The alarm clock didn’t wake me up. The pain in my left knee did—a souvenir from a bike wreck on I-95 three years ago, just before everything in my life turned to ash.
I sat up, the springs of the mattress groaning under my 250-pound frame. The apartment was cold. It always was. We lived in a complex called “The Pines” on the south side of town, the kind of place where the “Pines” had been cut down a decade ago and replaced with concrete, peeling paint, and the constant, low-thrumming bass of neighbors arguing through paper-thin walls.
I rubbed my face, feeling the sandpaper grit of a two-day beard. I needed a shave, but I didn’t have the energy. I swung my legs out of bed, my feet hitting the linoleum floor. It was cracked, just like everything else in this life.
