Allison listens intently was one of her favorite things to read on her old report cards.
She took the channel locks, shoved them underneath Kenny’s armpit, angled them up to the chain between the cuffs and cut.
Allison applies the lessons she’s taught was another.
Kristy was the first one to say the word “No.”
Mark and Donna and Quittra and Lily Kay all had negatives to say, but Kristy said the actual word No.
When the late night phone calls started, she wondered.
Kenny never lied.
He was in trouble.
His honesty was welcome, even warm in its own way.
Kristy spoke to Allison still, but it wasn’t friendly anymore. She could have been speaking to a grocery store cashier.
No rang in Allison’s head.
Kristy’s No.
Her own No.
She ran from the bathroom to the kitchen, grabbed the milk.
Milk is good for burns, she remembered.
Allison took one of the good towels that weren’t the good towels anymore and rubbed milk on Kenny’s forearm, as gently as possible.
Effleurage with milk and a smoky towel.
When it got bad, really bad, Kristy was right bad and everyone else was right bad and I’m a month and a half late for my period and that isn’t a cramp bad, Kenny said, and repeated twenty times:
Whatever happens do not call the cops, it will only get worse for you.
He said it drunk.
He said it sober.
He said it softly.
Allison listens intently.
She did not listen to Kristy.
She did listen to Kenny.
She cleared Kenny’s airway first, and checked his pulse and did the best chest compressions she could on a person who was handcuffed to a pipe connected to the toilet.
Allison had thrown open a window because the fumes from the burned plastic shower curtain were probably toxic.
Allison did not call the police, as Kenny had instructed her.
She knew milk was good for burns.
When she was a little girl who listened intently she believed in heaven.
She wanted badly to believe in it now, and to believe that Kenny had gone there, and to believe that he saw her lovingly tend to his burns.
She never ever got a lesson on what to do about bullet wounds, but she knew that if she had gotten that lesson, that the type that were on what remained of Kenny’s forehead were not of the variety that could be fixed.
Love the heavy ones. Great read.
Hard lesson for Allison.