CHAPTER 16
Two hours sounds like a pretty insignificant amount of time in the grand scheme of things, right? That’s how long it took me to wait for the cops to arrive, give a statement, beg them not to release my name, and for two officers to drive me from the mall to my father’s home. Somewhere in those two hours, all hell broke loose. Again.
When I arrived home, the front door stood open. Pieces of plastic littered the front walkway. When I tripped over a curlicue phone cord, I realized what the yellow fragments represented: The telephone formerly hanging on the kitchen wall. I’d spent hours as a teenager twirling the yellow cord around my fingers while I talked to a cute boy or Tara, miles away in Jersey.
Before I reached the door, my father appeared in the opening, muttering to hims
