“It was late one night. Raining. Cold. I was five. My parents said everything was going to be fine… Parents lie.”

“What happened?” Danny asked, turning his head to look at me. We were sitting beside each other, drinks in hand, on his crumbly leather couch that was moulding into his green-yellow backyard.

I kicked my feet up onto the glass patio table, which was unevenly positioned on the damp spring grass. “It’s a really long story.”

“Well, are you gonna tell me or not?”

“I’ll tell it, just hold on one second.” I groped around in my backpack for a cigarette pack. I lit one, exhaled a plume of stinking smoke, and continued, “It was around this time of year, nearly seventeen years ago, when it happened. One night, I was sitting in our basement, teaching my cousin how to play cards, when my mom came running down the stairs, and she-“

“Which cousin?” He asked, curiously, blue eyes staring right at me.

I sighed, exasperated. “Will ya let me tell the story you wanted to hear so goddamn much? Her name was Donna, you never met her. She was a couple years older than me.”

Danny nodded, and I continued, “Anyway, my mom ran down the stairs and she said, ‘listen, kids, dad and I gotta go buy some shit real quick, you two just be good and we’ll be back.’” I paused, thinking for a moment. “Or something like that. I can’t remember it all too great. Well, I didn’t know either of them were home anyway, so I don’t care too much, and Donna and I just kept playing cards and she was asking all these questions….”

“Stop beating around the bush, Macey, c’mon. Tell the story already.” Danny set down his half-empty glass on a stained cardboard coaster, and yawned.

“I’m telling the goddamn story! You’d hear it, if you were actually listening.”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I’m listening.”

I pulled my still-wet hair behind my eyes, the long, soggy bleach-blonde strands soaking through my shirt and into my shoulders. “Okay, well, Donna kept asking when they’d be back and I kept saying I didn’t know. Because I goddamn didn’t. Anyway, a couple hours later, we curled up all nice and cosy in our bed- we shared a bed, then, because she lived with us most of the time- and she slept. But, of course, I couldn’t sleep. So I put on one of my mom’s records that she played all the time, I remember, I can still hear it-“

“What record was it?” I knew he’d ask me that. Danny always asked what record it was.

“Well, it was by Richard Hell. Blank Generation. My mom always loved that guy…” I paused, almost still hearing the spinning record on our beat-up old record player. Then, I continued with the story: “Donna didn’t wake up, even though I was playing the record. It was pretty loud… Well, I didn’t hear the front door open and shut, real quick, and my mom was pretty drunk. She came into the room, and was all stuttering, and asked why I’d taken her record player into my and Donna’s room… And I kept asking, all innocent like the five year old I was, ‘where’s daddy, where’s daddy?’ And she yelled something- I can’t remember- but it woke Donna up and she started to yell…”

I fell silent for a long moment, almost going back in time in my memories. I hadn’t thought about that day in a long time…

“Macey? You okay?” Danny’s voice snapped me back to reality.

“Yeah, just thinking… Anyway, Donna started to yell what was going on, and my mom was yelling something, but it wasn’t really anything because she was drunk… Well, she picked up the record player and threw it and the record all got smashed into about a thousand pieces, and everyone got very, very silent, until my mom said something about she wanted us to go to Donna’s mom’s house, but she was too drunk to drive, and Donna’s mom’s house was about a twenty minute drive away- Donna’s mom was my dad’s sister, by the way. Anyway, she got us, five-year-old me and eight-year-old Donna, into her car, and we were all in our pajamas and all that, and she started to drive in the pouring rain-“

“Damn, this can’t end well…” Danny muttered, as he took a long slug of his drink.

I sighed, ashed my cigarette, and remembered the wet leather seats in the back of my mom’s old car that felt just exactly like Danny’s wet leather couch. “It doesn’t. She crashed the car, right in the passenger side, into a ditch. The window on Donna’s side got all smashed into the dirt, and the glass shattered, too. Her face got-“ I stopped abruptly. Blood, all over the other side of the car, all over the leather. “Her face got pretty smashed up, too. My mom was screaming, trying to climb out of her door even though the car was on its side and her side was in the air… Donna’s side was smashed right into the dirt… I was only shooken up, and crying. Well, I can’t remember too much of the next bit… But I woke up sitting in those stinky waiting areas of a hospital, and my mom wasn’t there, and I was crying for her, and Donna. This lady was there- she worked for the state, or something- and she explained it all to me. My dad had been caught selling drugs that night, and was in jail and all. And Donna… Well, she was dead. All the glass got in her brain and stuff, and her head had been all smashed into the ground.”

“Oh.” Danny stared at the glass table, which was littered with bottles, cans, and ashtrays. “So…”

“So, that’s how I ended up at old Beard’s place. Foster care, and stuff. You know.” I fell silent. That was the end of the story, wasn’t it? That’s all there was.