Chapter Text
Thursday, December 22nd, 1983. 4:38pm. San Diego, California
It’s late afternoon when Billy Hargrove takes his stepsister’s hand and drags her out through the backdoor, round the house, and into the passenger seat of his car.
The Camaro rumbles to life, and Billy throws their bags and duvets into the backseat without checking where they land. He drives out on the street and speeds, tires screeching, past the houses of their neighbours, and out into the city.
Beside him, Max sits, staring straight ahead, and shakes.
Whenever Billy blinks, he sees blood on brown fabric.
Tuesday, December 21st, 1982. 7:03pm. San Diego, California.
“Billy!” his dad calls.
Billy looks up, just in time to see the car keys to his dad’s car come flying through the air. He has played basketball long enough that it is instinct to reach out and catch them.
Neil smiles. “Why don’t you drive us, son?”
Billy breaks out into a grin. “Really?”
At Neil’s nod, he runs the rest of the way to the car and climbs into the driver’s seat.
Billy’s only fifteen, but he’s been practising driving, and his birthday’s in only three months. His dad promised him a car, so long as he understands he’s expected to drive Max around, too.
Neil’s got the passenger side door open. Billy hears Susan’s hesitant voice. “Are you sure that’s such a good idea, Neil, honey?”
In the backseat, Max climbs into the seat behind the passenger side and meets Billy’s gaze through the rear view mirror.
“It’s just that…” Susan continues. “What if we get stopped? He doesn’t have his license yet.”
Billy smiles sweetly at Max, fully aware she’s been mad at him all day and it will only annoy her.
Max scowls. She sticks her tongue out.
Outside, Neal laughs. “Please, Susie. We’re just going round the neighbourhood. Besides, I served with almost every man on the force. They know me, they trust my judgement. Even if they do stop us, they’re not gonna give us any ticket.”
Billy holds Max’ gaze and sticks his own out.
Max looks outrageous. “ Mum! ” she yells.
Susan climbs in behind Billy, while his dad gets in beside him. “What is it, sweetie?”
“Billy stuck his tongue out at me!”
“Oh,” Susan says. Billy thinks she sounds relieved.
His dad smacks him up the head. “Haven’t I taught you any manners, boy?”
“Sorry,” Billy mumbles. He thinks about saying, ‘She did it first!’ but knows there’s no use. Max is Neil’s precious little angel. It’s not like he’s gonna believe him.
“You’re going to drive nice and slow now, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, dad,” Billy says. They’re going to go drive by all the houses in their neighbourhood to look at people’s Christmas lights and decorations. There’s no way to do that if you’re speeding.
He starts the car.
Thursday, December 22nd, 1983. 7:30pm. Border between California and Arizona.
Billy slams his door shut as he exits the Camaro. He rounds it and gets the trunk open, fishing around in the duffel bag he’s taken to keeping there for his first aid kit.
Finding it, he stuffs it in the space between the cast on his left arm and ribs, and hurries over to wrench Max’ door open.
She’s still staring straight ahead out the front window. Her skateboard lies at the bottom by her feet, one of the wheels digging into her knee.
“Max,” Billy says, and when that doesn’t work, “Shitbird.”
Slowly, like she’s a zombie, she moves to undo her belt and step out of the car.
Billy’s impatient, restless, full of nervous energy. He keeps rubbing at his pendant.
“Hurry the fuck up, Max,” he hisses.
They’re at a gas station, and he can’t see anyone outside right now, but there are three more cars parked by the convenience store.
Realistically, he knows Neil wouldn’t already have called the cops and sent people looking for them, but he can’t help but worry.
He grabs Max’ hand and drags her with him around the building, to the back where the toilets are.
“Wait here,” he tells her, and steps into the men’s room.
There are three stalls, and the middle one is occupied. Bending a little, he can see two small legs, so Billy bangs on the stall door. They rattle, and the kid inside lets out a yelp.
“Hey! Hurry the fuck up and get out.”
To the boy’s credit, he’s out in less than ten seconds, but then he stops, staring between Billy and the sink. He’s eight, maybe.
Billy tries to make himself look taller than he is and nods at the door. “Out!”
Eyes widening, the boy scurries past him and runs outside. Billy waits about five seconds before he’s opening the same door and pulling Max inside.
“Billy-“
“Shut up, shitbird. No one else’s here.”
He lifts her up so she’s sitting perched on the sinks, and puts the kit down beside her.
There’s a dry blood trail from the cut on the bridge of her nose and down its side, making a little pool above her nostril. Billy wets a paper towel and starts cleaning it. She doesn’t react to that, but flinches when he gets to the actual cut.
“Stop squirming.”
He smears some antibiotic ointment on it, and tapes a small bandage over it. The skin by her right eye’s gonna bruise, he’s pretty sure, and briefly, he considers seeing if he’s still got something for that, but decides it might be better not to. He starts packing up the kit.
“We match.”
The sudden sound of Max’ voice makes him look up. Her eyes are big and blue and maybe a little wet. Meeting them like this, he could almost mistake her for being his actual sister.
He’s seen that look in the mirror before.
He was younger than her, but still.
“What?”
She reaches out, tentative, and ghosts her fingertips over the butterfly bandage on Billy’s temple.
It’s crazy to think he only got it today, that it’s only been a couple hours since he sat in an examination room by himself and lied through his teeth to a nurse and then a doctor. And now he’s here.
He thinks about the Polaroid photo in one of the plastic bags in the backseat of the Camaro and wonders what the hell is wrong with him that he’s actually doing this.
Then he looks at Max and sighs. He lifts her off the sinks and grabs his kit.
There’s a young woman watching them strangely when they step out of the men’s room. Billy ignores her. He’s exhausted, suddenly.
“I’m gonna go buy us some water. You gotta piss?”
Max nods.
“Meet me in five by the car. Okay, shitbird? Five minutes.”
Again, Max nods.
Thursday, December 31st, 1981. 11:57pm. San Diego, California.
Billy’s back is pressed up against the edge of the pool, and there’s a girl straddling his hips in the water.
He doesn’t know her name. He’s pretty sure she never told him, not that he’s forgotten it. He doubts she knows his, either.
What he does know is that she’s beautiful, with long, thick brown hair that floats on the water’s surface. Billy’s own curls are too short to do anything but stick to his skin in a way that he guesses is wildly unflattering.
But it doesn’t matter, because they’re both drunk.
Max is spending New Years with her dad, and Billy’s dad had only been too happy to let Billy go to a party so he could spend a romantic evening with Susan.
It’s Billy’s first high school party. It’s the first time he’s gotten drunk.
He’s not sure how he ended up here. The girl in his lap is seventeen. She’s the older sister of the guy throwing the party, and just a few minutes ago, her hand had been inside his swim trunks. She’d laughed at him, he thinks, but he’s not sure.
She’s smiling know, looking oddly amused.
“ Ten… nine… eight…! ” comes the voices from inside. The doors are open to the backyard, and Billy can hear music.
Everything is blue, except for the reflections of the Christmas lights in the heated water. Billy’s vision is kind of hazy around the edges.
“You want to feel them?”
He blinks at the girl. “Huh?”
She bites her lip. Her hand takes his, and guides it down under her bikini top, cupping her breast. Billy’s thumb glides over her nipple.
“It’s okay,” she says.
“… three… two… one! ”
She leans forward and kisses him.
Another first.
Thursday, December 22nd, 1983. 10:46pm. Desert outside Phoenix, Arizona.
“Max. Shitbird. Backseat.”
He’s driven off the road and parked the Camaro out in the desert, just far enough away that they hopefully won’t be noticed until the sun goes up again.
For once in her life, Max listens without question. She climbs over the console while he gets out of the car, taking her skateboard with him. From the trunk, he grabs two blankets, and leaves the board.
When he gets back, he finds Max has thrown his duvet on the driver’s seat and the plastic bag he’d packed with his shit on the passenger one. Since he already had the essentials in the duffel, the bag is mostly filled with sentimental stuff; his jewellery, his Kill ‘em All tape and poster (slightly ripped, now), his favourite band tees, money, the box he’d kept at the bottom of his drawer, labelled ‘Mum’ in his head.
He hadn’t known what to pack for Max, had opened the drawers of her closet at random and grabbed a little bit of everything without really looking. But he’d made sure to grab the skateboard, had pressed it to her stomach when he pulled her off the bathroom floor and she’d grabbed it automatically.
He’d also taken the stuffed bunny off her bed, and judging by the way Max is hugging it as she lies curled up under her duvet, her back to Billy, that had been the right choice.
He climbs in, shuts the door, and chucks one of the blankets at Max. He hears her moving around to take it, but doesn’t bother looking, instead lowering the backrest of his seat a little so he can sleep better. From the plastic bag he grabs one of his band tees and exchanges his shirt for it. Then he takes his own blanket and bunches it together to make something like a pillow, and covers himself with his duvet.
It’s been dark and quiet for a while, only the occasion glimpse of a pair of headlights from the road, when Max speaks.
“The woman at the gas station….”
It’s the first thing Max has said to him since she’d touched his face and told him they matched. Billy had stopped at a pizzeria outside a small town and bought them a pizza to share, and she hadn’t said a word to him then.
Billy sighs. “What about her?”
“She asked if I was safe.”
“And what you tell her?”
“I told her that yeah. I was now. Because I was with my brother.”
Billy digs his nails into the meaty flesh on the palm of his hand, below his thumb, just so he can convince himself the sudden burning behind his eyes comes from the pain and not anything else.
“Go to sleep, Max.”
Saturday, December 27th, 1980. 2:16pm. San Diego, California.
“Can I join?”
“Fuck off. You’re blocking the sun.”
Billy’s been lying in the sand for, maybe, an hour, and now Max is here, disturbing him. The sun’s right behind her head, and with her red hair the effect is eerie, as though her head is on fire.
She moves, and the sun blinds him. While he’s busy blinking, trying to get the spots to go away, she lies down beside him.
Billy turns his head so he can glare at her. “Thought I told you to fuck off.”
“Mum says you’re not allowed to say that to me.”
“ She’s not my mum! ” Billy yells. “She’s not my fucking-“ his voice cracks, squeaks, the way it’s been doing a lot lately, and he grabs a fist full of sand because he knows what’s coming.
Just as expected, Max laughs, and Billy shoves the sand at her.
She yelps. “Stop! Don’t do that, Billy!”
“Then don’t laugh at me!”
He feels like he’s gonna cry, and he hates that. He can’t cry in front of Max. He can feel her staring at him, and his black eye throbs, and his cheek stings from where his dad slapped him earlier, and he wonders if Max can tell, if she can see it on his face, if it’s as red as it feels, as red as her hair.
She must be able to see something , because she mumbles, “Sorry”, and looks away.
Billy closes his eyes and tries to pretend she’s not there.
It almost works, until she decides to sigh, all dramatic, like she’s got all the world’s problems on her tiny shoulders.
“I’m bored.”
Billy ignores her.
She pokes him in the side. “Billy, I’m bored.”
He pushes himself away from her. “Okay? It’s not my job to entertain you.” But that makes him wince, because his dad would definitely disagree with that sentiment.
“Can you tell me something about her?”
Billy frowns. “What?”
“Your mum. Tell me something about your mum.”
Billy’s frown deepens. His stomach hurts. “No! Why the fuck would I do that?!”
“I’ll tell you about my dad. What we used to do for Christmas.”
“I don’t care about your dad.”
But Max isn’t that easily deterred. Billy should really know that by now. He’s known her almost two whole years.
“He used to always take me to this Christmas market, and I’d get to pick the tree at the farm, and we’d visit Santa and there was fake snow and he got me a charm bracelet when I was little-“
“You’re still little.”
“- and then we’d always get food and cocoa and we used to go to the pier, too. And one year a seagull pooped on my shoulder and mum got mad when she saw it. At least I think it was a seagull. Dad said it wouldn’t be that hard to clean.”
Billy stares at her. “That’s disgusting, Max.”
She shrugs and grins. “Now you have to tell me something about your mum and Christmas. Because I told you about my dad.”
“I didn’t ask for you to tell me-“
“Please, Billy! Please! I wanna know! You’re being mean!”
“No!”
But then she just starts saying, “Please, please, please, please, please, please…” on repeat until Billy yells, “Fine!”
He sighs. “I really liked snow when I was little, okay? On TV. And I wanted to make snow angels, so mum promised me she’d take me somewhere with snow for Christmas someday, but until then we could make ‘sand angels’ on the beach. They looked like shit.”
“Did she?”
“What?”
“Did she take you to see real snow?”
“No.”
“She might. Someday.”
Billy drags a hand over his face. “She won’t, Max.” He closes his eyes and tries not to think of his mum. It always opens up a burning pit of disappointment in him.
“Like this?” Max asks, and Billy’s forced to opens his eyes again and look at her. She’s got her arms outstretched at her sides and is moving them up and down a little so the sand goes absolutely everywhere.
Billy grimaces, and then laughs when she doesn’t stop. “No- No, Max, you’re supposed to drag them over the sand, all the way. It’s supposed to look like you’re an angel, not like you’ve just got big sleeves. Like this.”
He ends up having to show her. Slower now, she starts copying him.
“I can’t believe you got bird shit on you, Max,” Billy says, once she’s gotten the hang of it. “You’re a shitbird.”
“No I’m not!”
“Yeah you are. You’re a real little shitbird. Max the shitbird. That’s you.”
In response, Max pouts, and then gets a look of utter mischief on her face.
She sits up in the angel she’s made and starts shovelling sand at his legs, doing her outmost to cover them and bury him.
Billy just calls her a shitbird again, laughing when she looks even more furious, and lets her.
Friday, December 23rd, 1983. 0 8:22am. Small town, somewhere in Arizona.
Billy stares at the wall of period products the way he imagines a fisherman would stare if he pulled up his net only to discover a mermaid tangled in it.
Mild fascination, sure. But mostly just horror.
Helplessness descends upon him. It’s a feeling he’s used to, but not one he particularly likes.
He’d asked Max if she knew what to get but she’d just shrugged and looked about as comfortable with the conversation as he was. She’s waiting in the car, because it’s been a day - not really, but they’ve been gone all night - now and Billy doesn’t think its impossible that Neil’s called the cops on him for kidnapping his stepsister. But the point is that she’s waiting in the car for him and she’s trusting him to fix this for her, so.
He swallows his embarrassment down and, with flaming cheeks, walks up to the twenty-something girl working in the general store and starts telling her the story he’d made up on the way in. About how their parents are working, and he and his sister were on their way to visit their grandma for Christmas when she unexpectedly got her period.
She seems impressed that Billy, all sixteen years of him, is actually out here buying his little sister her period products, even if part of the reason is because he’s worried Max will bleed through her jeans and stain the Camaro.
That thought makes something clench uncomfortably in his gut and he has to push his hands into his pockets to keep them from trembling.
The girl hands him three different packs of pads, telling him something about ‘different flows’ that Billy desperately tries not to think too hard about.
He thanks her, quickly, and hurries to get the rest of the stuff he’s compiled on his mental shopping list. Two decorative throw pillows, because he figures it’s gonna get colder and they’ll need to use the blankets as actual blankets instead of pillows during the coming nights. More water. Toothbrushes and toothpaste. Deodorant. A pack of cookies in case they get hungry.
Without thinking too much about it, he also grabs a hot water bottle, a pad of paper, crayons, and a Nancy Drew book.
Tuesday, December 25th, 1979. 9:47am. San Diego, California.
Billy has two reasons for giving Max what he gives her for Christmas. First, because he really didn’t know what else to get her, and second, to piss of his dad.
The second Neil told him they were selling the apartment and moving into Max and Susan’s house, Billy had decided he hated him.
There’s no way for his mum to find him, now.
And the truth is, Billy hates himself, too. Because despite the voice at the other end of the phone telling him the number he was trying to reach had been deactivated, Billy had still, foolishly, believed his mum would one day be back to get him.
He’d figured out pretty quickly the best way to get back at his dad was through Max. He doesn’t want his precious new daughter, nor his precious new wife, seeing the way he usually disciplines Billy, so there’s been less bruises than usual. His dad wants Max to like him.
But his dad doesn’t understand Max. At all. Billy does.
Kinda.
She’s a tomboy, and she’d seemed as reluctant to acknowledge his dad’s existence as Billy was to acknowledge her mum’s, but she’d seemed somewhat interested in the prospect of an older brother, which some of her friends apparently had. Billy had realised that maybe it might be fun, living with her, especially when he realised how much of a shield her joy could be against his dad’s ire.
Billy can’t help but grin as he watches Max break out in the widest smile she’s worn all morning when she tears off the paper, only to reveal Billy’s old skateboard. It can’t even be compared to the put out expression she’d worn while she opened his dad’s presents, all girly pink clothes and dolls and hair accessories.
Susan stares, hesitant, at the skateboard, but smiles a little when Max launches herself at Billy, hugging him as she yells how much she loves it.
Over her shoulder, Billy meets his dad’s angry gaze, and holds it.
Bizarrely, he has the urge to stick his tongue out at him.
Friday, December 23rd, 1983. 4:48pm. Somewhere in Texas.
“I want to call my mum,” Max says, and brings a forkful of pancakes up to her mouth.
Across from her in their diner booth, Billy stares at her. Below the table, his leg starts bouncing, and he chews on his lower lip.
“You can’t.”
Max glares at him. She’s angry now, in that equally righteous and naive way she gets. “Why not?”
Billy’s leg shoots out and his foot kicks hers below the table. “Lower your voice,” he hisses, and looks around warily, trying to make sure no one heard.
He knows they must look weird, with the injuries on both their faces and the cast on his arm and the way they must smell, neither one having showered since Wednesday, and the jittery quality Billy gets as soon as he steps out of the car. His stomach hurts.
Max had at least listened to him when he told her to keep her hood pulled up to hide her hair. He can feel the leather of his jacket touching his jaw from how tight his shoulders have gotten.
“You don’t get to-“ Max continues when he doesn’t answer. “You don’t get to- You weren’t there! You didn’t- You-“ She’s sucking in air like she’s a fish on land.
Billy leans over the table and grabs her wrist, then her hand. He gives it a quick squeeze. “Max. Max, shitbird, breathe. Okay? I know. But you gotta realise it might not be your mum who answers. Now eat your pancakes and shut up.”
She nods, and starts eating once she seems to have gotten her breathing back under control. Billy does the same, digging into his own plate.
“That first Christmas, when you got me the skateboard…”
“Mm.”
“I didn’t see you again until New Years, and you weren’t very nice to me then,” she says quietly. “Neil said you were sick. And he and mum wouldn’t let me go inside your room in case you made me sick, too. But you weren’t, were you?”
Billy leans his head back so he’s facing the ceiling and closes his eyes. His hand comes up to rub at the bridge of his nose. “No, Max. I wasn’t.”
Friday, 22nd of December, 1978. 3:04pm. San Diego, California.
The bell has just rung out for Christmas break, and Billy’s friends are all talking over each other about what they’re gonna be doing, what gifts they hope they’ll get.
There’s gonna be visits to or from family, and cousins, grandparents. Church, for some, Midnight Mass. Mum’s famous family dinners. They’ll be dragged to go carolling, there’ll be eggnog, they’re gonna watch football games, and of course Miracle on 34th Street.
Billy thinks about his bare apartment without a Christmas tree, not a single present or Christmas light in sight, and clenches his fists. It’ll be the second Christmas without his mum, and during these two years Billy’s figured out Christmas breaks are something to be feared.
His friends don’t notice his silence, don’t stop to ask him about his plans, what he hopes he’ll get for Christmas, and Billy’s glad for it. He’s too keyed up to come up with a good lie, and there’s no way he’ll tell them that his biggest wish for Christmas is that his dad will be forced to pick up another shift and leave Billy alone.
No way.
Friday, December 23rd, 1983. 0 7:04pm. Border between Texas and Oklahoma.
Billy’s not sure what had possessed him when he’d seen the handmade sign for a Christmas market that had made him pull off the main road and drive down to the little field filled with three lines of stalls, but he’d done it, either way.
Seeing Max skipping a few feet ahead of him does somehow make it seem worth it, though.
And it’s kind of nice, to be out of the car and walking.
He sees a stall selling knitted hats and gloves and scarves. He calls for Max to stop, and gestures for her to come over and check them out with him. They’re colourful, and they look soft and warm.
Billy’s got a strong suspicion the nights are going to get even colder. Between his low funds and his fear of being found out, he doesn’t want them checking in at any motel.
He buys them each a set.
Sunday, December 25th, 1977. 9:08am. San Diego, California.
It is morning when Billy realises that, despite the fact that he hasn’t heard his mum’s voice in months and despite the fact that his writs still aches from the bruises left there when his dad grabbed him too hard, there were still parts of him that weren’t broken.
That were still naive, the way only a little kid can be. That still believed in magic, or Christmas miracles.
Because he had, stupidly, believed that his dad would actually celebrate Christmas with him. That maybe only today, they could forget all the shit, and pretend they were a family, pretend they weren’t broken.
But his dad hadn’t stayed up after Billy went to sleep, hadn’t brought the old plastic tree out of storage and decorated it and left a couple present under its branches.
The living room is empty of Christmas decorations. No tree. No presents. Billy steps into the kitchen. Nothing.
His dad sits at the table with a steaming mug of coffee and last week’s newspaper.
Billy gives him a wide berth as he walks up to the fridge and cupboards. Quickly, quietly, he makes himself a sandwich, and sits down across from his dad at the round table. He can’t see his face, hidden as it is behind the newspaper.
Billy finishes his breakfast in silence. He washes his plate.
And then he turns around, and looks at his dad’s profile. “Merry Christmas, dad,” he says.
But his dad only sighs, and turns the page.
Billy goes to his room.
All day, he stays in there, waiting, hoping his dad will come and get him, but it never happens. He hears him moving around in the apartment, hears the TV being turned on.
It is early evening when Billy finally leaves his bedroom. His dad’s on the couch, and the room is dark, but from the glow of the TV screen Billy can see the empty beer cans left on the coffee table.
“Dad?” he asks, hesitant. His throat feels dry, and his stomach growls. He’s still dressed in pyjamas. He hadn’t seen any reason to change. “Can we go out and look at the lights?”
His dad’s right hand curls into a fist on his thigh. Billy is acutely aware of it. “Get out of my sight, Billy.”
Billy turns on his heel and runs back into his bedroom. He closes the door and throws himself on the bed, crawling under the covers and hugging one of his pillows to his chest. He buries his face in it, hoping it will be enough to keep his dad from hearing him cry.
He misses his mum.
He remembers the last thing he yelled at her, during that last phone call. He’d been crying, and had choked out, ‘You said you’d never leave!’. He doesn’t remember what his mum had said back, if she’d said anything at all, but she must’ve, she must’ve tried to placate him somehow, and Billy wants her now, wants her warm hugs and soft hands to dry his tears, wants to smell her shampoo, wants her voice, wants her.
He wants his mum .
In his closet, there is a sloppily wrapped gift, meant for his dad. Billy wonders if he might be able to get his money back if he returns it to the store.
Saturday, December 24th, 1983. 9:30am. Just past the border between Oklahoma and Missouri.
They’ve just crossed into Missouri when Max starts crying.
“What?” Billy asks. He glances at her quickly before he has to turn his gaze back to the road. “What is it? Shitbird?”
“Hurts,” she whines.
“What hurts? Max?!”
“My stomach… Billy, Billy, something’s wrong, it-“
Billy’s hand clenches on the steering wheel. “Shit,” he mutters, and starts looking for an opening for him to stop the car.
Five minutes later and he finally gets one. He turns his hazard lights on and pulls the car off to the side of the road. By then, Max has kicked off her shoes and brought her knees up, her arms around her middle, attempting to curl into herself as much as possible.
Billy gets out of the car and runs to the back, opening his trunk and getting out the pack of pain pills he keeps in his duffel bag. He takes them with him back inside, and hands them, along with a bottle of water, to Max.
“Here. This should help.”
Max turns to him and takes the offered objects. Her cheeks are wet, and she’s still crying, snot and all. “What- What if something’s wrong-?”
Billy shakes his head. “It’s not, Max. It’s just period cramps.”
Didn’t Susan prepare her at all?
“But it hurts!” Max wails.
Billy grimaces. “Yeah.” He pulls them back out on the road. “Let me know if you’re gonna barf.”
“What?!”
Billy wonders, briefly, if it would be insensitive to tell her he’s sorry she had the unfortunate luck to be born a girl.
He thinks she might punch him for that.
At the first sign of a small town he drives off the main road and looks for a diner or fast food restaurant or something .
It doesn’t take long to find one, and when he does, he parks the car in the lot outside and leaves Max curled up in the Camaro.
From the trunk, he takes the hot water bottle he’d bought, and carries it with him inside.
He walks up to the counter. There’s only a few people working, and the waitress who turns to him is older, with greying hair and a plump body. She looks like someone’s grandmother.
“What can I get you, sweetie?”
Billy holds the hot water bottle up and tries for a charming smile. “I’m sorry to ask, but it’s that time of the month for my little sister and she’s got really bad cramps right now. Any chance you could fill this for us? And I’d like to buy some breakfast, too.”
The waitress smiles brightly at him. “Of course I could.” She reaches over the counter, and in one smooth move takes it from him as she slides him a menu. “You just decide what you want and I’ll be back to take your order in a moment.”
Twenty minutes later and Billy’s opening the door to Max’s side, a plastic bag with food slung over his cast and the now filled hot water bottle held in the other.
Max’ stopped crying, so at least the meds seemed to have helped, but she’s still curled into as much of a ball as she can get.
Billy hands her the hot water bottle. “Press this to your stomach. It should help.”
Max takes it and does as she’s been told. “How do you…,” she sniffs. “How do you know these things?”
Billy bites his lip. He straightens up, and swings back on his heels. “My mum,” he eventually forces out. “She used to get really bad cramps.”
Tuesday, 28th of December, 1976. 6:44pm. San Diego, California.
“Where were you last night? Where were you?!”
“I told you, I was with Wendy.”
“Stop lying to me!”
“I’m not lying to you!”
His dad’s got his hand tight around momma’s wrist, which Billy knows from experience hurts, and his other hand has a finger pointing at her accusingly. “You saw him again, didn’t you?! Didn’t you?!”
Momma wrenches her arm free.
Billy jumps up from his seat at the table.
“Get away from me!” Her hand grasps for something behind her until it finds one of the plates from dinner.
She throws it at his dad, and his dad cowers to keep it from hitting him. Billy’s stomach clenches in fear at the look on his dad’s face as he straightens back up.
“You whore!”
Despite the fear, Billy rushes past momma, trying to be brave, the way she’s taught him, the way the superheroes in his comics always are, and pushes his dad. “Don’t hurt her!” He wraps his arms around him and tries to knock him down, but he’s stronger, he’s always been stronger, and it’s Billy who ends up stumbling.
“Billy! No, no-!” momma is yelling behind him, and the next time Billy looks up, it’s to see his dad’s fist connect with her face. She falls to the floor from the force of it.
“Mum!” Billy cries out.
“You lying whore!” his dad shouts, standing above her, like a monster, like a villain.
And Billy does something which he will spend the next seven years regretting, but it makes sense to him in the moment, because his dad is yelling and hurting momma because he thinks she’s lying, because he thinks she was with a man, and, “She’s not lying!” Billy yells. “She’s not lying, she was with Wendy! I saw them, I saw them, they were kissing, she wasn’t with-“
“ What?! ” his dad roars.
The look on momma’s face as she stares at Billy is one of complete and utter betrayal.
In the moment, that doesn’t make sense. But something in him shatters, all the same.
Then her expression shifts to one of desperation, and she scrambles to sit, to stand, as she puts all her focus on his dad, even as she calls to him to, “Go to your room, Billy! Go to your room and don’t come out!”
Billy does as he’s told, running into his room and hiding under the covers, his pillow pressed over his ears and eyes squeezed shut to keep himself from hearing what’s happening just a few rooms over.
It is only when his door opens, an hour or two later, and he hears momma’s familiar steps, that he dares look up from underneath the covers. In the brief span before she closes the door and leaves Billy’s room in darkness again, he sees red marks on her, sees the way she shakes.
She comes over, and slides into bed beside him, holding him to her like they’re two spoons in the cutlery drawer.
Billy takes her hands and asks her if she hates him.
“No, never. Of course not.”
But her hold on him tightens, just a little, until it gets just a little hard to breathe.
Saturday, December 24th, 1983. 11:59am. Middle of Missouri.
Billy hadn’t told Max what he’s doing. He thinks it’s better that way. She’s in the restroom of the gas station they’ve stopped at, and Billy’s taken the chance to stop at the pay phone and call home.
It takes a while for someone to pick up, long enough Billy starts panicking a little.
“Hargrove residence,” comes Neil’s voice, and Billy freezes. It doesn’t feel like he’s even breathing. “Hello?”
He can’t get a good read on Neil’s voice. It sounds… normal, calm, then irritated when Billy still doesn’t say anything.
“Hello?! Anyone there? Oh, for fuck’s sake-“
Neil hangs up. Billy can’t help but think it’s for the better.