I load my backpack and suitcase into the bed of the truck as my dad cranks the key in the ignition, pulling the choke knob in and out until the engine comes to life. This truck is older than I am. Its red paint is peeling at the edges, revealing the original olive-green finish. The cold makes it harder to start and we’ll have to wait here in the cold before the heater starts to work.

We ride, mostly in silence, through a dozen identical farm-towns. Attempting to make awkward conversation as we rumble past the strip of lighted fast-food marquees that is Bakersfield and up the Grapevine. So much for ever seeing my friends again. I don’t want to move and I don’t want to stay. I wish there was a third option. At least I won’t have to spend every day living in fear. I get a five-day break each week.

We exit the freeway at the Magic Mountain Parkway exit and turn the opposite way from the amusement park. It’s late, but I can hear the roar of the coasters in the distance. The exhilarated screams of their passengers. I hope I get to go there while I’m living here. Maybe I could get a season pass.

The tiny, one-bedroom apartment is nearly bare inside. Nothing hangs on the flat-white walls. It’s just a couch, a wooden table with four matching chairs, a TV, and a bed in the other room. I’ll be sleeping on the couch. Technically, we live in Canyon Country, but they call this whole area Santa Clarita. It’s like five towns, all mashed together.

Each day, my dad leaves for work at seven in the morning and gets back around nine at night. I’m left on my own. To do my homework, he said. It only takes me one day to do all of my assignments for the week. The rest of the time, I just pace restlessly around the empty apartment or watch TV. I’m not allowed to call any of my friends back home. We don’t have cable or anything, so it’s just the network channels that come in from LA. Television in other cities is always so weird and foreign, but also the same. You don’t recognize any of the local personalities, but they’re all saying and doing the same thing. They play the same shows, but instead of coming on at six, syndicated episodes of The Simpsons are on at seven. Watching TV out of town kind of feels like peeing at another school.

By the time I get back to Evergreen on Tuesday, I’ve already finished reading my history and Spanish textbooks. Not just the chapters I was assigned – the entire book.

“That’s pretty impressive. You must really like these subjects, eh?”

“Meh, not really. I’m just bored from being stuck in that apartment all day. It’s either watch daytime TV or read my books.”

“I can let you take the final right now if you want. You could test out of the freshman-level classes and start taking more advanced classes right now.”

“Do I get full credit for these classes if I do that?”

“No, you’ll just get to do work that might be more interesting and challenging.”

If that’s the case, why bother? I’ll just continue taking the weekly tests with the information I already know. I borrow a few more books from the classroom to read on my own. I can get English credit for recreational reading as long as I write a book report. Salinger, Hemingway, Steinbeck. That should be enough to last me until next week.

At the therapy appointment, we spend the first half doing basically what we did last week. My mom complains about me and laments her bad fortune as a mother while I sit, arms-crossed, looking away, refusing to participate in the so-called discussion. For the second half, the doctor asks my parents to wait outside, in the lobby, while he talks to me privately.

“First, I want to let you know that everything you tell me in here is just between us. Unless you say you’re going to hurt yourself or someone else, I won’t share our conversation with anyone. You can trust me.”

I sit, sunken into the plush, white sofa, with my arms still folded over my chest, refusing to speak.

“You know, I can’t help you unless you tell me what’s going on.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Well, your family seems to think you do. Why do you think that is?” I don’t respond. The clock on the wall ticks away in slow motion. Eighteen-hundred seconds. That’s how long I stare at the wall, refusing to make eye contact with this guy, until I can finally get out of this disgusting place.

I hate eye contact. It hurts to look into someone else’s eyes. All of their anger, pain and lies, they’re right there in the eyes for everyone to see. If I can see this in everyone’s eyes, they must be able to see it in mine. It would be nice if my parents would let me have sunglasses, so I could avoid having people look at my eyes.

For the next few weeks, it’s the same thing. Drive three hours on Wednesday night. Finish all of my homework on Thursday. Sit by myself in the apartment for four days, eating microwave dinners and watching the same couple of movies on repeat when there’s nothing good on TV. Drive three hours on Monday night. School, therapy, repeat.

Roberta has started to let me do two weeks of assignments per week, so I can catch up for the semester I failed. It still only takes one day to get through everything. It isn’t hard to read a chapter and regurgitate the information on the test. None of these classes teach practical skills or critical thinking. Rote memorization and replication is all it is. Same as it’s been since grade school. What good is learning anything without also being taught how to apply it? Memorizing names and dates in history is silly without knowing why people did what they did. And don’t get me started on algebra.

Soon, my dad starts letting me go to work with him for part of the day. Usually in the morning. We ride together to Mountasia and he tells me I have to sit in the break room or back office and read or do homework. Mostly, I sit at the break-room table with a book open in front of me and eavesdrop on the employees as they come in and out, gossiping about one another. For a half-hour or so, before he takes me back to the apartment on his lunch break, I get to play arcade games.

My dad’s employees have started to notice me hanging around. They call me “Little Mike”, because I look like a younger, skinnier version of my dad. We even have the same haircut. People have always made fun of me for being so skinny. It’s not like I don’t eat. I just don’t gain weight. It doesn’t seem right, though, to make it taboo to say anything about the weight of a fat person, while everyone, including teachers, parents, even fat people, can laugh about how thin I am and it’s totally okay. The haircut is because my parents make me get it done this way.

They’re all older than me, the employees. By at least two years. Most of them are eighteen or nineteen. They actually talk to me. Not in a way that feels like they’re judging me or trying to spy on me, but because they’re actually interested in what I have to say. They ask about my friends back home and what I like to do for fun. Nobody tells me the things I like are stupid or a waste of time. Aside from teasing me by calling me “Little Mike”, they don’t make fun of me or call me names. Maybe it’s just because I’m the boss’ kid.

The assistant manager, Kim, is always extra nice to me. She gives me candy and acts silly, like a teenager, even though she’s twenty-four. Her husband is Phil, he works for CHP and drives a Mustang. Her sister works at Rattler’s Restaurant. She says it funny, though. “Rat-lers”. With a long pause between the syllables. She’s obsessed with frogs. She has a frog tattoo on her shoulder and gives me a necklace with two silver frogs on a little green ball. I know all this because she tells me. It’s weird, being talked to like an adult.

Kim can tell I’m bored with sitting in the office all the time, so she asks my dad if I can go to lunch with her and some of the other employees. Surprisingly, he actually lets me go. I’ve never been allowed to do much on my own or with my friends. I wanted to go to the fair this year, but I wasn’t allowed without parental supervision. It’s not safe, they told me.

We go to Baja Fresh for giant burritos. I get the spicy beef, but Kim and Lindsay get the black bean and vegetable burrito. They’re both vegetarians.

“You mean like those weird hippies?” I ask, parroting something I’ve heard since childhood, while I set little plastic cups of salsa on the table in front of us.

They laugh and tell me not all vegetarians are hippies. Not all hippies are vegetarians. For Kim and Lindsay, it’s about loving animals. All animals, not just the ones people think are cute. They tell me about the farms where the meat comes from and how the animals are tortured and abused, kept in tiny cages, full of their own shit. They tell me that the sick animals are ground up and fed to the healthy animals. I didn’t know that I had a choice not to eat meat. I’ve always been made to eat whatever my mom makes: microwave pizza, frozen lasagna, chicken taquitos. I remember sitting at the table for hours one night, refusing to eat the disgusting mush that was supposed to be taco salad, not allowed to leave the table until I did. Soggy Fritos, black olives, and oily ground-beef, drowned in ranch dressing. Just thinking about it brings an awful taste to my mouth. It could be this burrito, too, now that I know where it came from.

On Tuesday, after school, I tell my parents that I want to be a vegetarian.

“Well, that’s stupid.”

“Why?”

“You have to eat meat to be healthy.”

“You don’t have to. Lots of people are vegetarians and they’re healthy.”

“Humans are supposed to eat meat. That’s why we’re at the top of the food chain.”

“That’s an antiquated way of thinking. We have so many options now compared to thousands of years ago. Agriculture.”

“I’m not going to make any special meals for you. You’ll eat what we have and like it.”

“Kim and Lindsay are vegetarians, and they’re plenty healthy.”

“Kim! Kim! Kim! I’m sick of hearing about fucking Kim!” My mom screeches. “Maybe you want her to be your mom instead?!”

“I wish.”

She slams my head into the kitchen cabinet and storms off to her bedroom, whining something incoherent about how she doesn’t deserve this. My dad smacks me in the back of the head and follows her down the hall.

At therapy, my parents wait outside for the whole session while the doctor pressures me repeatedly to confess everything to him. So I do. I tell him about how I still like to smoke when I can. I tell him about the daily physical and emotional abuse. I tell him how much I hate my life. It would be a whole lot better for everyone, especially me, if I’d never been born.

The next morning, my mom yanks me out of bed and drags me across the floor. I think I’m dreaming at first, then snap out of it to realize she’s screaming at me, calling me a liar. She called Zimmerman and he told her everything. She shoves a bar of soap in my mouth and holds my chin, clamping my teeth around it. I gag. I’m used to the taste of soap, it’s been the standard, if not cliche, response to swearing or taking the lord’s name in vain for as long as I can remember.

“How dare you tell people I’m abusive!” she shouts, slapping my face and sending the soap flying to the floor. “You’re going to go back in there next week and you’re going to tell him you made it all up.”

She starts sobbing, “Why do you make me do this to you? I do everything for you. We give you everything. Why are you so unappreciative?”

“You only give me things so you can take them away later as punishment.” That’s earned me another slap across the face. Her wedding ring cuts my temple and blood crawls down my cheek like a viscous tear.

“You want to see punishment?” she says, gathering up my game controllers and computer keyboard. Like I care. In a few more hours, I’m out of here for another week. I wonder who she takes her psychotic rage out on when I’m gone. Probably my youngest brother. He’s the most like me. I hope I never end up like my parents.