She is grateful he is not always coming around, but at the same time it’s weird. He calls and he is careful on the phone. It’s like being strangers. He is so timid, nothing like her dad.
Courtney says maybe you can’t control what happens, but you can control how you respond. She always says that when she is miserable. She is convinced quitting Boulders symbolizes something terrible—like Sam is giving up on life. That isn’t why Sam quit, but she can’t explain the real reason when her mom was already suspecting, and Sam lied so much to reassure her. Her mom has enough to worry about, especially with Noah.
When he was little, he was just curious, and then when he got bigger, Noah was quiet, playing with his cars, but now he’s twelve and he is angry. At home he breaks stuff. At school he will hit and kick and punch whichever kid is bothering him. He’s had detention. He’s had team meetings. He has written out his point of view.
My point of view is that it’s not my fault he started it. He poked me with a pencil. I rettaliated.
He writes that nicely with good handwriting, but then he fights again. He’ll smash things. A plate. A mug. “Noah, please,” Courtney begs him. “Goddammit, Noah.” But you can’t stop him. He breaks stuff and then afterward, he cries.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he sobs.
Once, Sam asks him, “If you’re sorry, why do you destroy everything?” He is facedown on the couch, so when he answers, his voice is muffled. She bends over him. “What? I can’t hear you. Sit up.”
He doesn’t sit up, but he turns his head. “Something happens to me.”
“But what happens?”
“I turn into someone else.”
“Well, don’t do that!” She sounds like their mom, half scolding, half begging.
One night he can’t figure out history, and he rips it up. First, he tears his homework down the middle and then he tears it again, and Courtney says, “Noah, stop!” She tries to lecture him. “You can’t just tear up the assignment!”
He slides open the glass door to the balcony to throw the pieces out there, but Courtney won’t let him, and she fights him, and for a minute Sam thinks the glass will break, and the landlady will come and make them pay for it—and how will they find the money?
By the time the fight ends, both Courtney and Noah are crying. Noah is curled up on the kitchen floor.
Maybe Noah needs a different school. Maybe he needs more time with his dad—except his dad is Jack. He still wants to go over to Jack’s house and Courtney won’t let him—but sometimes she does. When Noah comes back, he is tired and spoiled and he can’t remember if he had dinner. One time he comes back and says Jack hit him, but then he changes his mind. He never has any bruises or scratches, but he won’t go to sleep or follow any rules.
Courtney says he can’t go back. Then she says Jack’s house is like Six Flags. You wouldn’t go there every day but if Noah’s grandparents are there, she’s okay with it.
Jack is still family, even if Courtney doesn’t trust him. He helps with money. He never used to, but now he will pay for Noah’s clothes and even groceries. He will say to Courtney, “I’ll take care of it,” and she accepts. That’s how he wins. Little by little, he buys everybody.
Noah might need medication. He definitely needs more space. Courtney says, “We have to rearrange the bedrooms.”
Sam and her mom take the bigger double room, so Noah has the smaller bedroom to himself.
It’s not great. They should probably move.
“Good idea,” Courtney says. “Now tell me where with one car and two jobs we can afford to live.” They can hardly afford where they are now—even with help from Jack.
Sam is tired all the time because her mom has allergies. When Courtney starts snoring, Sam wakes up and can’t get back to sleep. She lies there worrying about Noah because what if he gets kicked out of school? Who will watch him? And what if Jack comes for him? She drifts into those shallow dreams you get when you are barely sleeping. She dreams that Jack kidnaps Noah, and Courtney doesn’t have the money for his ransom. One time she dreams she is calling her own dad and he comes over and fights Jack right in their apartment. It’s like the fight at Jen’s Halloween party, except this time they are bleeding on the rug. The beige carpeting is soaking red.
Then she wakes up and walks to school and she is tired. Her eyes keep closing.
Sam’s history teacher nabs her after class. “Is everything all right?”
“Yup.”
“I noticed you were sleeping.”
“When?” Sam asks, as if she’s never heard of such a thing.
“In my class.”
“I’m a little bit under the weather.” Sam is careful and polite, because her mom can’t have two kids failing.
She tries to stay awake during the day. She tries to memorize U.S. history and raise her grades, but it’s hard, because she didn’t learn much the first half of junior year.
Other kids are doing amazing stuff. Not just Halle, who was already gifted, but people you would not expect, like Emily who used to cry at practice and is now in student government. Corey is on the robotics team. He is obsessed with building an autonomous vehicle that scoots around eating Ping-Pong balls and then barfs them into a container. Sam knows, because he posts videos everywhere. Corey calls his robot THE REGURGITATOR.
Sam doesn’t build autonomous vehicles or govern anything. She just sits around trying to learn biology like mitochondria and DNA, and she no longer counts the hours, because she’s not expecting anything.