Chapter Five

Jake

By fourth period, I’m already behind on classes. I plop down into the chair in History with a sigh. Mr. Fretzel stands at the front of the class, setting up the smart board. He looks up and across the room at me, as if he feels me watching, and he scowls.

After last year’s incident with Mr. Desala, he’s not the first teacher today to frown at me. I know that I was wrong, and I’ve apologized. Coach has been the only one to listen to me. It was rough last year. I was grieving over Jamie, stressed out, feeling guilty, and had just started drinking. I don’t even remember coming to school that day. Even though I apologized, I don’t entirely remember how it all happened. It didn’t matter that before the incident I was always on time, polite, did my homework, everything I was supposed to. No one forgets, and even less than that, forgive. They don’t care about the reason, only the outcome.

It’s the same way when we lose a game. The why or the way we played doesn’t matter, only the score. Sometimes I think Mom had the right idea with running away from this town like she did.

I lower my head to the desk.

“Rough first day already?” Other Howell asks.

I look left as she takes the seat next to me. I didn’t expect her to be in this class with me. I haven’t been this close to her since the BS party. She was something else that night.

“It’s only the first day?” I ask.

She chuckles a little. “Yeah, we have too many more between us and graduation.”

Graduation. A word I try not to think about. “Let’s not bring that up right now. I’m not ready,” I say.

“Me either,” she says.

“Fretzel hates me,” I say to her when he starts staring at us again. His face is in a scowl.

She waves him off. “He loves me, so you’ll be okay.”

“He’s not the only one,” I say. “And to think teachers used to love me.”

“Well, that was before you were notorious.”

“Notorious?”

“Oh yeah,” she says. “Now you have community service for threatening a teacher.”

“Actually, I got it for coming to school drunk.”

Haley rolls her eyes at me. “Okay, that doesn’t make it better. Any idea what you’ll be doing for that?”

“I start Saturday. Eight mornings at a soup kitchen.”

She starts to say something else, but before she can, Mr. Fretzel clears his throat to start class.

Outside the house, the wheelchair ramp is loose from the front porch. I told Dad we need to build this shit in, but he won’t do it. Right now we still have one of those plastic ramps, temporary. The way he hopes all this is. Jamie and I both know it isn’t, but we can’t tell him anything. He never listens to us anyway. I scoot the thing so it latches back into place.

Thud.

The sound echoes through to the outside of the house, and my heart starts pounding as I rush up the porch ramp and jam my key into the hole.

“Jamie!” I call out. Everything replays in my head, shattering, twisting, too fast to scream, blood. Lights flash in front of my eyes. I expect to see the car again, smooshed and crushed, blood everywhere, to feel the rain on my cheeks. Even though I don’t, I have to tell myself to breathe. Worst case scenario, always.

I hear Nanette and Jamie talking, then there’s laughter. I want to be sick, but everything is okay. I push all the fear down into my throat, and call out, “Hey bro.”

“Jake! Come in here.”

I clench my fist for a second before I make the short walk into the study. Well, the former study. It’s Jamie’s room now. I stop in the doorway, pushing the empty wheelchair back inside, and look around the room to the new-addition poster of Selena Gomez in barely a swimsuit. It’s more and more his every day.

He’s playing a video game on the computer, on pause, controller in hand. I stare at the wheelchair, and my stomach churns. I hate that thing. As much as I wish Dad was right, that the whole thing was temporary, that chair reminds me it’s not. He used to do the same thing with Mom, pretend like it was something other than the truth. It’s how he copes. Jamie looks up at me and smiles.

It’s never not going to be weird to have my big brother look up at me.

“Nanette made brownies,” Jamie says, stretching the plate out to me. She moves around the room, making his bed. She’s one of his caretakers—Nanette and Raymond. They’re here more than I am.

I don’t want to be a shitty brother, but I can’t handle it here.

It’s too dark with the cherrywood floors and the cherrywood decor and the leather couches. It’s impersonal, cold, too musky, and too empty. The mantle has been lonely since Mom left, and it’s another ghost in our house. The Howells have white walls in their living room with blue couches with white tables. It’s the total opposite of this place.

I hate the silence the most. I hate the way Jamie and I try to fill it, as if we can say something loudly enough to fill the words no one is saying. It’s why I hate sleeping in my own bed. It’s weird to wake up to silence. It’s been five months now; you’d think I’d be used to it. I’m not. Jamie was always too loud. His alarm would go off too long and too many times. He’d stumble out of bed. Trip over things on his floor. Curse like a sailor while he woke up. Blare music in the shower. Slam dresser drawers. Mornings were an event, but they were part of the normal routine. This, the echo of nothingness, is abnormal. A reminder that there’s something broken.

That’s why I hate it here.

“Earth to Jake.” Jamie waves the brownies in front of my face.

I shake my head. “I’m good.”

“They’re delicious.”

Nanette smiles. “Glad to hear it.” She tosses a pillow at the head of his bed. “I’ve got to run to the pharmacy. You want to come with me, Jamie?”

My brother’s face darkens. “Nah, I’m good. About to win this level.” Unless it’s to go to the doctor, my brother hasn’t left the house since the accident. His psychologist said we couldn’t force him into things, but we should always ask. Nanette looks disappointed, but she gives in and leaves.

My phone dings, probably the guys. I ignore it for now.

“You have practice today?”

“Nah, we’re off. You know Coach’s rule about the first day of school.” The first day of school is the most important, sets the precedent for the rest of them. I don’t want anyone distracted by football.

Is Jamie thinking about school? Right now, he’d already be a couple weeks into his first semester of college classes, but here he is. He won’t be going back to school, at least now. He won’t play ball there. He won’t get anything he’s worked hard for. He deserves more than that, than this.

“Coach follow through on that community service?” Jamie asks.

“Yeah, I’ve gotta report to a shelter on Saturday morning,” I say. “At seven a.m.”

Jamie laughs at me. “I can’t even imagine you at seven a.m. on a Saturday.”

I jerk away his brownies. “For that I’m taking these with me.”

“Don’t be a douche,” Jamie says.

“Takes one to know one.”

“Wheelchair.” He says it with a smile, as if it’s the only excuse he needs to do or say whatever he wants. He’s right. It is. “And when what I’m saying is true, it’s not me being a douchebag. It’s you being unable to face reality.”

“We’re all pretty good at that in this house,” I say.

Jamie nods slowly. “Yeah, we are. Give me another one.”

I hold it out of reach. “No way. You’ll get fat. I’m saving you.”

He chuckles at me and flips me off.

I stuff a brownie in my mouth. “I’m gonna shower.”

“Then some Northlander?” he asks, pointing to his favorite game. I suck at Northlander, but he likes it.

“Sure,” I say. “Order some dinner?”

“On it,” he says, pulling out his phone.

On the way upstairs, I grab a beer from the fridge. I go slowly up the stairs because my legs groan. I’m sore from football practice since Coach has been riding us harder than usual and these two-a-days have been killer. He would never admit how much it matters that we win because he doesn’t have to. We all feel it each time we’re on the field.

I freeze at the top of the steps. Jamie’s door is open. Nanette or Raymond must have been up here. I hate walking by the room, so I always leave the door closed. The bed he will never sleep in again. The stuff he will never use. The football jersey for UGA that’s still sitting on his desk chair, never going to be worn.

I shut my eyes tight and then pull the door closed.

I grab my wallet and stuff it into my back pocket. Easy. But then I have to piss, and when I do, I see myself in the bathroom mirror. Coach wasn’t wrong. I look as exhausted as I feel. I don’t think I’ve had a good night’s sleep in five months. My hair is too long. And no matter what happens, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I will never be what I was.