The Favor by Megan Hart Page A

me.”
    Gabe leans out the window. If he falls, he won’t just break, he’ll splatter. He stretches to pass her the can, his belly pressing the windowsill. It takes hardly any time at all for them to stretch the string tight.
    Gabe can’t sit here all day fooling around with it. It’s almost time for lunch, and he has to sneak down the stairs to go outside before Mrs. Moser calls for him. He closes the window and the curtains.
    He’s at the top of the stairs when he gets caught. He didn’t know his dad was home from work that morning, so when the old man’s voice slithers out from the shadows of his dark bedroom, Gabe’s caught like a mouse snatched up by a snake.
    “Come in here.”
    Gabe’s feet don’t want to obey, but he makes himself go in, anyway. He’s no longer tired from being woken up last night and then being unable to fall back to sleep. Now he’s wide, wide awake.
    Dad’s in bed, but not in his pajamas. His curtains are shut tight, the blind drawn. He’s propped on his pillows, on top of the blankets. The small light clipped to his headboard is on, but the rest of the room is dark. In front of him is a box full of pictures and letters.
    “You’re supposed to be outside.”
    “I know,” Gabe says. “I came in because—”
    His father waves a hand at him. “Shut up. I don’t care. Come over here, closer.”
    Gabe does, thinking he could scream if he has to. Last night and all the nights before that, there wasn’t anyone to hear him, so all he had was the ability to fight. Some night, he thinks, he’s going to be too tired to do that anymore. But today Mrs. Moser is downstairs, and surely, if he screams, if he runs, she’ll hear him. She’ll help him...won’t she?
    The old man doesn’t touch him. He just looks at him. Hard, and for a very long time. No smile, nothing that looks like anything nice. He stares until Gabe starts to sweat.
    “She’s the one who wanted kids, you know that? She wanted ’em, I didn’t. I said, ‘Marlena, why do we gotta go and mess up a good thing?’ We had money, we could go out to dinner whenever we wanted. Nice car. I could buy her as many pretty dresses as she wanted. But no, she wanted kids, she said. So she got ’em. And then what? She found out they were as much a pain in the ass as I’d told her.”
    Gabe says nothing. It’s nothing new; he’s heard this story before. Or ones like it. The details change sometimes, but the stories are almost all the same.
    “ You made her sick. You know that?”
    Gabe nods, hoping that if he agrees the old man will let him get out of here.
    “She got sick, and now she’s gone.” His dad heaves a heavy sigh that turns into a choking cough.
    He’s crying. Gabe looks away. He’s seen his father cry before, that’s nothing new. Grown-ups aren’t supposed to cry, he thinks. He won’t when he’s a grown-up. He won’t now, no matter what.
    “This is your fault, you remember that. You just remember it, Gabriel.” Gabe’s dad looks up at him with red eyes, his nose snotty. “And you better understand something else, too. If it’s not you, it will be one of them.”
    Gabe jumps as if someone punched a fist through his chest and grabbed his heart. His stomach is a stone that hits the floor. He can’t breathe or speak; he can’t even move.
    “So you just remember that, ” the old man says. “Now you get out of here before I take it into my head to give you the belting you deserve.”
    Gabe does as his father says, making it only halfway down the stairs before his stomach heaves up and out of his throat, and he has to run for the bathroom to lose his breakfast. Mrs. Moser finds him there, crouched over the toilet. She doesn’t scold him. She wets a cloth and puts it on the back of his neck, and despite his every intention, Gabe can’t stop himself from crying.
    It won’t be him. It won’t be him. It won’t be him.

THIRTEEN
    AT FOURTEEN, JANELLE still wore her hair in a ponytail and slept with her