Just Beneath My Skin by Darren Greer

Jake says.
    â€œI don’t know,” I say. “I’m almost nine now. Mom says that’s old enough to do some things.”
    â€œLike?” Jake says.
    â€œWash the dishes. Sweep the floor. Go by myself to the store to buy milk and bread when we need it.”
    â€œThat isn’t man’s stuff,” says Jake. “That’s woman’s stuff.”
    â€œWhat’s man’s stuff then?”
    Jake doesn’t answer right off. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “Working a good job, I guess. Cutting trees or something, or fixing the car or hunting and fishing.”
    â€œI hunt and fish, Jake,” I say. “You’ve taken me hunting and fishing lots a times.”
    â€œAnd girls,” Jake says. “Girls are man stuff. You like any girls yet?”
    I think of the girls in my class in Grade Three. “Melanie Winters has blond hair,” I tell Jake. “And she sometimes gives me her apple when she don’t want it at recess.”
    Jake squeezes my hand again. “That’s man stuff,” Jake says.
    â€œDo you like any girls, Jake?”
    Once upon a time, Jake liked Mom. I remember when I was little they used to hug and stuff on the couch at night in front of the TV , and I used to sometimes sit all warm between them before I went to bed.
    â€œI haven’t got time for girls,” Jake says. “Girls ain’t nothing but trouble anyway.”
    I want to ask Jake how girls could be man’s stuff, and he was a man, and they are nothing but trouble anyway. But I don’t. Sometimes I can tell when Jake is getting tired of talking. Besides, we’re almost at his father’s place.
    â€œYou wait here,” Jake says when we reach the drive to the house. I say yes, and stand and wait for Jake while he goes up to the side door and knocks. Before long a light comes on in a window upstairs, then another light downstairs. The door Jake is standing in front of opens, and I can hear a voice speaking to Jake, though I can’t make out what they are saying.
    I stand there a long while, it seems, and watch Jake standing on the front step talking to his father, who I can’t see ’cause he’s in the house. Soon Jake’s father sticks his head out the door and looks down the driveway at me, but I can’t see him clear either because the light above the steps where Jake is standing is too bright. So I stand there and look up and down the road at all the other houses in Middlebridge.

“JAKE,” DAD SAYS. HE’S BLINKING at me in his robe and bare feet, his hair stuck up and sleep welts running up and down one side of his face. He looks as if he thinks he might still be dreaming. “What are you doing here?”
    â€œI need a place,” I tell him.
    â€œNow? I didn’t even know you were in North River.”
    â€œI got in today,” I tell him.
    He looks past my shoulder into the driveway. “Where’s your car?”
    â€œIt’s a long story.”
    â€œCome on in.” He yawns.
    â€œNathan’s with me.”
    Dad stops yawning. “Where’s his mother?”
    â€œHome.”
    â€œWhy isn’t he with her?”
    â€œâ€™Cause,” I tell him, looking him straight in the eye. “I took him from her.”
    He looks down and around, like I might be hiding Nathan under the steps.
    â€œWhere is he?”
    â€œHe’s by the road,” I say. “I wanted to check to see if it was okay first.”
    Dad leans his head out of the doorway to look at Nathan, who’s standing out under the street light, watching at us. Then Dad pulls back. “Why did you take him?”
    â€œBecause,” I say. “She’s no good for him.”
    â€œAnd you are?”
    â€œBetter than she is.”
    He looks at me in the old way, the way I remember when I lived here and he thought I was doing something wrong or stupid. “It can’t be