The underwear is gone and I can still smell him on my fingers when I brush my teeth, and I’m thinking about golden eyes and growling walls and stolen fabric while I walk into Advanced Literature ten minutes early like the overachieving tragedy that I am.
The classroom is a small amphitheater – tiered seating, the kind of room that smells like old paper and academic self-importance – and I take a seat in the third row and open my textbook and tell myself that this is a class about literature and nothing else.
My stepfather, Dominic Voss, walks in at exactly 9 AM and the room rearranges itself around him.
He’s wearing a charcoal suit that fits him like an apology for every ill-fitting suit that has ever existed, and his glasses sit low on the bridge of his nose in a way that makes him loo
