LITMIR.BIZ

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few people are total assholes.”

      “Maybe.” The word is meant to be a lazy brush-off, but there’s something about the starry sky and the quiet croak of the frogs that makes it hard to turn my brain on autopilot and go cold. “Can I tell you something weird?”

      It pops out, before I can think it through.

      “I love weird,” he declares. I let the tips of my fingers brush over his forearm and like the way he sucks a quick breath in. “You gonna tell me you turn into a mermaid during a full moon or something?”

      He looks so hopeful, I laugh. “Nope. Not like ‘boy fantasy’ weird. Weird like ‘crap I don’t talk about to anyone except my best friend.’”

      I stop and reconsider my path. Once someone knows things about you—things you’ve never told anyone else—they can choose to use them against you. Not that I think Doyle would...but I’d have to move my trust in him from hypothetical to actual, which is a huge step.

      “I know how to keep my trap shut.”

      He’s not flirting or teasing. I bet Doyle is one of those true Southern gentlemen who lives and dies by his word.

      “We moved to Savannah because my mom got into this crazy situation with her coworker—” I don’t get any further because the words petrify in my throat. Before I can get up and flee back into the house, where I can safely avoid any more intimate human interaction, Doyle squeezes my knee gently, like he’s steadying me. He speaks, quietly. Slowly. Like maybe it’s as hard for him to talk about his feelings as it is for me.

      “When I was in fifth grade, my mama finally came back again—she left the day before summer break my third grade year, and she was only around real spotty when I was in fourth. ‘Figurin’ her life out’ is what she said she was doing. Never made sense to me, ’cause she had a life at home with all of us, so what the hell was she figurin’ out?”

      When he breaks off, I give the weakest verbal comfort. “That blows, Doyle.”

      It’s a pathetic attempt at sympathy, but he gives me a half smile before he finishes.

      “Back then, my father still had a job at the paper plant, but life was kind of fallin’ apart ’round our ears. Lee and me and Malachi were goin’ to school half-starved and stinkin’, the house was always a mess. My parents weren’t ever real great at the whole responsibility thing, but my daddy made money and my mama kept things pretty clean and took care of us, mostly. When she was gone, we were barely holding down the fort. Anyway, she came back, and I thought for sure life was gonna be all right. Maybe they’d let me get this pup I had my eye on that was jest born at the farm down the way from our place. But she only showed up to give him divorce papers.”

      His voice doesn’t hitch or wobble. It’s relaxed, like he’s reciting a story that sort of bores him. Which is crazy because the frantic throb of his carotid artery makes me scared he’s about to have a panic attack.

      “When my daddy signed ’em, it was like he signed away the lot o’ us. My mama walked out on us, and my daddy checked out. Wasn’t a year later he was fired from the plant. Went in one day fallin’-down drunk and punched the foreman when he told Daddy he wasn’t in no condition to operate big machinery.”

      Doyle dips his head and presses his mouth tight to the side, like that’s the end of the story.

      My own life problems suddenly come into harsh perspective. I’ve never been abandoned, hungry, or dirty. Sure, Mom drinks a little too much some nights, but it’s nothing like what Doyle is describing with his dad. And my parents, though they’re no longer a couple, have never stopped being there for me and Jasper.

      “What did you guys do?” I realize a second after I ask the question that I’m butting in where I might not be welcome. “Sorry. If you don’t want to answer, that’s cool. I didn’t mean to pry.”

      “Nah. It feels pretty good to tell someone the whole story, even if it is all ancient history by now.” His fingers squeeze my knee a second time, but now it feels like he’s holding tight to calm himself down. I cover his hand with mine, and he attempts another weak smile. “Anyway, there ain’t much more. Daddy lost his job and never has found any kind of regular work since. Child Services came knocking on our door when it was so bad our teachers were asking us all sorts of questions every day. That’s when Daddy finally let my grandparents take us in. Pride’d been holding him back from asking for any kinda help, and by the time he bothered, it was too late. He was so far gone, and we were all done dealing with his crap anyhow. So trust me when I say I get what it’s like when parents screw up.”

      He clears his throat, then gives me a nod, like it’s my turn to spill.

      “My story is nothing like yours...” I throw my hands up, guilty over whining to him about my life when his problems are so much bigger and scarier.

      “I never figured you and me’d have identical stories.” He licks his lips and takes a deep breath. “Pain’s pain, and what hurts hurts, no matter if you think you got it better or worse than the next guy. It ain’t a competition.”

      Doyle has a way of laying out the obvious so plainly, it can’t be denied.

      “Okay. So my mom and dad... They’ve always had a weird relationship.” I lift one foot, then the other, watching droplets of water splash back into the pool. “And it got a whole lot worse when my father landed this huge book deal a few years ago—”

      “Your daddy’s a writer?” Doyle looks impressed.

      I roll my eyes. “Not like Stephen King or something. He mostly writes boring academic stuff, but he wrote one book about growing up in Santo Domingo—he meant for it to be a cultural study, but it wound up turning into this really interesting memoir... I mean, I guess it’s interesting. That’s what all the book reviewers say anyway.”

      His eyes crinkle when he laughs. “You tellin’ me your daddy wrote a book about his life and you never read it?”

      I blow out a long breath. “Ugh, I’m the worst. I should, right?” I squint at him guiltily.

      “You should do whatever you wanna do. All I can tell ya is, if my daddy wrote a book about his life, I’d be so curious, Satan ’imself couldn’t stop me from tearin’ through that thing. Don’t you even wanna see if you’re in it?” His eyes shine when he asks, like he’d be curious to flip through to those parts—if they existed.

      Thank God they don’t.

      “The book only goes up to his undergrad years, so I know there’s nothing about me in it,” I say to definitively shut down any possibility of Doyle combing through my father’s weird memoir for tidbits about me. “I guess I never read it because I kind of hate how it messed things up for my family.”

      “How’s that?” Doyle leans in, intrigued like he’s about to hear some twisted Gone Girl insanity. In fact, it’s a boring story of a family that quietly fell apart.

      “My dad got famous, in his own nerdy circle at least. And my mom got left out in a huge way. She took a hiatus on her PhD studies—which she’d been busting her ass on—so he could go on these worldwide tours and give lectures. Then he got offered a visiting professor position in France, which had been his dream job forever. When his guest semester was up, they offered him a full-time spot, and he wanted us to join him. But we had a life in New York, and I definitely didn’t want to go. My brother did apply to college in France without telling our mother, and it sent her into this depression for a while when he left. She thought he was going to Harvard, so it was a huge shock when he told us he was actually headed to the Sorbonne.”

      I kick at the water, the silky splashes deeply unsatisfying. I want to break something, smash something, do anything immediate and violent to help me forget that bleak time when my family splintered apart quickly and permanently.

      “That must’ve been hard,” says Doyle Rahn, the guy who watched his mother walk out of his life before middle school and his father

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