(Not everything is black and white.)
Peter has jumped in front of the bullet before. It was the best thing he's ever done. The only thing that's ever really mattered.
He can do it again.
" Okay, " he whispers. " Okay, I forgive you."
Skip gives a huge, shuddering sigh of relief. He lowers his forehead to the back of Peter's palm. "Thank you," he murmurs, "thank you, thank you. It will never happen again, I swear. I swear."
Peter hopes that Skip is telling the truth. He hopes it so hard his chest aches, even though the air flows freely now, even though he can feel his lungs working as they should.
But if he's honest with himself he knows, even then, that the promise is a lie. He knows now. He knows Felipe was right, and that bad things just happen and that good things are mirages, created to foster just enough false hope to make you drop your defenses, and that they shouldn't be trusted, no matter what promises are made, no matter what privileges are afforded from keeping his mouth shut. He knows — so when, a few weeks after Skip kneels on the floor and begs his forgiveness, he hears the door creak open in the middle of the night, Peter is not surprised at all. He is dazed when Skip slaps him for trying to push him off. He ' s hurt when Skip calls him things, terrible things, things that echo in his head for days afterward, no matter how much Skip apologizes, no matter how often he says it will never happen again. He's exhausted, because even on the nights when the door doesn't open he can no longer sleep, the anticipation almost as bad as the event. He's resigned, because things only get worse when he fights back. Peter is many things, now, but he is never surprised.
Despite Skip's promises to stop, it starts to happen more often. Despite Peter's promise not to tell, he starts to get scared.
Escalation. That's what the books call it. Peter goes to the New York Public Library branch near the apartment after school, too scared to Google anything on his school account, too scared to use the school library for the same reason. In cases of abuse, the aggressor will tend to increase their displays of power and dominance, either as a means of asserting control or because their self-control is slipping.
The next time Skip escalates, Peter forgets not to fight back.
It starts the same as the other nights. Skip on top of him. Skip's breath in his face, his mouth. Peter holds still, like he always does, closes his eyes and waits for it to be done.
But when Skip's hands grope for the edges of his pajamas, Peter panics.
He shoves the hands away. He shouts, "Sto—!"
Then Skip's hands are on his throat.
The bruises around his neck are so bad Skip keeps him home from school for three days, and only sends Peter back when he's had a chance to buy several high-collared shirts, by which time Peter's voice no longer sounds so hoarse.
The limp is harder to hide. Peter tells everyone he sprained his ankle running to catch the bus. No one questions it.
He remembers not to fight the next time. It makes things less painful. It doesn't make them easier.
When the girls are home, Skip talks to Peter normally. If Ned stops by he jokes and teases, makes them pizza rolls, plays the part of good dad so well that sometimes Peter wonders if he ' s imagining things — but which things, he can't tell. Is this smiling, khaki-wearing, dinner-making Skip the real one? Or is it the one who staggers into Peter's bed at night, smelling like whiskey and old sweat and murmuring nonsense while he presses Peter's body into the bed, his face into the pillows?
Which is the real Peter, for that matter? Is he the Peter who goes to school and band practice and decathlon and smiles when Ned or his teachers ask how he is? Who plays with the girls and does the dishes and his homework and pretends, for all the world, like nothing bad has ever happened to him, pretends so hard that sometimes even he believes it? (You act like nothing bad has ever happened to me.)
Or is he the smaller Peter? The Peter who lies awake every night until his body aches with tiredness, listening for the creak of the door, the shuffle of bare feet on carpet—and when he hears them holds his breath, holds himself so, so still, as if he can make himself disappear by refusing to move?
More and more, he feels like the second.
He thinks he can't do it anymore.
He thinks of the girls, and he does.
(Responsibility is not a choice.)
Skip doesn't apologize anymore. He doesn' t cry. When no one else is around, Skip looks at Peter with such disdain Peter feels flayed by it, like Skip is seeing everything underneath, like he is seeing the things Peter hates in himself and hating them just as much. Like Peter disgusts him.
This, at least, Peter understands.
Winter arrives, cold and sharp as a shard of glass.
In December, a blizzard closes the school for three days. The week after that is winter break. The ice is so thick by this point that Ned ' s mother declares it too dangerous for him to leave his apartment, even to visit Peter, and Skip decides to take her lead by proclaiming this a "stay-home break." He buys a host of indoor activities for the girls, asks Peter to help him decorate the apartment for Christmas, and then keeps them all inside for nearly ten days straight.
When Peter gets back to school after New Years, he's so tired he can barely see straight. In third period his English teacher places a pop quiz in front of him and he can't even read it: the letters are a nonsensical jumble.
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