Anyway, my mother got that real scared look in her eye when he started honking and she told me to take all her stuff to the table while she moved her car out.

I’m not sure what happened when she went back outside. I heard a crash, and then I heard her scream, so I ran to the garage thinking maybe she had slipped on ice.

Ellen . . . I don’t even want to describe what happened next. I’m still a little shocked by the whole thing.

I opened the garage door and didn’t see my mom. I just saw my dad behind the car doing something. I took a step closer and realized why I couldn’t see my mom. He had her pushed down on the hood with his hands around her throat.

He was choking her, Ellen!

I might cry just thinking about it. He was yelling at her, staring down at her with so much hatred. Something about not having respect for how hard he works. I don’t know why he was mad, really, because all I could hear was her silence while she struggled to breathe. The next few minutes are a blur, but I know I started screaming at him. I jumped on his back and I was hitting him on the side of his head.

Then I wasn’t.

I don’t really know what happened, but I’m guessing he threw me off of him. I just remembered one second I was on his back and the next second I was on the ground and my forehead hurt like you wouldn’t believe. My mom was sitting next to me, holding my head and telling me she was sorry. I looked around for my dad, but he wasn’t there. He’d gotten into his car and drove off after I hit my head.

My mom gave me a rag and told me to hold it to my head because it was bleeding and then she helped me to her car and drove me to the hospital. On the way there she only said one thing to me.

“When they ask you what happened, tell them you slipped on the ice.”

When she said that, I just looked out my window and started crying. Because I thought for sure this was the final straw. That she would leave him now that he had hurt me. That was the moment I realized that she’d never leave him. I felt so defeated, but I was too scared to say anything to her about it.

I had to get nine stitches in my forehead. I’m still not sure what I hit my head on, but it doesn’t really matter. The fact is, my father was the reason I was hurt and he didn’t even stay and check on me. He just left us both there on the floor of the garage and left.

I got home really late last night and fell right to sleep because they had given me some kind of pain pill.

This morning when I walked to the bus, I tried not to look directly at Atlas so he wouldn’t see my forehead. I had fixed my hair so that you couldn’t really see it and he didn’t notice right away. When we sat down next to each other on the bus, our hands touched when we were putting our stuff on the floor.

His hands were like ice, Ellen. Ice.

That’s when I realized that I forgot to give him the blankets I had pulled out for him yesterday because my mother got home sooner than I expected. The incident in the garage sort of took over all my thoughts and I completely forgot about him. It had snowed and iced all night and he had been over there at that house in the dark all by himself. And now he was so cold, I didn’t know how he was even functioning.

I grabbed both of his hands in mine and said, “Atlas. You’re freezing.”

He didn’t say anything. I just started rubbing his hands in mine to warm them up. I laid my head on his shoulder and then I did the most embarrassing thing. I just started to cry. I don’t cry very much, but I was still so upset by what happened yesterday and then I was feeling so guilty that I forgot to take him blankets and it all hit me right there on the ride to school. He didn’t say anything. He just pulled his hands from mine so I’d stop rubbing them and then he laid his hands on top of mine. We just sat there like that the whole ride to school with our heads leaned together and his hands on top of mine.

I might have thought it was sweet if it wasn’t so sad. On the ride home from school is when he finally noticed my head.

Honestly, I had forgotten about it. No one at school even asked me about it and when he sat down next to me on the bus, I wasn’t even trying to hide it with my hair. He looked right at me and said, “What happened to your head?”

I didn’t know what to say to him. I just touched it with my fingers and then looked out the window. I’ve been trying to get him to trust me more in hopes he would tell me why he doesn’t have a place to live, so I didn’t want to lie to him. I just didn’t want to tell him the truth, either.

When the bus started moving, he said, “Yesterday after I left your house, I heard something going on over there. I heard yelling. I heard you scream, and then I saw your father leave. I was going to come check on you to make sure everything was okay, but as I was walking over I saw you leaving in the car with your mother.”

He must have heard the fight in the garage and saw her leaving to take me to get the stitches. I couldn’t believe he came over to our house. Do you know what my dad would do to him if he saw him wearing his clothes? I got so worried for him because I don’t think he knows what my father is capable of.

I looked at him and said, “Atlas, you can’t do that! You can’t come to my house when my parents are home!”

Atlas got real quiet and then said, “I heard you scream, Lily.” He said it like me being in danger trumped anything else.

I felt bad because I know he was just trying to help, but that would have made things so much worse.

“I fell,” I said to him. As soon as I said it, I felt bad for lying. And to be honest, he looked a little disappointed in me, because I think we both knew in that moment that it wasn’t as simple as a fall.