Suckerpunch by David Hernandez Page A

before the sink and spat blood down the drain. My dad went into his office and banged the door shut. I went to my room and turned on the stereo and sat on my bed, my ribs throbbing where my dad’s elbow had stabbed me. We were like repelling magnets that pushed against one another to the corners of the house.
    Later on in the afternoon my mom and I crouched down on the kitchen floor and cleaned up the blood with sponges and paper towels. We found two ofEnrique’s teeth. They looked like chips of white marble. She put them inside a plastic Baggie and would carry them in her purse when she took Enrique to the dentist the following week, thinking perhaps they could be glued back in place, as if Enrique were a model airplane with a snapped-off landing gear that could be repaired.
    That night, Fourth of July fireworks cracked and boomed a few blocks from our house. I watched the horizontal blinds of my bedroom window glowing pink and emerald and blue. Every now and then a bottle rocket whizzed overhead and popped like a cap gun. I allowed myself to cry a little and fell asleep with my cheeks still wet. In the morning, Enrique woke me up.
    Asshole’s gone, he said. His mouth was swollen and purple with a crimson cut down the bottom lip. He held my dad’s handwritten note, the lined piece of paper that read: I’m leaving. Don’t look for me.
    Finally, he was out of our lives.
    Or so we thought.
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    This is wrong, you guys, Oliver said. I think we missed our freeway.
    We were driving through a town called Crows Landing, a town—from what we could see from the highway—that was no town at all. Just hills and a high chain-link fence to the west. The hills were blond except where blackened patches from a brushfire swirled through the landscape. It looked like marble cake.
    Why’s it called Crows Landing? Enrique asked while chomping on some Cheetos. I don’t see any crows.
    I flattened out the creases of a map of Central California and followed highway 5 with my finger. I glanced over the blue veins of rivers, followed the black veins of roads and freeways. I found many cities—Los Banos, Santa Nella, Gustine, Newman—but no Crows Landing.
    Come on, Marcus, Ashley teased. I thought you were our navigator.
    Sorry, guys, I said, feeling incompetent.
    Do we need to turn around? Enrique wanted to know.
    No, I said, my eyes racing around the map. I don’t think so.
    Oliver sighed. If Nub was Columbus’s navigator, we’d all be living in Greenland now.
    The backseat erupted with laughter.
    Catface began to meow. Someone’s hungry, Oliver said.
    You think she’ll eat some of my Cheetos?
    She’ll eat anything. She’ll eat her tail if you put ketchup on it.
    I finally found Crows Landing on the map—way north of the freeway that would take us straight to Monterey. Shit, I said. We need to turn around.
    Great, Oliver mumbled.
    I knew it, Enrique said.
    Ashley held one of the Cheetos up to Catface. She hesitated, then leaned forward and sniffed at the orange treat. Come on, Ashley said.
    Catface sneezed and shook her head wildly.
    Great, I’ve got cat snot all over my hand! Ashley held her arm out stiffly as if she were wearing a cast.
    Enrique laughed again and I looked at his tongue, orange from the Cheetos. I looked at his perfect teeth. I couldn’t even tell that he had caps. The dentist had told us that three were knocked out, not two. Wefigured the third one must’ve slid under the refrigerator during the scuffle and was now collecting dust.
    Our dad had been gone for almost a week when I found the third tooth. The dark purple bruise around Enrique’s mouth was now yellow, as if someone had taken a highlighter to it. My mom was ironing one of her blouses and watching a soap opera, her eyes going back and forth from the screen to the board. Enrique was on the couch, his feet kicked up on the coffee table, and I sat across from him with my