At fifteen, you still have a few illusions left rattling around in your skull. You think life is about skating through the cracks, keeping your head down, and not making enough noise to get noticed by the people who run the zoo. I wasn’t looking for love, Christ no. I wasn’t looking for commitment. And yet, somehow, I woke up one morning to find the entire front yard plastered with evidence that some girl out there had very different plans for me.
The night before was a hazy, electric dream. I’d snuck out my bedroom window while the family was asleep, my brain humming with cheap acid. It was a party in some kid’s backyard. And there was this girl, Carla. The head cheerleader. She’d been after me for months, and that night, floating in a sea of teenage hormones and chemical bliss, I finally stopped resisting. She was looking to punch her “womanhood” ticket, to lose her virginity to someone who wasn’t on the football team, and I was just the guy standing there when she decided to buy. I just followed. The universe, or maybe just my own dumb dick, said, “Why the hell not?”
I made sure to cover my trail coming back, sneaking into my room, everything back in its place before I crashed hard on my bed. But the morning after? That was something else.
I was still half-tripping when my organic father’s voice, sharp as a drill sergeant’s, yanked me out of bed. His wife, my stepmother, stood behind him, practically vibrating with a sick kind of excitement, as if Christmas had come early and my humiliation was the only gift she wanted. I followed them outside, shirtless and groggy, expecting a lecture for sneaking out.
Instead, I saw the banners. Giant, hand-painted letters screaming my name. Confessions of love taped to the stucco walls of the house. Streamers tangled in the bushes like party-colored spiderwebs. The cheerleader’s handiwork. A grand, public declaration of something I hadn’t even processed yet. She got laid, and now, in her mind, she was a goddamn woman.
And then, right on cue, a red convertible VW Rabbit came screeching down the street. It was packed with cheerleaders, girls hanging out the windows, howling my name like I was some kind of rock star. “I love you, James!” they shrieked, disappearing in a blur of laughter and teenage idiocy.
I turned back to my father. He just stood there, looking… embarrassed. Annoyed. Like a man who knew he was supposed to be mad but couldn’t remember why, or maybe just didn’t have the energy for it. Part of him knew this was something else entirely. But his wife—oh, she was loving every second of it. She was drinking it in.
“You’re lucky they didn’t use anything permanent,” my father finally muttered. “Now clean it up.”
He stomped back inside, defeated. But she lingered. She got close, leaned in with that poison-sweet smirk she always wore when she was about to stick the knife in.
“My son,” she said, her voice a low hiss, “will get better chicks than you.”
Then she skipped away like she’d just delivered the cleverest line of the century.
I stood there, barefoot on the wet grass, surrounded by declarations of a love I didn’t want and a rejection that cut to the bone. My head was still buzzing from the acid, but in that moment, I understood everything with a terrible clarity. This wasn’t about Carla. It wasn’t even really about me.
It was about him. My father. The man who had once been free, but was now trapped, stripped of whatever spine he used to have. She owned him. Controlled him. And what she really hated—what she truly feared—was seeing a version of him in me that she couldn’t yet control. The part that still snuck out at night.
So I pulled the banners down. I cleaned up her goddamn yard. I erased the evidence, but I couldn’t erase the lesson.
That morning wasn’t just a humiliation. It was a warning.
If I stayed, if I let them mold me, I’d end up just like him. A man apologizing for his own existence, walking on eggshells to keep a woman happy who would never, ever be satisfied. I didn’t know exactly where my life was going, but I knew one thing for damn sure.
I wouldn’t be cleaning up her messes forever.
