I'll Stop the World, page 4
“It’s full tuition, for four years,” Shawn explained, pressing ahead. He searched his father’s face for pride, relief, surprise, anything that might indicate even mild interest in his son’s accomplishment. His father had never praised him for good grades or championship-worthy athletic seasons—excellence was expected for the son of Gabe Rothman; anything less was to fail—but surely even he could see that this went above and beyond mere excellence. “They only award one a year for the whole county, out of hundreds of applicants. It’s a really big honor—”
“I know what it is, son.”
Shawn swallowed, his throat thick. “So you don’t have to worry about money for college. The award will cover all of it.”
Finally, his father looked at him, his expression inscrutable. After a long moment, he spoke, his tone icy. “So even after our discussions about what you would do after graduation, you went ahead and applied for this award anyway. Behind my back.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Shawn said, his heart thunking down into his stomach. “It was a long shot anyway, so I just thought—”
“Did you?” his father interrupted. “Think, I mean?”
“I—I mean, you said you weren’t going to pay for college, so I figured—”
“I said you didn’t need to go to college. Not when you have a perfectly good career waiting for you right here. Or is what I do for a living not good enough for you?”
Shawn took a deep breath, willing himself to remain calm. Getting emotional only ever made his father angrier. He didn’t know why he’d allowed himself to hope that the award might make a difference, no matter how impressive it was, or how hard it had been to earn. Gabe Rothman had only ever seen one acceptable path for his son: his own.
It doesn’t matter, Shawn told himself. Who cares if he doesn’t approve?
After all, with the citizenship award, he didn’t need his dad’s blessing. He could go wherever he wanted, far away from here, and there wasn’t a damned thing his father could do to stop him.
Still, Shawn couldn’t bring himself to let it go. Not yet. “Dad, just because I want to go to college doesn’t mean I don’t respect what you do. I have a lot of respect for you and your business. I just feel—”
“Listen to you, all I want and I feel. That’s the problem with kids today. You think it’s all about your feelings. No consideration for anyone but yourself.”
“I just think that—”
“You don’t think. You just do whatever you want to do, and then when it doesn’t work out, you’ll expect me to come in and fix it all for you. Well, I’m telling you now, son, I won’t do it. Once you leave this house, you’re on your own. Don’t come crawling to me when things don’t work out the way you want.”
Shawn fought the urge to ball his hands into fists. “But, Dad, I don’t—”
His father held up a hand, cutting him off. “Just stop, son. You’re only embarrassing yourself. This conversation is over.” He closed his eyes for a long moment, exhaling slowly out his nose. On the stove, the bacon was starting to smoke. He nodded to the pan. “You’re burning your dinner.”
“I made enough for both of us,” Shawn said quietly.
“I’ve lost my appetite.”
Shawn stood frozen in the kitchen as his father ascended the stairs. He waited until he heard the bathroom door close and the shower turn on, before driving a fist into his leg, over and over, biting back the urge to yell until the throbbing in his thigh drowned it out. He’d have a bruise later, but it didn’t matter. No one would see it.
For a second, he just stood there, relishing the ache in his leg, breathing in the sharp stench of burning grease as smoke stung his eyes.
Ten more months.
Forty-three weeks.
Three-hundred-something days.
He could make it ten more months. Then he could leave.
Taking a deep breath, Shawn turned off the stove, picked up the spitting pan, and threw it in the spotless sink.
Chapter Five
JUSTIN
“Why’d you say you’d go if you didn’t want to go?”
“To piss Dave off,” I say, dropping my keys on the kitchen counter and opening the fridge, then the pantry. Ugh. How do we never have any food? Grabbing a pad of Post-its off the counter, I start making a list of things we need from the store.
“You know what would piss Dave off even more?” Alyssa says as I add milk, bread, peanut butter to my list. “Actually going.”
“Yeah, but then my night would suck.”
Pasta sauce
Vegetables???
Aluminum foil
“You don’t know that. It could be fun. Besides, we’re seniors. This is the last bonfire we’ll ever have.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
The door to the basement opens and Stan emerges, balancing a stack of dirty dishes in one hand as he leans heavily on the railing with the other. “You’re home from school,” he announces gruffly, as if I didn’t already know.
“No shit,” I mutter under my breath. I cross vegetables??? off the list and replace it with ramen.
“Hey, Stan,” Alyssa says with a smile, taking the dishes from him and depositing them in the sink.
“Hey there, sweetheart,” Stan says, grinning at her like the creeper he is. “Draw anything new today?”
Her eyes light up, and a second later, her sketch pad is in her hand. She flips through it to her assembly sketch of me and holds it out for Stan’s evaluation. Alyssa has always thought Stan is charming. It’s the one thing she is consistently wrong about.
Stan is kind of hard to explain. He’s my grandfather’s cousin, or cousin’s cousin, or something, and the only member of our family who still talks to us. My grandmother—Mom’s mother—was an only child, whose parents died just a couple of years before she did. That left my grandfather’s side of the family, who took Mom in and raised her after my grandparents died in the high school fire. But they cut off all contact with her after she got pregnant with me, the result of a one-night stand with some guy she met at a party her sophomore—and final—year of college.
The way she tells it, the pregnancy was just an excuse. They were convinced that if my grandmother had never gotten pregnant with my mom, then their son wouldn’t have married her, and he would still be alive. They’d only taken Mom in out of guilt, and jumped at the chance to kick her out.
Anyway, not long after that, Stan showed up, saying he’d heard about what had happened through the family grapevine. While he couldn’t mend things with the rest of the family, he offered to help out however he could. He even bought this house for her so we could all stay together, one big happy dysfunctional family.
Mom was so grateful that, when I was born, she named me after him. Justin Stanley Warren.
I know this makes Stan sound like some kind of saint, but he’s not. He’s grumpy and mean and has probably never had a single moment of fun in his entire existence. He’s always there for Mom, making excuses for her every time she gets fired and picking her up at three in the morning when she’s too wasted to drive home, but can’t be bothered to care about my life, unless it’s to tell me what a screwup I am or how I’m being unfair for expecting her to act like an actual adult.
Stan finishes examining Alyssa’s drawing—he proclaims it incredible, a word that apparently applies only to pictures of me, but not actually me me—then shuffles toward me. He looks over my shoulder at my shopping list, his nasty old-man breath brushing my cheek. “Oreos.”
I lean away. “Oreos are expensive, Stan.” I’m arguing mostly because I’m allergic to agreeing with Stan on anything. Oreos are delicious.
“Here,” Stan says, digging a crumpled twenty out of his pocket and handing it over.
“Ew,” I say, wrinkling my nose at the softened bill. “Where’d this come from, your mattress?” Stan deals almost entirely in cash. When I asked him why he doesn’t just get a credit card—or even a debit card—like a normal person, he gave me a long-winded speech about our society’s overreliance on technology, which I tuned out after about fifteen seconds.
He shrugs. “If you don’t want it, give it back,” he says, holding out his hand.
“Not if you want your Oreos,” I say, shoving the bill into my pocket. It may be a gross bill, but money is money. And maybe if I get him his stupid cookies, he’ll forget to ask for the change.
“You talk to your mom today?” Stan asks me, getting himself a glass of water from the sink before lowering himself slowly into a chair at the table. He’s moving more stiffly than usual. His bad knee must be acting up. Some injury from when he was a teenager that left him with a gnarly scar that looks like a smiley face. Probably means it’s going to rain.
I shake my head. “Why? You think she got fired again?”
Stan sighs. “You know you’re allowed to text your mother just because she’s your mother, right, Justin?”
“I could lick the crust off all the dirty dishes in the sink just because it’s food. Doesn’t make it appealing.”
“Do you have to act like such a brat all the time?”
“Nope, I do it special just for you, Stan.”
Alyssa elbows me as she walks by, mouthing stop it when I look up from my list to meet her eyes. I roll my eyes, but resist the urge to keep messing with Stan. For now.
He just makes it so easy.
She sits across from him at the table and folds her hands. “You need anything else from the store? We’re getting ready to run out.”
“That’s sweet of you, dear, but I think I’m good,” Stan says, patting her arm.
Alyssa smiles, placing her hand over his and giving it a brief squeeze. I consider making gagging noises but decide against it, since I don’t want to piss off Alyssa. Even if her affection for Stan is super gross. “Well, you just let us know if you think of anything, okay?”
“Will do.”
For the life of me, I cannot understand why she likes him. He spends about 80 percent of his time in the basement with his weird old-man hobbies that he keeps trying to rope me into, 20 percent of his time parked in a recliner watching The Young and the Restless, and zero percent being even slightly normal or cool. Once I asked her what she saw in him, and she said he was “cute,” and I had to resist the urge to vomit.
“I’m done,” I announce, pocketing the Post-it and picking the keys back up. “You ready?”
Alyssa nods, refilling Stan’s glass of water and giving him a little wave before joining me at the door.
Stan and I don’t bother saying goodbye to each other. We never do.
Back in my Mustang—purchased off Craigslist last summer for $1,500, which was probably too much considering its mismatched paint job, rattly transmission, and slightly sour smell—I steer toward the Dollar Tree, where I can probably get most of the stuff on my list with my employee discount. We’re nearly there when Alyssa gasps, staring at her phone. “Oh my god.”
“What happened?”
“They found a body in the river.”
“Who found a body in what river?”
“Some guy walking his dog out near Wilson Bridge, and the Stone.” I glance over and see her switching between various social media apps, where kids from school are already filming videos and snapping selfies from the bridge. From the animated way they’re talking to their cameras, I assume there are already a few dozen dead-body theories being crafted into hashtags.
Alyssa’s got her phone muted, and I can’t make out the auto-generated captions while driving, so I wait for her to fill in the details. “Oh, people are saying it’s not actually a body; it’s just human remains,” she says, clicking to a new video.
“What’s the difference?” I find a space near the front of the lot and steer in.
“A body is whole. Remains are, like . . . pieces, I think,” Alyssa says.
“Gross.”
“But it’s not like someone got hacked up,” she continues. “It seems like these remains are super old. Maybe even decades old.”
“Ah, so no one we know, then.” Pity. Could’ve been Dave. You’ve got to cross over Wilson Bridge to get to his house.
“Still pretty cool, though,” Alyssa says. She looks up at me, mischief in her eyes. “Want to go check it out?”
I point to the store. “I need to get groceries.”
“We can come back here after.”
“They’ve probably got the whole area blocked off anyway. We won’t even be able to see anything.”
“Let’s go find out.”
Chapter Six
LISA
“You want to go roller-skating?” Lisa asked, stretching out across her bed to turn down the radio, currently blasting Madonna. She glanced at Charlene, whose nose was adorably wrinkled as she focused on blowing a giant pink bubble with her strawberry Bubble Yum.
The bubble popped, and Charlene shook her head. “I’m kinda tired.”
Truthfully, so was Lisa. After Charlene had arrived with more supplies, they’d spent the rest of the afternoon slathering squares of poster board with blue and gold paint and piles of glitter, making signs for the bonfire. She glanced in the mirror over her dresser and lightly brushed her hand over the edges of her neat Afro, dislodging a few stray sparkles that fluttered onto her bedroom carpet.
Still, as tired as she was, it was Friday night, and she longed to go out into the world and do something fun. Something where she could hold Charlene’s hand and no one would think it was strange. Tomorrow was about her family and Shawn and keeping up all the appearances she needed to maintain, but tonight, it was just her and Charlene.
“A movie then?” Lisa suggested. “We haven’t seen the one about those kids who go underground yet. I’ve heard it’s good.” Plus, a darkened theater sounded really appealing at the moment.
Charlene shrugged, her eyes flitting over to the calendar tacked to Lisa’s bulletin board. “Sure, whatever.”
Lisa sat up, tilting her head. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Charlene stretched out her gum, twirling it around a finger before popping it back in her mouth. She wouldn’t meet Lisa’s eyes.
Lisa peered at the calendar to see what was so distracting to Charlene. “The brunch?” she guessed quietly.
Charlene sighed, pulling a Kleenex from the box on Lisa’s nightstand and wrapping her gum in it. She pitched it into the trash can in the corner as she flopped onto her back on the bed. Lisa dropped down beside her, their shoulders bumping against one another.
“It’s really not a big deal,” Lisa said, trying to convince herself as much as Charlene. Her family was going to brunch in the morning at Emerson’s Tearoom as part of a campaign photo op. Shawn was meeting them there. As Lisa’s boyfriend, he was already scheduled to be part of it, but the citizenship-award win that afternoon would definitely be a plus. The picture was set to accompany a profile of Lisa’s mom in the Stone Lake Gazette next week leading up to the debate.
“Lisa,” Charlene said softly.
“It’s just a stupid brunch,” Lisa insisted. Her stomach twisted, belying what she’d just said, but she kept her smile glued on.
“Is it?”
Lisa was quiet. She knew it was more than that. It wasn’t just eating pancakes and drinking orange juice while a local photographer snapped photos. It was the public picture they were painting of who their family was: two loving parents, one cherubic baby, two supportive teenage daughters, one award-winning boyfriend.
The perfect family.
“Everyone knows these things don’t really mean anything,” Lisa said, picking at the purple polish on her nails.
“If it doesn’t mean anything, then don’t go.”
“I have to go.”
“Then tell Shawn not to go.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” Charlene propped herself up with her elbow, a challenge in her eyes. “Give me one good reason why not.”
“You know why not.”
“Do you?” Charlene’s lower lip trembled, pink rising in her cheeks. Her emerald eyes shimmered.
Lisa reached up to trace a finger along Charlene’s jawline. “You know I’d bring you if I could,” she said softly.
“Would you?” Charlene’s hand closed over hers, and she dropped her head onto Lisa’s shoulder, their fingers weaving together. “I just feel so . . . invisible sometimes,” she said, her voice small.
“You’re not,” Lisa insisted. “I see you.”
“You just don’t want anyone else to see me.”
Lisa frowned, twirling a tendril of Charlene’s golden hair around her finger. “Do you want anyone else to see you? With me, I mean?”
Charlene sighed. “No. My parents would flip out.”
“Yeah.” Lisa still didn’t know how her own mother and stepfather would react. Better than Charlene’s parents, she thought. Or at least, she hoped. But there was only one way to find out, and she wasn’t ready for that yet.
“But you have this whole other life that you want people to see, and I’m not in it,” Charlene continued. “I just have to sit around waiting for whenever you can squeeze me in. And it’s never the important stuff. I only get the parts that don’t matter.”
“Are you kidding?” Lisa squeezed Charlene’s hand. “You get the parts that matter the most.”
“You know what I mean. In the paper next week, it’s not going to be me sitting next to you. It’s going to be him.”
“That wasn’t my idea.” The decision to include Shawn in the photo had been all Veronica, Diane’s campaign manager. Lisa had never asked for her reasoning, but she suspected Veronica thought Diane would get more votes if their “family” photo included someone who looked like the majority of the people voting.
Lisa hated that she was probably right.
“But you think it’s a good idea, don’t you?”
Lisa bit her lip.
“It is a good idea,” Charlene said quietly, answering her own question. “He’s a good idea, and I’m a bad idea.”
“Char, no.” Lisa held her tight, wishing there were something she could say, some magic string of words that could fix this. That could make it easy. But those words didn’t exist. “It’s just complicated,” she said.
