Floating into darkness

Floating into darkness

I used to love the sound the papers made when they hit the porch, thump, slide, quiet. Like I was marking time in some secret code only I knew. That summer, I started riding faster. Not for fun. Just to get it over with.

The mornings got quieter after my dad left. Mom filled the space with dishes clinking and the TV murmuring reruns she didn’t even watch. I filled mine with pedaling. Hands on the rubber grips, breeze in my ears. Nothing spiritual about it. Just movement.

One morning, I finished early and kept going past the circle where I usually cut back. Pavement got cracked and mean out there, kind of like Travis. He was sitting under that leaning carport like he’d been waiting, though he never said so.

“Want a break?” he asked, nodding at the paper bag like it held something sacred.

I shrugged. Sat down. Watched him light something I hadn’t seen before. When he passed it, I didn’t ask what it was. Just held it. Like it might fill the quiet I’d been dragging behind me.

Travis had wandered off behind the shed, said something about looking for an old skateboard. I sat there, sweating through my shirt, holding the bottle like it could answer something. That’s when I heard it, clear as a bell, like it got snagged on the heat and came floating back.

"You think life’s gonna wait on you?" Dad’s voice. Not yelling. Just low and worn-out.

It was the night he left. He’d come home late, grease still on his arms from the garage, and I’d asked him why we never went fishing anymore. Dumb timing, I guess. He looked at me like I’d asked him to lift a house with one hand.

"Because I work, Billy. That’s why. Somebody’s gotta. Ain’t no time for boys and bobbers anymore."

I think that was the first time I felt like a problem. Not a kid. Not his. Just… something in the way.

He slammed the fridge that night, didn’t come back for his boots the next morning. I remember staring at them, mud-caked and leaning together like they missed him. Like even the things he’d kicked around still wanted him more than I did.

I shook it off, sitting there under Travis’s busted roof. But something had slipped sideways in me. Like home wasn’t a place anymore. Just walls where people pretended.

Even school felt fake, teachers telling us to stay clean, stay focused, stay out of trouble. But none of them came around when Dad disappeared, or when Mom started forgetting what day it was. Nobody knocked. Not the pastor. Not the neighbors. Nothing.

So yeah. When Travis passed the bottle again, I didn’t hesitate. Not because I wanted it. Because I already knew nobody was coming to stop me.