It Ends with Us

His hands were like ice, Ellen. Ice.
That’s when I realized that I forgot to give him the blankets I had pulled out for
him yesterday because my mother got home sooner than I expected. The incident in
the garage sort of took over all my thoughts and I completely forgot about him. It had
snowed and iced all night and he had been over there at that house in the dark all
by himself. And now he was so cold, I didn’t know how he was even functioning.
I grabbed both of his hands in mine and said, “Atlas. You’re freezing.”
He didn’t say anything. I just started rubbing his hands in mine to warm them
up. I laid my head on his shoulder and then I did the most embarrassing thing. I
just started to cry. I don’t cry very much, but I was still so upset by what happened
yesterday and then I was feeling so guilty that I forgot to take him blankets and it all
hit me right there on the ride to school. He didn’t say anything. He just pulled his
hands from mine so I’d stop rubbing them and then he laid his hands on top of
mine. We just sat there like that the whole ride to school with our heads leaned
together and his hands on top of mine.
I might have thought it was sweet if it wasn’t so sad.
On the ride home from school is when he finally noticed my head.
Honestly, I had forgotten about it. No one at school even asked me about it and
when he sat down next to me on the bus, I wasn’t even trying to hide it with my
hair. He looked right at me and said, “What happened to your head?”
I didn’t know what to say to him. I just touched it with my fingers and then
looked out the window. I’ve been trying to get him to trust me more in hopes he

---

would tell me why he doesn’t have a place to live, so I didn’t want to lie to him. I
just didn’t want to tell him the truth, either.
When the bus started moving, he said, “Yesterday after I left your house, I heard
something going on over there. I heard yelling. I heard you scream, and then I saw
your father leave. I was going to come check on you to make sure everything was
okay, but as I was walking over I saw you leaving in the car with your mother.”
He must have heard the fight in the garage and saw her leaving to take me to get
the stitches. I couldn’t believe he came over to our house. Do you know what my dad
would do to him if he saw him wearing his clothes? I got so worried for him because
I don’t think he knows what my father is capable of.
I looked at him and said, “Atlas, you can’t do that! You can’t come to my house
when my parents are home!”
Atlas got real quiet and then said, “I heard you scream, Lily.” He said it like me
being in danger trumped anything else.
I felt bad because I know he was just trying to help, but that would have made
things so much worse.
“I fell,” I said to him. As soon as I said it, I felt bad for lying. And to be honest,
he looked a little disappointed in me, because I think we both knew in that moment
that it wasn’t as simple as a fall.
Then he pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and held out his arm.
Ellen, my stomach dropped. It was so bad. All over his arm he had these small
scars. Some of the scars looked just like someone had stuck a cigarette to his arm and
held it there.
He twisted his arm around so I could see that it was on the other side, too. “I
used to fall a lot, too, Lily.” Then he pulled his shirtsleeve down and didn’t say
anything else.