Read Online Things Unsaid: A Novel by Diana Y. Paul - Free Book Online

Avenue, the T-bird spun around and around down the street, almost doing 360s. Andrew kept on flooring the engine. It was like flying. There wasn’t another car or person in sight—he was so lucky sometimes! He imagined he was a driver in the Indy 500, feeling the freedom of life and all the fun he would have once he left Akron for college. He was counting the days to high school graduation. Two more years. Only two more years.
    Black ice. He panicked and froze. Before he realized it, his sister had grabbed the wheel. As they struggled, fighting over the steering wheel, the car started skating out of control towards the lodge, towards the housing development surrounding the rink. After jumping the curb and plunging into a snow bank, a huge, twisted oak brought the T-bird to an abrupt halt.
    The porthole was covered. Andrew couldn’t see out of the front window either. Shakily, his heart feeling like it was pulsating through every vein in his body, he muscled the door as far open as he could, squeezed out, and trudged through snow to the front of the house. The owner was already standing there, front porch lights on, startled to see the cockeyed T-bird. Andrew didn’t look back to see if his sister wasokay. The homeowner waved him inside without a word and gestured to the hallway phone. Andrew called home.
    “Hi, Dad?” Andrew cleared his throat. “You have to come get us.”
    Silence. Andrew could hear a deep, threatening sigh on the other end. “What have you done now?” Their father’s voice was hard.
    “We had a little accident,” Andrew gulped. He looked up; Jules was standing near the front door, waiting.
    His father hung up without another word. Andrew and Jules waited there in the house, fidgeting. Ten minutes later, their father arrived in his silver Buick Riviera, his second most favorite car, and said something, probably an apology of sorts, to the homeowner. Andrew saw him write his telephone number on a sheet from his prescription notepad. Then he grabbed Andrew’s elbow and twisted him out the front door. Jules followed. Andrew wished he could be anywhere else.
    Chesterfield dangling from her lip, his mother stood up from the kitchen table as they walked through the kitchen door. She spit out something—he didn’t know what—but the cigarette didn’t eject. Then she laid into him. “Goddamn it. Driving crazy in this weather. Now that fucking car’s going to cost a fortune to fix. You think money just grows on trees around here.” Their mother looked so full of rage that she could bite a chunk out of her own arm. He recalled her saying she had actually done that once so she wouldn’t hit Jules.
    Andrew looked down at the melting snow still on his shoes, the blood-red linoleum all wet and slippery like the afterbirth from a newborn baby.
    “It wasn’t my fault, all right?” Trying to head off the inevitable. “I hit an ice chunk. Could’ve happened to anyone.”
    “Well, but it didn’t, did it?” His mother’s voice was whiskey hoarse. “It’s a privilege to drive his new car. Now your father’s afraid of the damage to that guy’s yard. Maybe even a lawsuit. More money wasted on you.”
    Andrew nervously fingered his black-and-blue ski jacket while their father stood quietly in the kitchen behind Jules, waiting for his mother to finish. He was
too
quiet. Then his father moved towards Andrew, dangerously close, and Andrew’s back petrified. He looked over his shoulder, then down at his boots. He knew what was coming.
    He felt a crack as his arm was torqued, wrenched into an ugly angle. His father dragged him upstairs. Shoulders hunched, head down, he lost his breath. Then numbness. As the belt slap-slapped against his back and head, he curled like a fetus, trying to avoid the hook of the belt hitting his eyes. All he remembered after that: the toilet flushing, over and over again. And blood washing down the drain, swirling in the toilet bowl.
    A couple of hours later, in his boxers,