“Moron!” Jane says to herself and Tim as she shuts the door, slumping against it and looking out to her father’s dirty room, aka the living room.

  “Stupid boys.” She grumbles as she walks by full trash bags, overflowing ashtrays, and burn holes in the carpet, cigarette butts still lying next to scars old and new. She opens the fridge and shoves open beer bottles, some having almost no liquid in them, to the side to get what little food is shoved into the back of the fridge.

  If she was going to end up here anyways she should’ve gone to Tim’s house first, Delilah would’ve made sure to feed her, she’s so sick of this almost bad sandwich meat that her dad always brings home.

  She does a sniff check on it to make sure it hasn’t gone rotten, and despite it still being good she can’t help but get nauseous. She opens up the loaf of bread and takes out a few slices, ripping off the parts that are speckled with bluish grey mold and tossing them into the overflowing, bagless trash can.

  She opens up the utensil drawer and finds it empty, save for traces of insects. She looks over at the mountain of dirty dishes sitting in the sink, soaking in brown water, and taps her head against the cupboards and groans.

  She refuses to do the dishes for this asshole, despite how bad her father seems to want her to be a replacement for her mom, but sometimes she just doesn’t have a choice. She starts relocating the mountain of cheap plastic gagging at the smell, until all that’s left is the frothy brown water.

  She shuts an eye and looks away as she sticks her hand in, like looking away from a horror movie, and starts feeling around for the drain.

  “Ew ew ew.” She gags as her hand hits something chunky, and then she finally feels the drain blocker and pulls it out.

  She cleans out the sink, and then takes extra care to clean her arms and hands, before comparing what’s left of the dish soap to the mass next to her. No way is it enough to clean them all, and all she needs is a butter knife to spread some mayo on her old bread, but now that she’s started, if she doesn’t get through at least some of the dishes her dad will be furious.

  It takes long enough that she’s completely exhausted afterward, she doesn’t even have the energy for a good fight, let alone forcing down the evil meal that sits behind her. She’d rather just go to bed hungry at this point, if she goes to Tim’s early enough he, or someone, will make her food anyways.

  She slinks off to her room and, while not dirty like the living room is, it's an absolute disaster area. Her dirty clothes are flung all over the floor and furniture, while her clean clothes all still sit bunched up in a hamper that sits at the foot of her bed.

  She shoves clothes off an office chair and sits, spinning around until she comes to look at herself in the mirror of her pink and white vanity she uses as a desk.

  She brings her elbows onto it, laying her face in them and groaning. Why doesn't she just tell Tim how she feels? Does she even need to? Everyone else fucking notices and insists commenting on it.

  “Stupid.” She shakes her head, there’s always been lots of reasons she doesn’t tell him, at first the biggest reason was just fear of rejection, and then the fear of things getting awkward and losing her best friend. As terrifying as those were, and still are, now there’s something much more.

  The conversation from the library, she truly felt like she just doesn’t want anything. Not in an easy, simple way either, sure there’s things she wants, like getting the fuck out of this house, a computer, a phone so she can watch new anime easier, her mom to suddenly come back and rescue her somehow.

  But those aren’t goals, those aren’t really anything. There’s nothing she wants, nothing for the future but vague notions of romance and getting far, far away from here. It's not even like she isn’t passionate either, she loves the things she enjoys. When she can get into the computer lab at school she does deep dives into her favorite show and manga all the time, reads interviews, looks up animation techniques, behind the scenes on how scenes get made. So why the fuck doesn’t she want to do any of it?

  Is something wrong with her? Is she just lazy? She exercised a lot, lazy people don’t exercise right? Then what the hell is going on?

  She does know she wants Tim, but what does that mean? Besides kissing and holding hands and all that. Did she just want to be some housewife or something? No, definitely not, that sounded boring as fuck and Tim would make a better house wife than her anyways, she’s too much of a slob.

  Maybe she just latched onto her crush so hard because it's easy, she’d had it for so long it's almost comfortable. When she doesn’t have any other escapism she can always escape into her whimsical thoughts of holding hands, going to dances, getting married.

  She sighs as she takes out an old journal, flipping through it and landing on some pages where she had doodled hearts with her and Tim’s initials in them. She rolls her eyes at herself and tosses it in front of her. She was stupid to do it, her dad wasn’t weird about Tim until he had found that journal, now he seems to hate her best friend more and more every time she spends any time with him.

  “Stupid... stupid stupid.” She shakes her head, her eyes starting to sting as tears roll down her cheeks. “And now you’re crying?” She says to her reflection. “What the fuck Jane?”

  Despite her slip ups becoming more and more common, she once again tells herself she’s not going to tell him. She needs to get her shit straight first, finally want something. Plus, it’s not like rejection didn’t still terrify her. She knows Tim, and as much as she also knows he’d never leave her, she’s been wrong before.

  She reaches for a framed photo on the desk and holds it up, inspecting the picture of her mother inside it. In her arms, wrapped in a green blanket with cartoon dinosaurs on it, is Jane when she was a newborn, hair already long, for a baby anyways. She gives an amused exhale at the blanket, she was apparently inseparable from it, until her father got rid of it. A safety blanket, is that what Tim is to her now? Probably not, but if he is, she’s just using him, and that’s more reason to not tell him. Anyone reasonable would run away from that, from being committed to someone like that, like her mom.

  When Jane’s father had asked her mom to marry him, she left not long after. Jane doesn’t blame her for it, much. After all her dad was awful, abusive, and was even more so towards Jane’s mom then he is her. Jane remembers screaming, fighting, escalating over a few weeks until things always got physical. Jane had seen her mother tossed around and beaten more times than she can count, one time her dad even put her in a headlock and made the motion to break her neck, he didn’t, but he tried.

  So Jane doesn’t blame her mother for leaving, not much, just wishes she didn’t leave Jane behind to fill her role. Her dad hasn’t laid hands on her, not yet, but she can feel it coming, she knows it's coming, and she can’t help but imagine herself in that headlock, and when her dad twists, this time there will be a snap.

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  Her chest tightens with fear at the image, and she tries to force it out through her lungs with slow inhales and exhales. At least if he kills her, he wouldn’t live much longer. That’s probably why he hasn’t hit her yet, if he does, and Tim notices, Beth and Delilah will come down on him. Delilah especially, Beth is nice to Jane, but only cares about her because Tim does, Delilah though? She loves Jane, and she’d shoot her dad in the head if anything happens to her.

  If she does slip up and tell Tim, and he reciprocates, at least that means he’ll whisk her away from here. He already does whenever he can, but if they're dating? Beth would probably let her move in, she used to for Tim’s brother’s girlfriends.

  No, she should just file that under another fantasy for now, or at least till she figures out what she wants, and probes a little to make sure Tim won’t take off after a declaration of love.

  “Stupid.” She says as she plucks a sweater off the ground and dabs the tears from her puffy eyes. It's a stupid fear, and she knows it doesn’t even make any sense.

  But she’s been wrong before.

  She tries to push off her vanity and wheel over to her bed, but the chair gets caught on all the littered laundry and the chair tips, she yelps as she falls over, landing face first into jeans. She groans and uses the bed to lift herself back up, her long hair covering up her face. It takes an obnoxious amount of effort to get it all to rest behind her, continually swiping at it as she decides to get to some disaster relief.

  She manages to get all her clothes into a hamper, and decides to bust out the vacuum while she’s on a roll. She has to chase this urge to clean until it fizzles out and dies, who knows when the next one will hit.

  She’s gotten nearly a fourth of the living room done, as much as it can be, before her dad stumbles through the door with the short haired woman that had given her and Tim a hard time the other day. Jane thinks her name Alicia, the newest tweaker to stay in Tim’s living room, though she’s not sure if she pays for a spot to sleep or is just there all the time.

  “Jane, go to your room.” Her father commanded with slurred words.

  Fucking great, he’s high and drunk,

  “I’m vacuuming dad.”

  “Aw it's ok, take a break sweetie, me and Big Man Dan have some things to do.” Alicia smacks his chest.

  Jane’s face furls in disgust. “Nasty.”

  “Oooo your daughter has a dirty mind Dan.” Alicia teases.

  “Talk shit about me and I'll break your arm.” Jane threatens, she could probably take this “adult.”

  Her arms are skinny and she’s barely taller, and barely older than Jane. Plus, even though she doesn't seem drunk, there’s no way she isn’t inebriated in some way. God it’d feel so good to just fly off the rails and just fuck this bitch up.

  “Get the fuck in your room NOW Jane!” Her father yells.

  The roar instantly douses the fire that lit Jane’s chest just a moment before, and she retreats into herself. She flicks off the vacuum and it takes all of her willpower to not take off running to her room. She refuses to look that pathetic, her speed walk already is.

  “What is wrong with me?” Jane says as she shuts the door behind her and holds her chest. Anyone else talked to her like that, no matter how big or old they are, she’d break their nose. God she wants to flatten his nose.

  She’s well reminded how desperately she wanted earphones or a speaker as she’s forced to curl a pillow around her head. It barely muffles the grunts and groans of the sex happening on the couch, she needs to set fire to that fucking thing. God she hopes they’d both have a heart attack and just die, OD and just die, so she doesn’t have to fucking sit through this. She wishes her dad wasn’t such a bastard and would just let her stay the night with Tim. If something happened so what? It's not like she hadn’t overheard how his first time was at thirteen, three years younger than her.

  “Shuuuut uuuuup!” She yells, the plea either going ignored or unheard.

  It feels like a goddamn eternity until the noises finally stop, replaced by an occasional giggle or beer fueled belch. Jane sighs with relief as she hears movement and then the door shut, her father letting out a low chuckle and the couch creaking as he falls onto it.

  Jane tries to fall asleep, but her empty stomach growls in protest, keeping her awake. She should’ve just eaten the evil fucking sandwich, just forced it down and tried to swallow without tasting it. But of course she didn’t, why would she think ahead and not see that something like this was possible?

  “Ugh,” She groans into her pillow and tries not to give in, she doesn’t want to see the disgusting pig on the couch, she won’t relent.

  “Fuck.” She says as her stomach's growl practically echoes in her room and she gets up.

  “Dad, are your clothes on?” She cracks her door and calls out.

  “Jane? Jane I can’t reach my blanket, come bring it to me.” He orders.

  Jane sighs and takes a few steps out before her dad gags and makes a heaving noise.

  “Fuck, Jane the trash can!” He heaves again and Jane rushes it over, him puking into it.

  Jane tries to breathe as little as possible as she pats the man’s back as he continues to empty his stomach, eventually settling into a short fit of dry heaving before his body finally relaxes.

  “Ugh, paper towels.” He orders and Jane brings them from the kitchen, holding them out for him.

  “Damn it Jane, don’t you see I’m sick!” He yells, “You do it.”

  Jane grimaces, “I can’t, it’ll make me throw up too.”

  “Aaaagh,” He snatches the towels away from her and starts wiping his mouth. “Your mother would have! The only thing you got from her were her looks.”

  “Okay dad.”

  “Don’t even know any Spanish, I Loved when she sang it while making breakfast.”

  “Yep...”

  “Why don’t you sing for me huh?”

  “I... don’t sing dad.”

  “Well you should, you’re just like her after all. Get me my blanket.”

  I’ll fucking smother you with it. Jane thinks as she snatches it from the ground, laying it over her father.

  “Just like her,” He grumbles, “You’re going to leave me just like she did, aren’t you!” He suddenly leans forward and Jane flinches away.

  “The hell? Act like I hit you or something.” He scoffs and lies back down. “Beth’s boy, you’re going to run off with him aren’t you?”

  Yes, she will.

  “No dad...”

  “Call me daddy, like you used to.”

  She doesn’t respond.

  “You promised me you’d never leave me Jane, you promised.”

  She did, when she was five.

  “I’m not going to leave you d-daddy.” She chokes out.

  He scoffs, “Whatever, you better fucking not. I’ll kill that boy if he takes you from me, Beth be damned, Bobby be damned.”

  If he does, that’ll be enough, she’ll be able to snap and kill him in his sleep.

  “No, no you have to stay with me, have to.” He begins to nod off. “Love you Jane.”

  “Love you too.” She lies.