I moaned again.
Rush was obnoxiously perky for so early in the morning. I would have wanted to kill him, except he got me Tylenol and coffee and gave my parents some story about how I’d run out of gas the night before, and he was taking me to fill up the tank.
“Thanks for doing all this,” I told him once we were in the car and heading to the Barn.
In response, Rush asked, “What’s going on with you and that Enzo guy?”
“You could just say you’re welcome.”
“And you could just answer the question.”
“Enzo and I are friends. That’s all.”
“Keep it that way.”
“You sound like Emily,” I grumbled. A phrase I never thought I’d utter.
Rush glanced over at me. I was surprised to see that he actually seemed worried. “There’s something not right about Enzo.”
“Like he may be a murderer?”
“No, Hawthorn. Like he’s a loser who will drag you down with him.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t. We drove in silence.
Who was Rush to lecture me? Like he was a master of great decisions or something? Like he had his life together?
The longer the silence stretched, the more annoyed I got. Finally, I blurted out, “You can’t just be my brother when it’s convenient for you.”
“What?” Rush looked at me sharply.
“You can’t sit here and lecture me about how Enzo is bad news, even though most of the time, it’s like you forget you even have a sibling. For all you know, I could be hanging out with people who are bad for me every single day. You don’t know anything about my life.”
“I don’t know anything about your life because you don’t tell me anything about it, Hawthorn.”
“I’ve tried to.”
“When have you ever done that?”
I was silent.
“And when have you ever wanted to know about mine?” Rush went on. “I can’t say anything without getting insulted by you. Football is stupid; the girls I date are stupid; I’m stupid. If that’s how you feel, fine, whatever. But don’t sit there and act like I’m a shitty brother, OK?”
“So it’s all my fault then? Yeah, right. You’ve spent half your life making fun of me because I’m not as cool and popular as you.”
“Yeah, you’re such an outcast. No one understands you. All anyone does is sit around and think about what a loser you are. Grow up, Hawthorn. No one cares.”
As if to punctuate his point, Rush turned on the radio, which I pretty much took to mean the conversation was over.
My headache was getting worse by the minute.
When we got to the Barn, there was no sign there’d been a party there the night before. What happened to the beer bottles and Solo cups? Did someone come out early in the morning to clean all the trash? I thought about asking Rush, but a glance at his face convinced me it would be a bad idea.
“Thanks for the ride.”
Rush nodded but didn’t look at me.
“So…see you later,” I said.
“Yeah.”
He continued to stare straight ahead. I didn’t know what else to say, so I got out of his car and into my own.
? ? ?
I drove toward my house but couldn’t bear the thought of going inside. Not because I was avoiding Rush. He’d gone to coach one of his peewee games after dropping me off. And it wasn’t because I was afraid my parents would ask me questions about last night. If anything, they were probably happy I’d gone out and socialized. Besides, a few nights before, I’d caught my mom passing a joint with Sundog. If she was fine smoking pot in our backyard, she could hardly get on my case for underage drinking.
I didn’t want to go inside because the house was suffocating. I didn’t want to be in my room, alone with my thoughts. All the things I’d accumulated over the past seventeen years trapped me inside of my head, which was the last place I wanted to be. I didn’t want to think of what a fool I’d made of myself the night before or how everything Rush said in the car was probably true.
On a normal day, I would have gone to Emily’s. But it wasn’t a normal day. I couldn’t hang out with Emily and pretend our fight hadn’t happened. And Enzo was the last person I wanted to see because I still felt like he’d abandoned me. That pretty much summed up my list of friends. For a second, I thought maybe I could call Connor, and he’d hang out with me. But then I dismissed that too. He was my brother’s friend, not mine.
With nowhere to go and my head hurting too much to make aimless driving possible, I got out of my car and walked around the side of my house to the backyard. I could at least put off going inside for a while.
Sundog was sitting by his tent, smearing paint on a piece of construction paper with his bare hands.
“Young Hawthorn, how are you on this fine Sunday morning?”
“Hungover.”
I sat down next to him and watched him work. The colors on his palette were running together and turning brown. His canvas didn’t look much better. Sundog dipped his fingers in a glob of paint at the edge of his paper and used it to draw a long line.