. Look at me.” I crossed my eyes and stuck out my tongue. She laughed. The mood felt lighter. “You’re a silly girl. No wonder Jax is so fond of you.”
There was silence for a few seconds. “Fond of me?” The words came out like a breath. I knew Jax and I were friends, but the way she said those words made me feel like maybe my deepest feelings, the ones I didn’t even consciously acknowledge, meant something. Everything felt lighter, like the planet had been catapulted into the cosmos and we were spinning freely through space and time. My cramps were killing me, I had blood running down my leg, but it didn’t matter: I was floating on a cloud, all because Jax was fond of me. Even though I knew it myself, to hear someone else say it validated everything for me.