What Comes After by Steve Watkins

Beatrice’s dad didn’t come home from his office some nights; she thought he might be staying in a motel; she wondered if he was having an affair. Their lives were falling apart, and that meant there was never going to be room for me there again.
    And what did I have here, in North Carolina, at Aunt Sue’s? Redneck field parties, a prisoner’s diet, an aunt who hit me, and the money my dad had made pissed away — stolen — on things he detested.
    The more I thought about it, the more worked up I got. I was too angry to sleep, and lay awake for hours just shaking with rage. I finally got out of bed and got dressed. I went outside and looked at the truck. I kicked the bumper. I even spat on the windshield. Gnarly, maybe sensing my hostility, lifted his leg and peed on one of the rear tires. “Good boy,” I said, and scratched him behind his ears. I paced around the yard and the field. I glared at the truck.
    And just like that, I knew what I needed to do. I marched back into the house and rooted through the giant silverware drawer in the kitchen until I found an ice pick way in the back. Then I flattened every one of the tires on Aunt Sue’s new Tundra, including the spare.
    A small part of me was scared, afraid I’d get caught in the act, afraid of what Aunt Sue would do when she found out. But mostly I felt exhilarated, like I had that night with Beatrice on the seawall. Once I was done, I practically danced over to the barn to tell the goats. Patsy woke up and nodded at me sleepily. The chickens clucked.
    I went back outside and lay with Gnarly in the grass, the way I had my first night in Craven County. I looked at the stars and wished I’d paid more attention when Dad tried to teach me the constellations. The Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, the North Star, Cassiopeia — those were the only ones I remembered. Finally, just before sunrise, I let myself into the house, crept up the stairs, and collapsed on the bed.
    Aunt Sue stormed up to my room a couple of hours later. She didn’t say anything, just grabbed my hair, pulled me out of bed, and slapped me hard across the face again.
    She yelled at me: “I know it was you, you ungrateful little bitch!”
    At first I stood frozen in the middle of the room while the world circled around me, or maybe I was the one doing the spinning while everything else stood stone still. My face burned. My eyes teared up, but I swore I wouldn’t cry. Whatever she did to me now, it had been worth it.
    “You had no right to buy that truck,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even. “Or any of that other stuff. That wasn’t your money. That was my dad’s.”
    “You’re damn wrong about that,” she said, leaning her face so close I could smell her cigarette breath. “Plus you got no say in the matter. And you shit-sure better believe you’ll pay for those tires.”
    “No, I won’t,” I said. I’d been looking for some trace of my mom in Aunt Sue since I got to Craven County — not just in how they looked, but in who they were — and I guessed I’d finally found it. Not the mom I liked to remember, singing Joni Mitchell and reading me books in a big overstuffed chair by a south-facing window in streaming sunlight, but the other one — the one who might turn angry all of a sudden without your knowing why, the one who Dad said hit me when I was five and left a dark bruise. The one who walked out on us not long after that.
    “Oh, you’ll pay, all right,” Aunt Sue said. “I’ll see to that. I will not allow anybody to break bad in this house.”
    She ordered me to stay in my room for the rest of the day, except to use the bathroom. Book brought up a jug of water and a couple of sandwiches he left on a plate outside my door. Both had baloney on them, which I peeled off and threw out the window. At least there was lettuce, and a little cheese.
    I wrote Dad a letter, but I didn’t mention getting slapped again. I thought he’d rather just hear about the truck.
    Dear