Moonglow by Michael Griffo

touch her. I do know that I wanted her out of my sight, which is why I gave her a jump start and shoved her right into my father’s waiting arms.
    Thanks, Dad! Come to my friend’s rescue and leave your daughter to fend for herself. He must have heard us arguing and was on his way to break up the fight or stand there all fatherly-like and think that his presence was going to scare me into submission. Think again. The only thing he did was catch Jess before she fell over the banister and crashed onto the stairs below. If that had happened it wouldn’t have been my fault, although I’m sure everyone would have thought it was. So I shoved her? She’s the one who lost her balance and stumbled. Not that it mattered because my father saved her from toppling over to her death or from spending a lifetime cruising around town in a wheelchair, while at the same time he stared at me with fear in his eyes. But not just fear by itself, fear mixed with knowledge. Looking into his eyes was like crawling inside my father’s brain; he knows something is going on, and he’s afraid of it, more afraid than I am if that’s possible. Even if I hadn’t seen his face I would have known he was frightened, because after he drove Jess home he didn’t come back into my room to yell at me, and I was up waiting.
    I was waiting for Jess to yell at me too, but that never happened. She avoided me all morning, and during geometry her eyes were fixated on anything else but me. At Mrs. Gallagher—our new teacher who replaced old Mr. Winslow who retired last year—as if she were giving out instructions on how to survive a nuclear holocaust; at the back of Danny Klausman’s head like she was trying to count his dandruff flakes—impossible, I’ve tried; or at her test as if she understood the questions.
    I kept stealing glances and felt my stomach spin out of control again watching her pencil fly across her test, hearing the scratching sounds as she filled in the blanks with sentences, circled answers to multiple-choice questions. She didn’t look baffled at all; she looked nothing like me. I looked down at my test page, and I saw nothing that made sense. It was like staring into a mirror.
    After we handed our tests in, I heard Jess brag to Danny that she had done really well on the test because she had had a breakthrough last night. A breakthrough that she didn’t bother sharing with me. And that is why I want to break her skull into two separate pieces.
    When the bell rings signaling the end of class and the three-minute countdown to the next, I clutch the back of my own skull. My thoughts are irrational I tell myself. These images of violence that are popping up in front of my eyes with more frequency and in Blu-ray detail are not normal. I want them to stop; I need to make them stop before I start believing full-time that they are normal, but I don’t know how. How can I make something disappear that appears without warning? How can I make something stop when I don’t know how it starts?
    â€œDominy, are you okay?”
    Mrs. Gallagher’s question does what I couldn’t; she makes me stop thinking.
    I look up, and I see an image of my mother looking down at me. Her beautiful features marred by worry and concern. I’m about to say, “No, Mom, I’m not okay,” when Mrs. Gallagher’s face comes back into focus. The only thing they have in common is their hair color, and that’s not enough to get me to tell the truth.
    â€œYes, I’m fine.”
    When I’m asked the same question a few more times by my friends and some other teachers, I repeat the lie, and by lunchtime I almost believe it. Of all days, Archie has to skip lunch to attend an impromptu football playbook meeting, which means Jess and I are left without an intermediary. She’s already seated and eating, so I tentatively place my tray on the table and sit across from her. I don’t