The Quiet Game

(sensitive content: implied abuse)

“Let’s play a game.”

Ryan’s voice is low and quiet, a whisper through the inky blackness of Finn’s bedroom. The room is only illuminated by a small sailboat-shaped nightlight, its blue threads of light sewing shadows on the walls.

“The quiet game,” she says, “you remember that one, right?”

Finn nods. It’s the same game Ryan asks him to play at night sometimes. Hide in the closet. Cover your ears. You only win if you stay quiet. Finn pretends to zip his lips shut and throw away the key. In the near-darkness, Ryan’s smile is eerie. 

She ruffles his hair, ignoring his soft hum of protest. 

Ryan seems nervous. Anxious. She rummages through Finn’s things, opening his closet and tossing clothes into a backpack. 

“Here’s the next part of the game,” Ryan whispers. “Grab your toys and go wait for me by the car.” 

Finn doesn’t like this game. It makes his heart race like in hide-and-seek. His shoes crunch on the gravel on his way to Ryan’s beat-up Hyundai.

Cicadas screech in the nearby trees, mingling with the persistent calling of frogs and the high-pitched whining of mosquitoes.

Ryan doesn’t turn the car on. Not right away. She pushes it down the driveway and says the car is playing the quiet game too. 

“Where are we going?”

“Just a little adventure.” Ryan’s voice shakes. 

“Is Daddy coming too?”

Finn doesn’t know why the question makes Ryan cry. 

____

The sun is warm and blinding, a pulsing yellow beach ball rising slowly into the sky. Daybreak. Finn often wonders what breaks in daybreak. Is it the night? Or is it the sun, cracking open like an egg to spill its yolk over the horizon? 

Ryan isn’t nervous anymore. She turns the radio all the way up and rolls down the window, her hand flowing gracefully with the movement of the wind. Her long brown hair whips with the breeze. 

Finn holds a stuffed shark, squeezing its face until it distorts. 

“Did you know sharks don’t - they don’t - sharks don’t have bones?” He asks. Ryan tips her head back to look at him through the rearview mirror. He catches his reflection in her sunglasses. 

“That’s right, kiddo,” she says with a smile. “Sharks and rays have cartilage instead of bones. They’re called chondrichthyes.” 

“Chonda-what?” 

Ryan’s laughter is accompanied by the rapid lighting of a cigarette. A short inhale and a cloud of smoke. 

“Never mind.” 

____

The highway blurs ahead, all shimmer and haze. The red of the desert is bleached by the high noon sun. There’s music playing but it’s hard to hear over the rush of air from the open windows.

Ryan’s hand slides towards the backseat, letting Finn’s small fingers entwine with hers. There are tattoos on her fingers, symbols that mean nothing to Finn but must mean something to Ryan. 

“Can we get McDonald’s?” Finn asks. His stomach rumbles in time with the engine. 

“We have snacks in the car.”

“But I want McDonald’s!”

“So do I, kiddo, but that’s expensive and we already have snacks in-”

“Shut up, Ryan!”

Ryan rips her hand away, lips pressing into a thin line. 

“Hey! Don’t talk to me like that!”

Finn doesn’t say what he wants to say. He doesn’t say: Daddy does. 

“And it’s ‘Mom’, not ‘Ryan’. Christ.” 

____

Ryan stops at McDonald’s after all. She dips fries into a milkshake while watching Finn play in the play place. 

Finn makes a friend in the ball pit. His name is Jack and he says he was so big when he was born that he ripped his mom’s vagina. Finn doesn’t know what that means but it sounds funny so he laughs. 

They crawl through the bright plastic tunnels, pretending to be spies on a secret mission. Their sticky hands leave greasy prints on the smooth purple surface.

“Did you know bees kill – bees… bees kill more people than sharks?” Finn asks Jack. 

“I’m allergic to bees,” Jack says. 

“And they swim - keep swimming - so they’re not drownded.” Finn picks at a scab on his knee with dirt-crusted fingernails.

Jack watches him wide-eyed, like Finn is the smartest person he’s ever met. 

“C’mon, kiddo. Let’s get back on the road.” Ryan finishes her milkshake. She tosses the cup in the garbage along with the remnants of their burgers and fries. 

“No! 5 more minutes!”

“No.”

“One more minute!”

“No, Finn. Now.”

“One more second!”

Ryan’s eyes roll back so far Finn can see the whites. 

“Fine,” she says. “One. Now, let’s go.” 

Finn pouts, beaten at his own game. 

____

Finn likes the motel they stop at. It’s bright blue, as blue as the sky. There’s a mural painted on the side, birds of paradise, yellow petals extending like crowns from beak-like stems. It has a pool that’s painted pink. Little bugs flit over the water’s glassy surface. 

The motel bathroom is tiled in white and green and the lights flicker like there’s a ghost in the walls. Finn turns the lights on and off to communicate with it. Morse code.

“Wanna give Mom a makeover?” Ryan’s voice is high and lilting, excitement steeped into the syllables. She holds out a pair of scissors and a box of hair dye. She turns some music on and they sing along to Don’t Stop Believin’ as Finn rubs colourful paste into her hair. 

Ryan rinses her head in the sink and she already looks different. Her long brown hair is now short and blonde, choppy where it was Finn’s turn with the scissors. 

“It’s a new start, baby,” she says as she cuts Finn’s hair. She keeps snipping away at it until it’s so short he can almost see his scalp. 

The night is hot and humid, the air so thick you could swim through it. There’s the smell of cigarettes wafting through the open door. Ryan is out on the balcony in a tank top and pyjama shorts, leaning against the railing, rocking gently as she smokes. Her bare skin glows in the flickering yellow lights lining the Paradise Motel. She’s talking to herself, wiping at her eyes. 

“Ryan?” Finn calls. The corded muscle of Ryan’s shoulders ripples as she tenses. There are angry bruises on her arms, painting her skin the colour of a sunset. 

“Go to bed.” Ryan sounds exhausted. She folds her arms on the railing, flicking ash off the balcony. 

“What’s wrong?”

A harsh bark of laughter pierces the heavy, muggy air. The tip of Ryan’s cigarette burns a bright cherry red, spirals of smoke curling into the dark sky, soaring towards the stars. 

Ryan tips her head to look at Finn. Her eyes are dark in the low light, deep black holes sucking Finn into their abyss. Holding him there. The thin smile she offers does nothing to dull their gravity. 

“Nothing, baby.”

The Paradise Motel is loud at night. There’s the sound of revving motorcycles, distant arguments, and loud rap music. Ryan pulls him into her warmth but it’s more suffocating than comforting, their bodies sweat-slick in the seams where they meet. 

Finn falls asleep to Ryan’s deep breathing and a man’s loud, slurred voice calling someone a dumb fucking slut.

____

“I was thinking we get an RV,” Ryan says. 

They’re on the road again and it’s dark and anonymous. No faces in the headlight haze. 

“That could be fun, right? Just hop from town to town? We hate it, we leave. Simple as that.” A lit cigarette smokes between her fingers, coils of grey escaping towards the open window. 

“Can Daddy come too?”

Ryan takes a long drag, her expression souring as if he’d just uttered a curse word. 

“I dunno, Finny.” She exhales heavily, massaging the spot between her eyes with marked-up fingers. “It might just be us for a little while.” Her smile is fragile, porcelain. “Our little adventure, remember?” 

____

Ryan’s phone won’t stop ringing. She never answers it, letting it vibrate endlessly in the cupholder. She smokes more when it rings, and less when she turns it off, turning up the radio as if to fill the vacant space left by the incessant noise. 

Finn’s hands are coated with Cheeto dust and sugar. He licks them clean between each reach into the bags of chips and candy Ryan got from the gas station. When Ryan tells him that’s disgusting, he only extends his stained tongue in her direction. 

The truck stop has a playground. Ryan pushes him on the swings and spins him on the merry-go-round. She spins him so hard he flies off and they both fall to the mulchy ground, clutching their stomachs as they laugh and laugh and laugh. 

____

The sun rises and sets, rises and sets, over the hood of Ryan’s Hyundai. Finn loses track of how long they’ve been driving until they pull into a campground. 

The campground has a pool but it’s much dirtier than the one at the Paradise Motel, streaks of sand lining the tiles and bits of dead grass floating on the surface. Finn plays in it with some of the other campground kids, twins named Sara and Amanda. Two little blonde girls with matching floral swimsuits. They play sharks, circling each other with their hands held up like fins. 

Ryan sits on a lounge chair by the pool’s edge, passing a funny-smelling cigarette back and forth with a woman who introduces herself as Haley, Sara and Amanda’s mom. Finn catches broken pieces of their conversation as he plays. 

“... asshole… drunk… couldn’t stay any longer,” Ryan’s voice says.

“Sounds like a dickhead.”

“Tell me about it.”

Amanda catches up to Finn and pretends to take a bite out of him. Finn squeals and accuses her of cheating. 

Sara and Amanda come to Finn’s cabin that night. They make popcorn in the microwave and watch movies on the grainy TV. The cabin is uglier than the motel was. There are no pretty colours and birds of paradise here, only old floral wallpaper and stained carpet worn down to the wood. 

Ryan and Haley are out on the balcony, bottles littering the table where their bare feet are propped up. Ryan’s toenails are bright red and her flip-flop tan lines are pale against bronzed skin. 

The screen door screeches when Finn opens it.

“Ryan! Can we watch Jaws?” Finn calls. 

“When you’re older,” Ryan replies. It’s the same answer he always gets but Finn lets out an overdramatic sigh anyway. 

“You’re the worst.”

He lets the door slam behind him. Ryan and Haley’s voices drift through the screen as he relays the bad news to Sara and Amanda.

“He’s obsessed with that damn movie,” Ryan tells Haley. “No idea where the whole shark thing started.”

“Sara’s thing is police officers,” Haley says. “I swear to God if my kid ends up a narc…” They both erupt into raucous laughter. 

____

Soft morning sunlight glitters on the quarry like shattered glass. Ryan and Finn are skipping stones by the rocky shore, scratching at fly-bitten skin, their sun-drenched forms casting shadows over the water. 

“You like it here, right?” Ryan asks. Her stone skips twice before sinking into dead, stagnant water. 

Finn offers a noncommittal shrug. 

“I like Sara and Amanda,” he says. 

“What would you think about sticking around for a while?”

There’s the buzz of cicadas and flies and the sound of calling birds. Finn’s stone doesn’t skip at all, simply falls into the water with a lacklustre plonk. 

“What about Daddy?”

Ryan searches for more flat rocks. She’s on her hands and knees, sorting through them, making a little pile of stones she deems useable. The bruises on her arms are almost gone, now only sickly pale yellows and greens, the colours of a dull, dying field. Ryan says nothing for a long time, the birdcalls seeming to grow louder and louder as the silence stretches. 

“We’ve been having fun just the two of us, haven’t we?”

Finn chews his bottom lip. He likes the road, the motels, and the gas station candy, but he misses his old room, his old toys, and his old friends. 

But Ryan’s eyes are shining like glass, threatening to shatter if he doesn’t mutter a quiet: “Yeah, I guess.”

Ryan’s beautiful when she smiles, straight white teeth extending forever as her face splits into a grin. 

“That settles it, then,” she says. 

____

Mirages blur the horizon, the barren landscape taking the appearance of rippling waves. 

It’s too hot to play outside today, heat heavy in the air, dampening Finn’s clothes and hair. His body is sticky and slick, making him feel like a slug. Or an eel. 

Ryan has the fan on full blast, its undulating head spreading warm air around the cabin. Haley, Sara and Amanda are sitting on Finn and Ryan’s bed, a game of Skip-Bo spread over the faded bedspread. Finn sits cross-legged among them, arguing with Sara over the rules of the game. 

“Ryan! It’s your turn!” Finn calls. 

An indistinct sound rings out from the kitchen. 

“I’m cutting us some watermelon,” Ryan says. “Hold on.”

“We’ll skip you if you don’t - if you don’t hurry up we’ll skip you.”

“Don’t be a brat. I’m coming.” 

Ryan sets a plate of watermelon down on the bedside table. The slice in her hand drips pale pink water down her fingers. 

“Okay, where were we?” she asks, her tongue darting out to lick away the watermelon’s sweetness before picking up her cards.

A loud rap at the door interrupts their game. 

“I’ll get it,” Ryan says. “Finny. Play my turn for me.”

Ryan pads to the door, her bare feet skidding across the carpet. She swings open the screen door and stops dead. The colour drains from her face and she somehow grows smaller, sadder, in mere seconds. 

Finn leaps off the bed, curiosity getting the better of him. 

A familiar figure stands in the doorway.

“Daddy!”