Things We Didn't Say

Chapter 38

Dylan



I totally should have talked to Casey.

She’s sitting against the wall in my room, obviously hung-over, but volunteering for me to play my sax in here.

I’m all tuned up, and then, from memory, I start playing the solo for last year’s band concert, when I was in the school I liked.

All my muscles start uncurling. Over the top of my sax I can see she’s got her eyes closed, and she’s holding her temples, but she’s also smiling.

It never occurred to me to talk to her about stuff. I thought about my mom, and realized she’d flip out, and my dad wouldn’t listen, he’d just say, “Excalibur Academy is a wonderful program,” repeating exactly what Grandpa Turner said. Like test scores and college placement rates are the only things that matter in a school.

I don’t care if there was a gun at my old school. It’s not like anyone was gonna shoot me at lunch. That’s a whole other crowd I have nothing to do with, but I loved the band, and I had friends there.

At this new school they all make these, like, wide circles around me like I’m invisible. Not to be mean, really, but they were all friends before I got there. And then my best friend from my old school quit talking to me and told me, “Dude, you’re trying too hard,” when I sent him some messages. I still don’t know what that was about.

I could have handled all of it if there had been a real band, instead of this musty old music teacher who plays cello and doesn’t even know where the reed goes in a sax. And there are only, like, two other kids who play brass in the whole school. Both of them trumpets.

Whenever I thought of years left in that school, years left in my house with Angel and Casey fighting all the time, and Dad all worn out, and Jewel and stomachaches, I sometimes felt like my heart would explode out of my chest and I wanted to scream. Or other days it would just feel totally black, and endless.

I should have given Casey a chance, though. She might have helped.

Because now my parents are reacting exactly as I’d expected. Except my dad is keeping my mom calmer than I would have thought.

They were in here, and Dad was all, “Son, this is very serious, I wish you’d come to me.”

And Mom started crying and cussing.

So I’m grounded until they decide I’m not, which is no big deal because I have no life to be grounded from. And my dad is going to monitor everything I do online, which is no big deal because without Tiffany—and she’s got it worse than me, she’ll probably never be allowed to touch a computer again—I don’t care about that, either.

The worst part is, my dad wants to drag me to a shrink again. They got in a fight about that, right here in my room, my mom saying that’s an awful idea and my dad hinting that maybe I’m screwed up in the same way she is.

“Dad!” I shouted.

“I’m just concerned about you,” he said with his serious reporter-face.

Too many words to get out what I wanted to say then. Maybe later I’ll write him a note.

I close my eyes for the tricky part of my solo. It tumbles out like it was just waiting there for me to turn it loose. And I was thinking I wouldn’t remember it right.

I hear something over the sax, and pause, the last notes vibrating in the air.

It’s my dad, hollering for Casey.

She looks at me and sighs. She looks like she knows something coming. Something bad, but can’t be helped. She heads out the door like she’s walking the plank.