My hands, scalp, and legs hurt. 

We

Probably 

Just talked/yelled/screamed.

 

My mom hated violence and the word hate. 

 

I slapped A. across the face when we were 16. I hate that I did it. She tells the story like it's a joke, occasionally, 10 years later. A. had taken our shared car and left before I was awake in the morning. We had plans for that summer afternoon and she was gone for hours. I was alone in the farm house (too hot and far to walk anywhere). She never answered my texts. Mom was at work. E. was living with friends in a state that mostly wasn’t real.

​

E. Left the farm house when she was 16/17. My mom and the police visited her, nothing to be done. I visited her too. E. was always smaller than A. and I, but her body of noodles was heavy to drag when it was left in my care with out a primary driver. 

Maybe that is why I remember dragging her now? I wouldn’t have pulled her hair then though. 

 

A. arrived back in our car a few hours later, smiling with a dead phone in her pocket, totally content and oblivious. I was waiting on the picnic table out back when I saw our car pull into the long driveway. We met on the even more broken back sidewalk. I hit A. very hard. She yelled furious in disbelief and stormed inside. I stood outside shaking and crying. 

When A. tells that story now it is usually when someone asks if we always got along so well. Inseparable and incredibly connected, except for… laughs and wide-eyed looks at me. I jokingly defend my younger self.