Free Either the Beginning or the End of the World by Terry Farish Page B

himself.
    â€œI know a lot,” I say.
    â€œIn Afghanistan they give girls like nine to old men.”
    â€œI’m seventeen in February. You’re barely what, twenty?”
    â€œOld man. Twenty-two,” he says.
    He lifts his head. “You should get out of here.”
    â€œMy mother was sixteen.”
    â€œYou told me,” he says.
    â€œMy father. I am everything to him. I wish I weren’t bad.”
    â€œYou don’t know what bad is. You’re a child.”
    He comes down from his rage. He kneels. He places his hands on my shoulders. I close my eyes. I take in his smell of paint and beer and coffee and skin.
    A charge runs through my body. His hands are warm and very big against the bones of my shoulders and back. “You must have dreams. What do you want to be?”
    I laugh, opening my eyes. “I’m not six. Like, do you want to be a cowboy? I’m already it. I’m a businesswoman.”
    But Luke is back to pacing this space. He has lost interest. What can he say to a schoolgirl?
    â€œWhat are you going to do now?” I say.
    â€œWhat is this, the golden hour?”
    â€œI don’t know what that is.”
    â€œAfter a trauma, like an explosive in your chest, the first hour, the golden time when you have a chance to save somebody. Your only chance.”
    â€œNo,” I say.
    I stand up in the tiny room that is kitchen, living room, bedroom. Where is the gun?
    What I say is, “You need music in here.”
    â€œI don’t speak the same language,” he says.
    â€œAs who?”
    â€œAs any fuckin’ person in this country. Move on, Sofie. Go out with the girlfriends. Or the boyfriends. You got a trail of them.”
    â€œWe do,” I say. “Speak the same language.” I don’t know why I know this. I lean against the counter, I hope provocatively. Luke steps away from me. He opens the cottage door. The footprints I left on the path when I came are covered with snow.
    His outstretched arm grazes my shoulder. Rests.
    â€œThe family’s trying to hook me up with this Odyssey project, some mountain at the end of the world. A vet thing. My family wants the guy I used to be back.”
    â€œOdyssey,” I repeat.
    He drops his arm. His face turns dark. But his eyes don’t turn away. “The old guy’s gone.”

NO RETURN
    The light is on. Not like my father. He never makes it this late. He crashes by eight or nine. But then he never leaves a room with a light on. What could we begin to have to talk about? Tell him, don’t make me sneak any more shrimp? I’ll just take it, okay, ’cause selling your shrimp is my last chance to keep you home.
    When I see the light on, a part of me feels a reprieve and it’s joyous. My father and me. We could go back to the way we used to be. Before all the things that have started spinning. For one brief second, I would be so happy to go back to just my father and me. And Luke? I don’t know.
    Snow blows into my jacket and chills my neck. I open the door.
    â€œWhere are you selling these?” Grim lines cut into my father’s face.
    â€œWhat, Dad?”
    He hauls up a sign I’d made, Sweet Northern Shrimp .
    â€œI sold every one,” I tell him. “It was an experiment.” I keep talking under his grim gaze, hoping it will turn when he understands. “I processed one of the totes. I wanted to see if I could sell them. I undercut Atlantic and sold them all.”
    â€œWhere?” He is clipped.
    â€œRight here. People really like it when it’s processed.”
    â€œAll you put in the ice chest?”
    â€œI wanted to prove to you,” I say again, as if that would explain everything. It is all for my father. Snow falls around us. I imagine the house disappearing. I wait for him to get it. Get how much money we’d made toward paying the bills.
    â€œYou said you were taking it over to Atlantic.” My father