“What do you think went wrong in English and physics?” Dad asked.
“I’m dumb. I failed. As expected.”
“You’re not dumb,” Laurence said. I threw him an annoyed look. There was no need for lies just to make me feel better.
“Spare us the pity party,” Dad said. “You just need to focus on studying, not . . .” He trailed off, because he had absolutely no idea what I liked to do. I’d been marathoning all eight seasons of Game of Thrones when I should have been studying for my physics final.
“Boys?” I guessed.
“Exactly.” He held out his hand. “Your phone, please.”
I peered at Mom. He gave me a concussion, and the first thing he did upon returning was punish me?
Mom twisted a towel in her hands and swallowed.
“Come on,” Dad said, opening and closing his fingers.
I stared harder at Mom.
“Clara, maybe it’s better if you don’t have any distractions this summer,” she said quietly.
Behind Dad’s shoulder was a framed picture of a stream, and I couldn’t remember which hole it covered. I didn’t know if it was the time he punched it in a rage about something Mom had done, or if it was the time he’d hurled a chair at the wall when I came home late. I wondered if, one day, I’d forget what the painting of Texas was covering up. Would I be like Mom, who swore up and down that Dad hadn’t been aiming that chair for my head? I already wasn’t sure if I had really ducked, because she so adamantly claimed it didn’t happen. How long until my reality bent the same way Mom’s did?
I dug my phone out of my pocket and put it in Dad’s outstretched hand, but my eyes stayed on Mom.
She looked away.
4
After midnight, when Mom and Dad were asleep, I slipped out of my room and into the backyard. I sat on the edge of the porch, feet in the grass. It was early enough in the season for the weather to be pleasant this late, almost cool now that the sun was gone. In a few weeks it would be miserably humid every hour of the day.
France probably had better weather. It was a terrible reason to run off to fight scrabs, but I’d always hated the summer. I hadn’t even known that other places were cool at night, even in the summer, until I visited Mexico.
The door slid open behind me, and fear gripped my chest so intensely that I couldn’t breathe until I turned to see that it was just Laurence. I let the air out of my lungs slowly.
Laurence had something square tucked under his arm, and he used his elbow to keep it steady as he lit a match and held it to the cigarette in his mouth. He hadn’t noticed me yet, sitting at the far edge of the porch.
“Laurence,” I said.
He jerked like I’d startled him and almost dropped whatever he had under his arm. He adjusted it and tucked his lighter in his pocket.
“Hey,” he said, blowing out a breath of smoke. “What are you doing out here?”
“Nothing.”
He watched me for a moment, like he was debating saying something. Laurence’s words were never an accident.
He settled for silence and strode across the yard to where an old drum sat on top of two concrete blocks. He removed the lid.
“The neighbors hate it when you do that,” I called.
“Life’s full of disappointment.” He peered inside the barrel, then grabbed the matches from his pocket and lit one. He dropped it in and added leaves until smoke began to rise.
I stood, dead grass crunching under my feet as I walked to him. He took the square object out from underneath his arm and dropped it on the ground. It was the painting of Texas.
He slammed his foot down on it, cracking the wooden frame. He picked it up again, another crack echoing across the yard as he folded it in half. He dropped it in the barrel.
I stopped next to him, watching the black smoke curl up from the fire. “Didn’t like that painting?”
“You kept staring at it.”
He said the words to the barrel, not meeting my gaze even when I turned to him. The flames lit up his expressionless face in the darkness. I said nothing, because sometimes if you waited, Laurence would finally choose the right words.
“They should have to look at that hole,” he said after a silence so long the flames were almost gone, leaving nothing but smoke. He tossed his cigarette butt in with it. “He almost killed you. They should have to look at the evidence.”
Mom would just buy another one—that painting was ten dollars at Walmart—but I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything, because the words he almost killed you were vibrating through my brain. Laurence had never acknowledged the danger I was in out loud.
“I’m going to stay,” he said. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, shook it, and sighed dejectedly. He tossed the empty pack in the barrel.
“Why?” I asked, even though the answer seemed obvious. Obvious, but unexpected.
He met my gaze and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Unless you’re leaving too, I’m going to stay.”
“I didn’t ask you to protect me,” I said.
“I’m going to do it anyway,” he said.
You’ve done a terrible job so far, I didn’t say.
“Unless you’re leaving?” It was a question this time.
“What about the job?”
He shrugged. “There will be others. Dad can feel smug, at least.”
The wind shifted, blowing smoke in our faces, and we both stepped back, in opposite directions. I stared at him through the smoky haze; his eyes fixed on a point at the other side of the yard. When I looked, there was nothing.
I wondered if there would always be an excuse not to go. Maybe Dad had planned to leave when he was twenty. Maybe there were jobs in Oklahoma or road trips planned but never taken. A different life plotted but never lived.
I thought of
