Harry sat up and pushed away the blanket. He looked carefully before swinging his legs off the bed, then stood up. Sometimes there was broken glass on the floor. Not today. He walked to the bedroom door.
Harry's bedroom was a safe place, most of the time. Every now and then he cleared it up and removed the hazards that appeared without explanation. One time there had been a vicious dog chained to the wall beside his dresser. Often he would find that somebody, probably Jack, had snuck in and loosened all the little legs under his bed so that it might collapse when he sat on it. Or there might be a bucket of liquid drain cleaner balanced on top of the door.
He touched the doorknob lightly to guage its temperature before gripping it and turning. Once the doorknob had been very hot and burned his hand, because Jack was standing outside the door holding a candle against the outer knob.
Things were not safe at home. Outside was just as bad. Harry was thirteen years old and small for his age. He lived in a tough neighbourhood, full of dealers and hookers and tough guys. It was best just to get where he was going, walking quickly without looking at anybody. It was best not to linger.
School was okay; he felt safe there. He got a sense of security sitting at his desk with a teacher in charge, who would make sure nothing bad happened to him. But the teacher was a stranger passing through his life for one year only. The teacher was concerned for him but there was not much she could do in the long run. And he could tell she really did not want to get involved in his life; she did not have time, and other kids in her class had problems at home too, and she felt sort of helpless. She was a nice lady, though.
His bedroom felt safer than most places but he could never be sure. There was no lock on the door. Plenty of bad things had happened to him in there, and he worried at night while he waited to fall asleep. And by the morning when he woke up and realized that the whole night had gone by without any trouble, it was too late to relax and enjoy it. It was over, and it was time to tiptoe through another day, watching his step, avoiding confrontation, just trying his best to make it through.
The one time when Harry felt a sense of security was when he was with his father. He would stand facing his father from a few feet away, when everything was calm, and he knew that this was the one constant, unchanging force in his life. A boy had to build his life around his father, and a father had to build a world around his boy, because nobody else was a permanent fixture in that life. Everybody else was like the teacher, who would be gone in a few short months. Harry's father was there for good.
He looked down before walking along the hallway, and saw that the floor was covered in jars again. Jam jars and mustard jars and medecine jars and others, all made of glass. They stood crowded together, filling most of the hallway, and every jar had been broken off halfway up, so that instead of being topped with molded threads for screwing on lids, each jar presented a jagged circle of sharp edges.
Jack had set one of his traps, an obstacle course that Harry would have to cross before he could get to the kitchen and the breakfast things and the security of being near his father. This had happened before and Harry knew to look closely at the floor and see where every couple of feet there were empty spaces with no jars and no glass; spaces just big enough for one of his feet. There was a way through, and Harry had to decide. He could stoop and pick up the jars a few at a time, carefully carrying them to his bedroom window and tossing them out onto the dirt yard below until they were all gone. He knew this was the wrong solution because it would make him late with breakfast and late for school, and Jack would be angry and there would be hell to pay. Or he could walk through, try not to get cut, make it to the kitchen and pretend nothing was wrong, and this would make Jack happy. By the time he got home from school, the jars would be gone, cleaned away to be replaced with some new hazard. Harry chose the latter course; he wanted to keep the peace.
There was another ritual to deal with. On the wall beside the bedroom door was a little shelf that was meant to have arriving mail placed upon it, and lying on it were needles. Syringe tips; little conical pieces of plastic with sharp needles sticking out, all of them dirty. Jack collected them from under the benches in the park across the street, where the addicts gathered at night to shoot up.
Harry picked up the little pile of needles, a dozen of them, and placed them gently inside his mouth. He balanced them on his tongue, careful not to let them jab him and, transferring his attention to his bare feet, he began to walk along the hallway. If he arrived in the kitchen without carrying the needles in his mouth, he would be in big trouble with Jack. Best to avoid that.
Step by step, Harry moved slowly along the hall. The kitchen was only fifteen feet away. He looked ahead and saw the spaces where his feet were meant to go. Seven more steps. He knew his father would be waiting for him in there, waiting for his breakfast, and they would be able to spend half an hour together before Harry would have to leave for school, and this would be the best part of the day. Harry would move around the kitchen, cooking the meal, and he would look at his father the whole time, and feel safe.
Four more steps and he could see part of the kitchen table now. Two more steps and there was his father, sitting at the table, waiting for his breakfast. Harry took a last step and made it safely into the kitchen. He stopped and gently removed the syringe tips from his mouth. He placed them on another little shelf that hung from the kitchen wall for that purpose.
His father looked at him and said, "Morning, son."
Harry walked sideways into the room, facing his father the whole time. He moved along the wall, his back just missing the edge of the counter, until he was next to the fridge. He looked at his father and forced himself to smile. "Morning, Jack," he said.
He made scrambled eggs with bacon and toast. He did it quickly and efficiently, and he never turned his back on his father the whole time.