Quinn could hear it in her voice: the old lady was mad. Hell, screw mad. She was fucking pissed. Quinn swallowed the bitter taste bubbling up in his throat. It wasn’t a new thing, her being mad. She spent most of her life that way, or at least it sure seemed like that to him. At eleven years old, he couldn’t really think of a time when she hadn’t been mad over something. Mad because she didn’t have the money to score some drugs. Mad because she didn’t have the money to buy more booze. Mad because the landlord wouldn’t take a blowjob in exchange for rent. Mad because of Quinn—just because he existed. Always mad about something. Still, going by that shrill tone in her voice, he had a feeling it was worse than usual this time. He glanced around the dirty little apartment where they lived, calculating the distance to the door, wondering if he could get a window open without her hearing him. Looking for escape, even though there wasn’t one. It had all of three rooms, a main room where his mother slept on the couch, a kitchen that hadn’t ever been used, and a bathroom with a toilet that was permanently stained with urine and shit.
