“This is really good, Mom,” I say over a mouthful, to make up for the sweatshirt remark.
“Good,” she says absently. “Oh. I almost forgot. You got something in the mail today, Wil.” Her knuckles whiten against her glass.
I raise my eyebrows at her. “What is it?”
“Something about a college fair in downtown Jacksonville. Lots of southern schools. The flyer said there would be representatives there to talk about scholarship opportunities and financial aid.”
“We don’t need financial aid,” Dad mutters into his tea.
Mom’s face doesn’t even register Dad’s voice.
“Now,” she says, “before you say anything, Wil, I know you think you’re not interested in college. But college will open doors for you. You’ll have options.”
“Thing is, I don’t really need options.” I should say Okay, great, thank you. I should end this. “I have the shop.”
“The shop.” Mom runs her tongue over her teeth and lets out this half laugh, half sigh that brings my dad’s fist down on the table.
The plates jump. Mom jumps. I jump.
“Where’d the UF sweatshirt come from, Henney?” Dad asks.
My mother doesn’t answer—swallows her tea and sharpens her Silence Weapon.
“Dad. It’s okay,” I say. I don’t want my lasagna, but I take a huge bite anyway, because everything’s fine and when everything’s fine, a person eats his lasagna.
“My boss is on the Board of Regents,” Mom says. She has gray in the same places my dad does, around her temples and streaked through her hair. They’ve made each other old. “He brought it back from a meeting. For God’s sake, Wilson, it’s a sweatshirt.”
Again, she looks at me with her tight smile. “They have club rowing there, you know.” She slides out of her chair. “Who needs a napkin?”
I hate it when they do this—fill the air up with so much anger and hate that it’s like breathing through a straw. “It’s fine, Mom. Tell Dr. Larkin I said thanks.”
“Bullshit, Wil.” Dad shoves his chair back and stands up. His voice is getting softer, but his energy almost blows me back.
“I don’t want to talk about this right now. Please,” I say.
“Wil doesn’t want to go to Florida, Henney. He doesn’t want to go to Florida State or University of Miami or Central Florida. He doesn’t. Want to go. To college.” He follows Mom around the counter and into the kitchen. “Would you look at me, goddamnit? Look at me.” He grabs Mom’s shoulders and whips her around.
“You guys!” I yell.
“How does he know if he wants to go to college?” She’s shouting now, so loudly my ears are buzzing. “We don’t always know what we want at seventeen, do we, Wilson? We don’t know that we could go to college, that we don’t have to get married right away! We’re too young and stupid to know!”
“Mom.” I taste bile. “Mom.”
She keeps going. “Sometimes we make choices at seventeen that we regret for the rest of our—”
My dad lunges. The crack sends an earthquake through me.
Everyone is still, and the house is filled up with silence.
My stomach heaves and heaves again. No one moves. The whole damn world can hear my heart. I get up, and my glass tumbles toward the floor. I watch it shatter. I leave it there. I walk through the kitchen, calm and slow.
“Wil,” my dad says. “Son.”
“It’s okay,” my mom says with a bloodied lip. “It’s okay.”
I open the door. I slam the door. I heave my lead body across the yard, and I duck into the workshop and he better not follow me. He better not.
I circle the sawhorse, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I scream at the weathered walls and the perfect floor. I scream until my throat is pinched and my temples throb.
I stop and bend over the boat. My hand slides over the mallet and the electricity flows through me. I lift it over my head and bring the mallet down again and again, destroying perfect wood. I watch the seams pull apart; watch the wood splinter like I’m watching time in reverse.
I don’t stop swinging the mallet until the boat is a pile of splinters on the floor, and I slide down to the concrete and, fuck, my hands. I stare at them, the dark blood running down, and they don’t look like my hands. They are someone else’s hands, hands that are capable of destruction. His hands.
You and I are the same, he said.
He was right.
BRIDGE
Spring, Senior Year
WIL was wrong, I think as I twist the shower nozzle. It screeches, and I hold my breath. I’m up extra early, while the moon is still suspended in midair outside the bathroom window. I duck under the spray and twist the nozzle again, making the water as hot as I can stand it. I haven’t cried since Wil kicked me out of the shop last night. I can feel the tears trapped beneath the surface, waiting.
You think you know about my family, he said. You know nothing.
The backs of my calves and thighs are bright pink, my knees and shins dead white. I turn and face the spray until every inch of me is humming with heat. It’s useless. The tears and the knots in my neck and shoulders and back don’t budge. I repeat all the truths I already know: Wil is grieving. Angry. Irrational. A dead father gets him those things.
But still. There are plenty of things I don’t know. I don’t know what Wil saw that night when he woke up and stumbled into the kitchen. I don’t know the sound Henney made when the killer pressed his hands around her neck. But I know Wil Hines, and I know his family. I know that Ana will never understand him better than I do.
I turn off the water and reach for the waffled resort robe Mom gave me as a stocking stuffer last Christmas. I twist a towel around my head. In the hallway, the smell of burnt coffee hangs over the top step. I stop for a second and listen for the thick hum of early-morning quiet. Instead, I hear the clang of pots tumbling.
“Nonstick piece of—” Mom hisses.
“Morning, Mother,” I call out. I find her downstairs in the kitchen.
“Did I wake you?” Mom’s in a robe that matches mine, her hair sticking out of her head at strange angles. She fell asleep in her eyeliner again. She’s pretty still, in an undone way. Books and papers and the used laptop Leigh let me have when she got a new Mac litter the kitchen table.
“Why are you up so early?” I ask, capping a pink highlighter.
“No reason,” she says in the voice she uses when she’s lying. She drags a spoon through a mixing bowl on the counter. “I was just up studying, and decided to make some breakfast.” She hands me a mug of coffee.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Pancakes will be ready in a sec.” She turns back to the stove. “And then I thought we could talk.”