Staring at the huge expanse of dark sky and the thousands of stars winking in and out as though they were communicating with each other, I’d dream about who I’d be when I grew up. I liked to draw, but I was good at math – the kind of good that would have got me labelled a nerd if it wasn’t for my skill on the ice. I could be an artist, a scientist, a professional hockey player. Surrounded by that seeming infinity of sky and sand and ocean, I thought my choices were wide open.
What a naïve f**k I’d been.
Those bath sheets were like everything else here, now. Worn out. Used up. As close to worthless as something can be without being entirely worthless.
Dad looked older than his years. He was just under fifty – a bit younger than Heller – but he looked a good decade older.
Salt water and sun will do that.
Being a tightlipped, heartless ass**le will do that.
Too far, Landon. Too far.
Fine.
Grief will do that.
He watched me load my shit into his best friend’s vehicle, as though it was normal for a father to reassign his parental obligations – like the day his only kid left home for college – to someone else. But he’d been doing that for a while now. It had been up to me to fail, flail or claw my way out of wanting to end myself since I was thirteen. Five years of surviving from one day to the next. Of choosing to get up or not. Go to school or not. Give a flying f**k about anything or anyone or not.
Heller had given me one shot at getting out, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to apologize for taking it.
‘Hug your father goodbye, Landon,’ Heller murmured as we shut the hatchback door.
‘But he won’t – we don’t –’
‘Try. Trust me.’
I huffed a sigh before turning and walking back up the front steps.
‘Bye, Dad.’ I delivered the words dutifully – something I did for Heller’s sake, nothing more. He’d set his cup on the railing. His hands were empty.
I was leaving him to his silence and his solitude, and suddenly I wondered how different this moment would have been if my mother was alive. She would have cried, arms looping round my neck as I bent to hug and kiss her goodbye, telling me she was proud of me, making me promise to call, to come home soon, to tell her everything. I would have cried, holding her.
For the sake of the only woman the two of us had ever loved, I reached my arms round my father, and he wordlessly put his arms round me.
I stared into the side mirror, watching the town grow smaller. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Despite an uneasy curiosity, I wouldn’t look back to see if this was true. That bullshit town and the years I lived there would be out of view in five minutes and erased from my conscious mind as soon as I could forget it.
‘Do what you want with the radio,’ Heller said, and I snapped my attention forward. ‘As long as it isn’t any of that screaming crap Cole abuses his ears with. Can’t stand that noise pollution he calls music.’
His oldest kid was fifteen now. Whenever we were together, he’d ape how I dressed and what type of music I was into, following me around and mimicking whatever I said or did – not always a great idea, I’ll admit. His attitude on life seemed to be: if something irritated his parents, he was for it.
I blinked like I was surprised. ‘What, no Bullet for My Valentine? No Slipknot?’
I laughed at Heller’s agitated scowl, sure he didn’t believe or care whether or not those were real band names. That was all the answer I got, besides his usual stoic sigh. I plugged my iPod into the stereo console and dialled it to a playlist I’d made last night titled f**k you and goodbye. The tracks were a lot less violent than the title implied, in deference to my road-trip companion. I might share Cole’s attitude when it came to my own father, but not his.
I didn’t see the Heller kids often – though that was about to change, since I’d be living in their backyard. Literally. My new home would be the room over their garage that had been storage for boxes of books and holiday decorations, exercise equipment and old furniture. My memories of it were vague. When I’d visited the Hellers, I’d slept on an air mattress in Cole’s room. Backing out at the last minute every damned time, Dad would stick me on a bus with my duffle bag and strict instructions not to do anything stupid while I was there.
I wasn’t a kid any more, and this wasn’t a weeklong visit. I was a college student who needed a place to live for four years. A legal adult who couldn’t afford a dorm or an apartment along with tuition. Heller told me I’d be paying him rent, but it wasn’t much. I knew charity when I got it, but for once in my pathetic life, I was grabbing it with both hands, like the knotted end of a rescue rope.
LUCAS
‘I’ll take the first couple hours, and you can take the last two.’ Jacqueline slid her dark sunglasses over her eyes and grinned at me from the driver’s side of her truck. ‘But don’t nap, or we could end up halfway to El Paso. I need you to navigate.’
As she backed her truck down the driveway, I waved goodbye to Carlie and Charles, sliding my sunglasses into place. ‘That’s a completely different highway.’ I chuckled. ‘You aren’t that bad.’
She shook her head and sighed. ‘Seriously. Don’t tempt fate. You’ll be sorry. We could end up lost and driving aimlessly for our entire spring break.’
When I stopped to consider the fact that Jacqueline was coming home to the coast with me, driving aimlessly for a week instead didn’t sound so bad. I shook my head. ‘I guess I should have gotten you a new GPS for your birthday.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘That sounds like a sensible gift.’
‘Ah, right, I forgot – we don’t do sensible gifts.’
She’d told me that her parents had always bought each other (and her) sadly pragmatic gifts, but they’d hit a new low – buying their own gifts. ‘Mom got herself a new StairMaster and Dad got himself a grill,’ she told me when we’d talked Christmas night. ‘It’s a big grill, with side burners and warming drawers and, who cares, because holy cow – buying your own gift for Christmas?’
I didn’t tell her that seemed like a great idea to me. If she believed practical gifts were out, then I was destined for a lifetime of impracticality. Bring it.
We’d each had a birthday in the past two months. My gift from her: driving a Porsche 911 for a day. Massively impractical. Heller and Joseph were both massively jealous. I texted a pic to Boyce and he texted back: Fuck the bro code. I am stealing your woman. You have been warned.