Nuclear Family by Lesley Whyte

I shouldn't be sitting here. Night will fall soon and that's one of the rules - never stay out after dark. Not if you want to live 'til morning anyway. But I was sifting through the books, pulling out pages to burn on the fire if it gets cold enough that it's a choice between lighting a fire and freezing to death. It's headed that way. It's been getting colder for weeks.

Ma always used to laugh at the term "nuclear family." When people said we were a nuclear family - which meant two parents, two kids, usually a dog, too, though ours died when I was six and Ma said we couldn't get another one - she'd laugh and say "this family isn't nuclear, it's toxic." People would laugh but I didn't really get it. I was going through the library books and found a cover with that exact line written on it. I felt the tears welling up and bit them back, biting down hard enough on my tongue to draw blood. Being found was one thing. Being found in a sobbing heap on the floor was quite another.

I ripped the cover off that book but left the pages, tucking it back into its place on the shelf. I stashed the cover in my bag and started tearing up bibles instead. There was no religion anymore and they had a lot of fucking pages. There were no families either, but I left all the books with happy families on the cover well alone. Bibles it was.