Blake sits too. And he looks at Mama and Dad. “I know you don’t believe me,” he says. “I know you think I’m just angry. And I’m sorry for causing trouble. But you’ve got to listen to me. Just . . . please. Listen to me for once.”
Mama rubs her temples. Dad sits quietly. My chest is tight and I can’t take a deep breath. Anticipating rejection is the worst. But all I allow myself to think about is Cami. Get through this, and I get to see her tomorrow. Fuck it up, and I don’t. I focus.
“Go ahead, then,” Mama says with an impatient sigh. “Just know that you are on really shaky ground, mister. So watch it.”
Blake wets his lips and I can see his fingers shaking. “Okay, so in science, we’re doing genetics, right? Dominant and recessive genes. I had to do the eye color thing and the earlobes, remember?”
I wince as pain shoots through me, remembering how bad that made me feel.
“Yes, we remember,” Dad says. His face looks tired.
“Well, first there was all the stuff Ethan said about the woman, but I saw two men in the car, and that didn’t make sense . . . and him not remembering things—”
“That’s perfectly normal,” Mama interrupts.
“I know,” Blake says quickly, a little too loudly, but he holds his temper in check. “But then I noticed something.” He glances at me with such enmity in his eyes, it’s stunning.
Blake opens up his folder and pulls out a photograph. It’s a slightly blurry, blown-up snapshot—the one of me and him and Cami and the sno-cone machine.
“You stole that from my collection, you little f—” I cut myself off just in time, but neither Mama or Dad notice. They’re looking at the photo. I bend forward a little, suck in some air.
“Look at his . . .” Blake’s voice cracks again. He clears his throat and points to my head in the photo. “Look at his ear,” he says, softer, his voice losing a little of the confidence he had before. His face turns red, and his lips press so tightly together they turn gray.
And I’m sitting here with that boot in my gut. Making its steady climb up my ribs again. Fuck. I try breathing steadily but I’m gulping air.
“What about it?” Mama says.
“He looks different,” Blake says. “Do you see it?”
Mama sits back in her chair, exasperated. “Blake, of course he looks different. That’s normal. And Ethan looks almost exactly like the age-progression photo that NCMEC created. You look different from then too, because your body and features change a little as you get older.”
“Mama,” Blake says, and I can tell he knows she’s about to blow. “My looks changed, I know. But my earlobes didn’t. Earlobes don’t change. They are either attached or detached, and they stay that way for life. Ethan’s is detached in this picture, see? Now look at him.”
Dad leans forward and stares at the photo. He takes it by the corner and pulls it closer so he can see better.
And then he stares at me. At my ears. All the color drains from his face. And his eyes . . . his eyes.
I turn away, but it’s too late. His rejection is suffocating, my lungs searing as if I’ve been underwater too long. I’ll never forget that look on his face.
I struggle to my feet as the first wave of hysterics washes over me. I’m falling out of a fifty-story window, I can’t breathe, can’t do anything but grasp at air and wait for the impact to kill me. I stumble blindly around the table to the basement door and hang on to the handrail in a silent scream as Mama says in a trembling voice like death, “Blake, you have pushed this too far. Go to your room.”
CHAPTER 42
I sit in the dark in my old familiar spot beneath the vent, curled up with a blanket, my teeth chattering. Numb. Mama and Dad arguing. And I can hear Blake up there too. Yelling and throwing crap around in his bedroom, stomping around. And then he’s crying, big coughing, angry sobs as Dad tries to talk to him.
“Give me the original photo!” Dad says.
“No. Then I don’t have any proof!”
After that, they lower their voices and I can’t hear them anymore.
Mama and Dad fight long into the night, and this time, they’re not even trying to keep their voices down. I can hear every word.
“It’s clearly photoshopped,” Mama says, her voice ragged. “And this is a horrible game. It’s not funny. I can’t believe he would do something so . . . so . . . mean. What kind of boy have we raised? Paul?”
“I don’t know,” Dad says. “He won’t give me the original picture.” And that’s about all he says. Over and over as Mama rants, he can’t answer her and he can’t support her. And when she finally winds down, he says wearily, “Maria, sweetheart. I know it’s really him. But what if it’s not?”
It’s eerily quiet for a moment. And then Mama speaks. “I. Know. My. Son.” She pauses. And then, “Get out.”
I hear footsteps above my head. The mudroom door closing. And the car starting. Finally, there is silence.
I have seven text messages from Cami and I can’t even comprehend them. I’m sick, my whole body aches, and I lie here on the floor, unable to move. Hating Blake with all my heart. Wishing I were Gracie, asleep and oblivious.
But knowing only one thing for certain. That truly, I am Ethan Manuel De Wilde, son of Paul and Maria Quintero De Wilde, born on May 15 in Belleville, Minnesota. I live in a white house on the corner of Thirty-fifth and Maple. And nobody’s going to drive me out.