“Maybe the army will give you some direction,” Mom said.
I’d spent the last few days waiting for one of my parents to beg Renny not to leave. He would have listened to them where he ignored me. But my mother and father were incapable of cooperating, not even to save their eldest son from making a huge mistake.
“Basic’s ten weeks, then infantry AIT for five weeks. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a few days’ leave to come home before my first posting.”
I didn’t understand how Renny could treat this so casually. Like he was leaving for a gambling cruise to the Bahamas instead of the army.
“Listen to your drill instructors,” Mom said. “And try to make friends with the other recruits.”
“Christ, Mom. It’s the army, not kindergarten.”
“I know that, Ozzie,” Mom snapped.
“Do you?” I could barely stand to look at my parents. Their indifference had killed my appetite. Even for éclair pie. “Look at us. We’re wearing party hats, celebrating Renny’s idiotic decision to run away from his problems instead of tying him to a chair to make him stay.”
Warren set his fork down and folded his hands in his lap. We were talking about him but not to him, and I’d been in his position before. Sitting in the cafeteria while the other kids talked about me and the plane crash like I couldn’t hear them. It was a shitty thing to do, but right then I cared less about Renny’s feelings than about possibly saving his life.
Dad clenched his jaw. His already too-thin lips became barely more than pink face slits. “Warren’s certainly not the first of our sons to run from his problems. We haven’t forgotten about your little misadventure.”
“Misadventure?” I said. “You mean the one where the plane crashed and exploded?”
Mom tagged in. “Your brother’s an adult, Ozzie. Your father and I may not agree with his choices, but they’re his to make.” She glanced at Dad. “If it turns out Renny’s made a mistake, he’ll just have to live with the consequences like the rest of us.”
“Real nice, Kat,” Dad said. “Are you actually bringing that up now?”
“I didn’t sleep with one of my students’ parents.”
“Wait,” I said. “What?”
But they’d taken up their weapons again and dragged me and Renny into the trenches with them. “No,” Dad said. “Just someone young enough to be one of my students.”
Mom slammed her fork on her plate, chipping the ceramic edge. “At least I waited until our marriage was over, Daniel.”
Dad snorted. “Keep acting as if our marriage hasn’t been over for years. You checked out long before I did.”
“I’m done.” Mom stood and marched upstairs, slamming her bedroom door behind her.
Dad hung his head, pushing strips of fallen lamb around his plate with his fork.
When I couldn’t take the silence anymore, I said, “You cheated on Mom?”
“It’s complicated, Ozzie.”
“Either you did or did not have sex with another woman while still married to my mother. It’s really not that complicated.”
Dad wouldn’t look me in the eyes. “Maybe you’ll understand better when you’re my age. Or maybe you won’t.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin and draped it over the remains of his dinner like a shroud. “People drift apart, and sometimes they don’t notice soon enough to fix it.”
“That’s your excuse?” I said.
Dad left the table and walked outside to the back patio.
“Still think I’m crazy for wanting to get the hell out of here?” Renny said.
“Did you know?”
“About Dad?” he asked, and then said, “Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Renny shrugged. “Dad needed an ally, and you’ve always worshipped him.”
I couldn’t process the new information. All this time, I’d thought my father the victim in my parents’ war, but he’d cheated on Mom. I’d been on the wrong side this whole time.
“What about that stuff you said about Dad still being in love with Mom?”
“Him cheating doesn’t make it less true,” Warren said, but I didn’t know how it could be. If he’d loved her, he wouldn’t have slept with another woman.
“Everything’s changing,” I said.
Warren sighed heavily. “No shit, Ozzie.” He pulled off his party hat and tossed it onto the table, grabbed his Styrofoam container of éclair pie from the fridge, and headed upstairs.
“Don’t go, Renny.”
He paused on the landing. “Party’s over.”
1,675,009,220 LY
I PASSED BELLA DONNA THE fakest fake ID of all time outside of a/s/l. I thought Calvin was joking when he’d handed it to me in the parking lot behind the club, but then he’d smiled sheepishly and shrugged. My picture was crooked and the plastic felt flimsy. Worst of all, he hadn’t even made me twenty-one. All he’d done was shift my birthday back a couple of months so I could pass for eighteen. Bella Donna smirked at my ID but drew an X on my hand anyway.
“See you found your boy,” she said. She let her eyes crawl up and down Calvin, lingering in some places more than others. “I can see why you chased him, baby.”
I pulled Calvin inside by the arm, not giving him the opportunity to ask what Bella Donna had been talking about.
Your Mom’s a Paradox was scheduled to perform early in the night—they were the opening band’s opening band—but a/s/l was already crowded to capacity with drunken revelers eager to rock in 2018.
During the week before the show, Lua had been busy rehearsing, so I’d split my time between working at the bookstore and hanging out with Cal. We fought about our roller coaster and argued about the universe. It was the most fun I’d had since Tommy disappeared. I gave Calvin Plato’s Republic to read and told him to focus on the allegory of the cave. Calvin convinced me to watch Donnie Darko, hoping the concept of the tangent universe from the movie might spark some ideas about Tommy’s disappearance, though I didn’t like how the movie seemed to suggest Donnie was schizophrenic, because it made me think Calvin was insinuating that everything might be in my head when I knew damn well it wasn’t. But I kept that to myself because the time I spent with Cal was the most normal I’d felt in ages.
When I’d picked up Calvin to go to the club, I’d had to convince him to change into an outfit that wasn’t a black hoodie and jeans. He’d compromised by wearing a long-sleeve black T-shirt and different jeans, but had refused to brush his hair, which grew wilder with each passing day.
I, on the other hand, had dressed for the occasion in a sleek black velvet suit Lua had convinced me to buy a couple of months ago but which I’d never had the opportunity to wear. I hadn’t dry-cleaned it, and a few spritzes of odor remover had failed to camouflage the old-cigarette-smoke stink, but no one could deny I looked pretty damn good.