Some days I wish I could fall asleep and wake up in two or three years. Maybe I’ll be in culinary school. Maybe I won’t have to push our broken-down family along the road. Maybe, years from now, we’ll be fixed enough to move forward.
I nod off on the couch until Bekah complains about being hungry. I make chicken sandwiches and force everyone to eat side salads, too. Then Leah and I go to her room to play horses. Plastic horses have many personal accessories—brushes and flowers for their manes and ribbons for their tails. We’ve barely unpacked everything when I hear Bekah and Isaac bickering.
Then I hear something shatter. Shit.
“Stay here,” I tell Leah.
Downstairs, Isaac and Bekah are still fighting. They’re pulling the remote control between them, both flushed from anger and exertion. I’m relieved to see it wasn’t the TV they broke. It was a picture frame, facedown on the side table near their tug-of-war.
They see me and exclaim “He did it!” and “It’s her fault!” at the exact same time. I look between them, and Bekah says, “I was here first, and he knows I always watch this show!”
“That show is stupid, and there’s a show on about dinosaurs, and I told her about it last week!” Isaac makes another grab for the remote.
“Stop.” I hold my hand out. “Give me the remote. No one is watching anything because you guys are acting like five-year-olds.”
“But!” they both say.
“Now.” I rip the remote from Bekah’s hand and slide it into my back pocket. “You broke something, and it wasn’t enough to stop you? Do you understand how ridiculous that is?”
I lift the picture up gently, and no glass pieces fall out. It’s just cracked in the center from hitting the edge of the table, splintering off into several arcs of fragmented glass.
It’s my parents’ wedding picture. Glass is shattered over their smiling faces. And I’ll never see my dad smile at my mom like that again. I’ll probably never see my mom smile like that again, at anyone, ever. The best years of their lives are gone, and sometimes it feels like mine are, too. Like life will never be that good again. I didn’t even appreciate it at the time.
“The dinosaur show is educational,” Isaac begins, making his case, as if I’ll change my mind.
“Come on, Jonah! It’s bad enough that you guys made us get rid of cable!” Bekah shrieks, turning on me.
The broken picture has knocked the wind out of me. Hit me right where it hurt—in my own broken places. Part of me wants to sob. But instead, I yell, anger roiling up from inside me.
“Goddamn it. Are you two fucking kidding me?” My voice echoes against everything. I’m pushing air from my stomach. “You’re making this so much harder than it already is. Do you understand that I’m seventeen? I’m not a grown-up! And you’re down here . . . fighting like idiots and breaking Mom and Dad’s wedding picture. Look what you did!”
I hold the picture up, and Bekah’s eyes brim with tears. This should stop me, but it doesn’t. “You’ve got to stop being such assholes. Just stop. You are not the only people in this family, and the rest of us think about each other constantly. You only think about yourselves.”
They’re side by side, lips quivering and eyes wide. Tears streaming.
“Jonah,” Silas says, appearing in the doorway. He’s holding his work apron in one hand. “That’s enough.”
“I’m sorry,” I reply automatically to him, and I turn back. Isaac wipes at his cheek. I’m the shittiest brother of all time. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. I shouldn’t have . . . I’m sorry.”
I’m off and running. Fleeing. The neighbors’ houses blur in my peripheral vision. Months of weight stacked on my shoulders finally broke me. My brothers and sisters—how much longer can we keep this up? My mom—what to do, whether to let her grief run its course or tattle to Felix. My dad—how it still sometimes doesn’t feel real that he’s gone. How it makes me question everything. On top of everything else, the restaurant—his one legacy, his life’s work—may or may not be struggling.
And me. What the hell am I doing with my life? If I have the same fate as my dad, I’ll be dead before my forty-second birthday. That used to sound old. Now it’s a little more than my current age doubled. And I’ve spent the past eight months just trying to get through each day. I have one more year of high school left, then what? My grades are decent but not spectacular. I have no particular skills to get a scholarship. I should be spending this year like everyone else—trying to figure it out.
I have basically two achievements in life: my perfect hollandaise sauce and the fact that I’ve helped take care of my family since January.
And I screamed at them. I called them assholes.
Maybe I shouldn’t be here, on Vivi’s front stoop. She’s been so low. But I need her right now.
I knock on the front door. On the outside, the house looks more like an office building. A big square with sharp edges. I knock again. No answer. So I start around the side of the house, to below her bedroom window. She’s usually blasting music in her room and can’t hear the door anyway. Her light is on, and her window is open.