I already checked it for him two times, but he never believes me that it’s locked. He says, “Check the door again,” every time he looks out the window.

I don’t know why some days he thinks the men are coming for him and some days he doesn’t care. I slide off the couch and crawl to the door. My legs work, so I could walk to the door just fine, but sometimes I’m scared if the men show up, they’ll shoot me, so I crawl when I pass the big window.

I check the door. “It’s locked.”

My Daddy looks at me and smiles. “Thank you, son.”

I hate it when he calls me son. The only time he calls me son is when he’s scared of the men who are going to shoot him and then my mom and then me. When he’s scared, he’s really nice to me and makes me help him do things, like push the couch against the door and unplug all the things that have electricity. I’ve been helping him a lot today and he keeps calling me son. I like it better when he doesn’t call me anything and he just sits in his chair all day.

I crawl back to the couch, but before I make it there, I feel my dad squeeze my arm. “They’re here, Asa!” he whispers. He pulls me to my feet and says, “You have to go hide!”

My heart beats real fast inside my chest and I nod.

My dad is scared of the men a lot, but they’ve never actually shown up before. I look out the big window while he pulls me across the living room, but I don’t see anyone. I don’t see the men.

My dad pulls me out the back door and down the steps. He kneels down and grabs my shoulders. “Asa, hide under the house and stay there until I come get you.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to.” It’s dark under there and once I saw a scorpion.

“You don’t have a choice!” he whispers real loud. “Don’t come out until I come for you or they’ll kill all of us!”

He pushes me toward the opening that leads under the house. I fall to my knees and my hands sink into the mud. I don’t look behind me. I crawl as far as I can so the men don’t see me.

I pull my knees up to my chest and I try to be quiet when I cry so the men don’t hear me.

***

I got really cold and hungry and cried until the sun came back up. But my daddy said not to move, so I didn’t. I still haven’t moved. I hope he doesn’t get mad, but I peed on myself while I was sleeping. I haven’t peed on myself while I was asleep since before my last birthday. If the men haven’t killed him yet, he’s going to be so mad at me for what happened.

I can hear them walking around inside the house. I don’t know if they killed my Dad. My Mom was in the bedroom where she stays most of the time, so they might have even killed her, too, if they found her.

But they didn’t kill me, because I did exactly what my dad said. I stayed here and I’m not moving until he comes for me.

Or until the men are gone.

***

I got really cold and hungry and cried until the sun went down again. But I still didn’t move. My daddy said not to, so I didn’t. But my legs don’t feel like they’re a part of my body anymore. My eyes keep closing. I’m not so thirsty anymore because there was a little water coming out of a pipe next to me and I put my mouth on it and drank some of it.

I think the men killed my mom and dad, because it’s real quiet in my house now. I haven’t heard the men walk around since the sun came up, so maybe they left.

I know my dad said not to move, but if my dad were still alive, he would have been back to get me.

But he never came back.

I crawl out from under the house. It’s real dark out now, so that means I’ve been under the house for more than an entire day now. I don’t think the men would kill my mom and dad and then stay at our house for more than a whole day, so I think that means they’re probably gone now and it’s safe for me to go inside.

When I try to stand up, I fall back down. My legs are tingly and my fingers hurt. I crawl up the back stairs and that’s when I realize my clothes have mud all over them. I’m scared to get the floor dirty. I try to wipe some of it on the rug, but I just keep spreading it around on my clothes.

I grab the door handle and pull myself up. I still can’t feel my legs very well, but they’re working now. When I open the door and walk into the house, I can see my father’s dead body. It’s in the recliner in the living room.

I hold my breath. I’ve never seen a dead body before and I really don’t want to see one now, but I know I have to make sure it’s my dad and not the men. I tiptoe into the living room and I’m so scared, it feels like my heart is beating in my neck.

When I reach his chair, I take a deep breath and then step around it to look at him. I’m a little surprised to see that dead people don’t really look all that different from the people who are still alive.

I thought he’d have blood all over him, or be a different color-like a ghost. But he still looks the same.

I lift my finger to touch his cheek. I heard dead people are colder than people who are alive, so I press the tip of my finger into his cheek to see what his skin feels like.

His hand goes around my wrist and he squeezes it. His eye pop open and it scares me so bad, I scream.

My dad’s eyes are real mean when he looks down at my clothes. “Where the hell have you been, boy? You’re filthy!”

I thought he was dead.

He’s not dead.

“Under the house where you told me to go yesterday. You said you’d come get me.”

He squeezes my wrist real tight and he leans forward and says, “Don’t ever fucking wake me up from a nap again, you little bastard! Now go get in the shower, you smell like a goddamn sewer!”

He pushes me away from him. I step back, still confused how he’s alive.

I thought the men came. I thought they killed him.

He squeezes the back of my neck and shoves me until I stumble out of the living room. He said he would come get me, but I don’t think he even remembered I was under the house.

I can feel my eyes start to get warm, so I run out of the living room. I can’t cry in front of my dad or he’ll get really mad.

I walk down the hallway toward the bathroom , but really all I want to do is eat something. My stomach has never been this hungry before. When I pass the bedroom where my mom stays most of the day, her door is open. She’s asleep in her bed, so I walk inside her bedroom to ask her if I can have something to eat. I shake her and try to wake her up, but she just groans and rolls over. “Let me sleep, Asa,” she says.

I don’t like how much she sleeps. She says she can’t sleep very well on her own, so she takes lots of pills that help her sleep better. She says the white ones are for the nighttime, but she takes them when the sun is up sometimes. I’ve seen her do it.

She has some yellow ones, but she says those are her special pills. She says she saves those for the days when she wants to go somewhere else in her mind.

I look at her bottle of pills and I wonder if she would notice if I stole one of the yellow ones. Because I want to go somewhere else in my mind. I don’t want my mind to be inside this house anymore.

I pick up her bottle of yellow pills and I try and try, but I can’t get them open. I’m not very good at reading because I’m only in the first grade, but I finally figure out that the lid says I have to push down and then twist it open.

When I do that, it opens this time. I look at my mom but she’s still facing the other way. I hurry up and take one of her yellow pills and I put it in my mouth and chew it. My face crinkles up because it’s the grossest thing I’ve ever eaten. It’s real bitter and makes my mouth dry. I take a drink of my mom’s water so I can wash it down.

I hope she’s right. I hope this pill takes me somewhere else in my mind, because I’m getting really tired of being in this family.

I put the lid back on the bottle and I sneak out of my mom’s room. By the time I get to the bathroom to take a shower, my legs already feel like they aren’t mine again.