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then I’d stop walking and stare. More than once, Dad ran into me because I just stopped midstride on my way to the door.
    In February I got up the nerve to look at T.J.’s stuff again. I crept through the living room, past Dad’s recliner, around the table full of Dad’s magazines, and over to the hutch in the corner. But when I opened the top drawer, the bag wasn’t there. I waited for a night when I knew Dad would be out, and then I went through every drawer and rifled through the stuff on the shelves.
    Over spring break, I searched the whole house — nothing.
    No bag, and none of the stuff that was inside. No sign of the flag from T.J.’s coffin, either.
    A few weeks ago, the pictures of T.J. that had been scattered around the house disappeared. I came home and they were gone. All of them. Like he’d never even existed. Like after Mom died. And I instantly knew I’d left some clue, something out of place or the dust disturbed. Something to tell Dad that I’d gone looking for the bag. And his removing everything else was a clear message.
    For about a week, I stewed and avoided Dad. Then I started searching the whole house, drawer by drawer. I started outside: the storage shed, the garage. Then I worked my way from the kitchen out, searching every drawer and cupboard and box in the downstairs.
    Last Friday I decided to check the upstairs again. But before I’d even opened a door, I heard Dad’s car. He caught me in the living room near the stairs. He didn’t come right out and say he knew I’d been up there, but his look made it pretty clear. And pretty clear that if he ever caught me up there again, I was screwed.
    So many times I tried to figure out how to bring it up, how to ask about the bag. Every time, I chickened out. Friday, when he caught me, I actually got half a question out. But he got in my space so fast, warned me off without saying a word. Stared me down. And I wussed out. Like always.
    All weekend he’d rocket up to high alert out of nowhere. He’d jolt up out of his chair or stalk into the kitchen, ready, for whatever he thought he’d see. If I was in there, he’d stare for a minute before standing down, fading back into the living room. If I was down in my room, I’d hear him hovering near the door at the top of the stairs or on the landing near the laundry room, listening. I started keeping some music or a movie on, just so he’d have something to hear.
    It felt like every time I breathed, he was on me, and I wasn’t doing
anything.
Every time he shifted his jaw or came anywhere near me, I thought he might preemptively toss me into a wall. This morning I jetted out the side door early, knowing that if I stayed one more minute, I wouldn’t get away.
    All the way to school, it all churned and curdled in my stomach.
    And then there was Pinscher — one day, one shirt, one asshole move too many.
    I pull the scrap from my pocket.
    Army Sgt. Theodore James Foster Jr.
Black on white, and now with rusting blood around the edges, where my hand didn’t cover it.
    T.J. would have ripped that shirt off Pinscher and fed it to him.
    That’s what I should have done: I should have made him swallow it, name by name.

T HE SHOWER GOES A LONG WAY TO WASHING AWAY THE LAST of the fight. But everything feels heavy and tired after, like the wet cement has spread from my hand through the rest of me.
    The recliner creaks in the living room above. When T.J. left for Basic, we were both still in our old rooms upstairs, across the hall from each other, down the hall from Dad. And for a while, even after it was clear T.J. wasn’t moving home anytime soon, I stayed in my old room. But at the start of sophomore year, I moved down here to the basement apartment. Should have done it sooner: with its own bathroom, the kitchen at the top of the stairs, and the side entrance through the laundry room in between, I can go for days without actually seeing Dad.
    I flick on my desk lamp. The circle of light spotlights the