Scott’s mouth drooped. He placed a finger on his bottom lip. There was a thought in front of him, practically in a cartoonlike fluffy balloon. “So … I’m not here because you asked me to come,” he sounded out. “And I don’t hang out with you because … I like you. Because I think you’re cool. No, it’s because of some … power play to break up you and Charles. To piss off my family. That’s the kind of person you think I am.”
Joanna laughed. “Well … yes! I do think you’re that kind of person! It’s the impression you give everyone! Your mother, your brother, all your friends … even this thing with this boy. I mean, you haven’t called your mom to tell her what happened in that meeting yesterday. She’s called you and called you, I’ve seen her name come up on your cell phone, and you haven’t even bothered to answer. Did you even go? Did it even matter? What am I supposed to think about you, Scott, given what you portray to the world? Yes, you are exactly the type of person who would come here to fuck with your brother. That’s what you show the world!”
But as soon as the words fell out of Joanna’s mouth, she wasn’t sure if she could stand behind them. Scott stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets. His lip trembled. “I guess you got me,” he said quietly. He jingled his car keys. “I guess you have it all figured out.”
An ambulance screamed up the drive, its lights flashing blue and red. It soared past them to the ER entrance. Joanna shivered. Her lips tasted like his, cigarettes and coffee.
He took a few steps, and then whipped back around. He stared at her, his eyes ablaze. “That kid never wanted to wrestle,” he said. “But you know what they do with those scholarship kids? They make them do a sport. They make them get a certain GPA and do a certain sport every season. Not every kid wants to do a sport, you know.”
Joanna blinked, not daring to move.
“He was coughing,” Scott said. “This one day I made him work out until he sat down and started crying. The fucking kid started crying.”
Joanna widened her eyes. “So … there was hazing?”
Scott raised his arms. “Would it really matter what answer I gave you? Do you really think anyone gives a shit what I say? You said it yourself—people have already made up their minds. People have already decided.”
“Maybe I’m wrong.”
Scott sniffed and gave her a weary look. “The kid was coughing that last day. It was the kind of cough that didn’t even sound real. Should I have taken it seriously? Should I have said something to someone about it, ‘Gee, this kid sounds like he’s got fucking pneumonia? Gee, do you think maybe we should take this kid to a doctor?’ Yeah, maybe I should have. But how would that have made the kid’s father look? Some shitty father who doesn’t even care that his kid’s lungs are failing? It was easier to let someone else deal with it. It was easier to just keep my mouth shut and hope this pansy-ass kid who dresses like a fucking hobbit, who yes, got picked on, got picked on plenty, is just doing it for attention.” He wiped hair out of his face. “I kept my mouth shut about it. I’ve kept my mouth shut about a lot of things, Joanna. Most of it hasn’t come to much good. And apparently, most of it makes me look like an asshole.”
Joanna shifted from foot to foot, stunned. Scott’s eyes were wild. His mouth was craggy and crooked, almost like he was about to cry. He didn’t look like himself anymore: tough and impenetrable and mysterious. He looked like a little boy.
She swallowed hard. Everything around her had shifted. “Maybe it’s easier to be an asshole, though. Same as it is to … to dress up like a hobbit instead of like a normal person. It’s a way to hide. People don’t expect as much from you. You don’t have to try. There’s less chance of you disappointing anyone.”
He snorted. “So you’re making excuses for me now? That’s a pretty big reversal, Joanna. Maybe I’m an asshole, the whole way down to my core. Just as you originally thought.”
“But maybe I don’t think that,” she said quietly.
He pushed the toe of his shoe into a dirty crack in the sidewalk. “By the way, I swiped a bottle of your mom’s pills. Pain meds. She had so many, I figured she wouldn’t miss one.”
She blinked. There was a stony, unreadable look on his face. She thought of what Charles had said last week—all sneaker shops were fronts for meth labs. “You did?”
He put his hands on his hips. “No. But you thought I did. At least for a second? You could see me doing it.”
A dry, croaking sound emerged from Joanna’s lips. “I …”
Scott turned back. “I guess everyone does form impressions,” he said over his shoulder. “Maybe it’s, like, biological or some shit. Maybe people can’t help it.”
And then he broke away and started across a patch of grass toward the ER entrance. She remained where she was, bewildered as to what had just happened, simply watching him go.
Chapter Seventeen