Saved.

"Are you drunk?" My mother asked disdainfully, as if the answer was known, only needing to be confirmed. He still held the bottle in his right hand.

"Don't fucking worry about what I'm doing," My father snapped, stumbling as he walked. My young, tired eyes, kept awake by their shouting, peeked around the corner and watched.

I often watched when they fought like this. I used any chance to take in information, to use it later. It was something I learned early on that I needed to do- and maybe, it was also a curse on me.

"Drinking isn't going to fix this, David! What is wrong with you? You need to be there for our son. For both of our sons."

"Don't tell me what I need to do, Julia! You think it was fucking easy to see him like that?!"

"Of course it wasn't! You don't see me drinking about it!"

"Bitch," he muttered under his alcohol-infused breath, and she mumbled back something indiscernible in Spanish. I took a small step forward, and that was my mistake. The slight creaking of the floorboard turned both their heads toward me.

"Leo, go to bed, mijo," Mom said gently, wiping away her tears as if I hadn't already noticed them.

"What the fuck are you doing out here, huh?!" Dad demanded.

"I-I'm sorry-"

"Are you? Are you sorry, kid?!" He stepped closer, and I was thankful for the short hallway separating us. "What the fuck are you doing up? Do you know this is your damn fault?!" I felt the tears coming down hard, and that day was when I learned to stop them for many years. What could I say? I was only a kid.

"It wasn't his fault, David!"
"If Marco hadn't gone to pick him up from that stupid fucking guitar lesson, this wouldn't have happened."

"You can't blame Leo for this."

"Is Marco going to be okay?" I asked quietly. The sympathy in my mother's puffy eyes was painful to see. I hadn't been there- they didn't let me. I thought that twelve was old enough for them to allow me to see the hospital and the details following the accident, but they did not. One less image to stick to my brain like glue.

"Things are going to be different now," Mom told me, barely above a whisper.

"Yeah, you fucking think?! 'Different' is what you wanna call it? He's never gonna walk again, because Leo has this goddamn music pipe dream!" The shock of his words made me freeze for just a moment. He threw the bottle in my direction, shattering glass and whiskey across the thin wall.

At this age, it was becoming clear that not everyone's father was this way. Mine was different, and not in the way a child would want his father to be. Our current circumstances were a match, and I was the fuel causing him to explode. I ducked out of the way just in time to avoid being hit with fragments of glass, locked the door, and went back to bed, ignoring my parents' screaming at each other as it continued echoing through the dark.

__

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather be hanging out with the guys?" Allie asked as she drove me, Chloe, and Emma to the mall, a few days after the radio show. I didn't spend time with the girls much outside of the band, but Emma had asked me to join them- likely so she wouldn't be third wheeling with two best friends.

"Am I interrupting girl time?" I teased.
"Honestly, I spend so much time with my brother, I'm not sure if I remember what 'girl time' is," said Chloe. The mall was overcrowded, and we found a parking space that was a pretty far walk from the entrance.