Her boy leaned down close. He parted his lips. Slowly, softly, Dylan slipped into Bethany’s ear the final words he would ever say to her.
“You’re a fucking champion.”
SATURDAY
SOMETHING YOU CAN’T FIX
JOEL
Friday night, the dreams began. As the storm finally burst, as the windows rattled with thunder, Joel lay in his old bed, his heart racing, his legs tangled in his bedclothes. He was running from something—something rotten, somethingold—that was chasing him through the hungry open country outside of town. He could it feel it, feel it right there behind him, snatching for his ankles, nicking the skin with a long cool nail. Getting closer. Closer.
When he awoke the next morning his mind was as cold and blank as a slab of marble. He was all but poached in sweat, one hand lost beneath his pillow, and when he checked his phone, he saw that he had slept for ten hours and was somehow more exhausted than when he’d gone to bed.
Joel struggled to recall his dream. A few vague impressions flickered, fast fading: a great black hole in the ground, a thudding in the earth. An ungodly stench.
And coursing through it all, his brother’s voice, calling to him from somewhere deep in the dream, shouting something that sounded a lot likerun Joel run JoelRUN.
Dylan. Joel sat up in bed, unlocked his phone. No calls. No messages.
Where the fuck was his brother?
Joel chewed a Xanax, cranked out a few sit-ups, but the awful anxiety that had squeezed itself around his heart refused to relent. He felt queasy, light-headed, terrified for no good reason. If he didn’t move he’d be throwing up soon.
One thing at a time, Whitley.Shirt, pants, socks, sneakers, coffee. Breathe.
On his way to the front of the house, Joel stopped at his brother’s room and pressed his ear against the door. He listened to the way the silence inside seemed to throb like a swollen heart—
imissedyou.
—and pulled away. He tasted dirt on his tongue.
His mother was eating at the breakfast table, her elbows propped over a plate of toast, her phone in her face.
“Has Dylan called?” Joel said, fighting a tremor in his fingers.
“He mostly texts.”
Joel went to the kitchen for coffee. The mugs had moved.
“So he hasn’t texted?”
“Why would he text?”
“Because he’s been out all night. Because he’s seventeen.”
“Meaning he’s asleep.”
Joel slid the coffee’s carafe back into the machine. “I couldn’t take five steps at his age without you calling me.”
“I learned a lot of lessons from you.”
Joel heard the pat of soft footsteps from the hallway and looked up to see Darren, his mother’s boyfriend, in a tank top stained all over with mustard. Joel had met Darren only twice, on the family’s Christmas trips to the city. Like Paulette, he’d gotten older, though unlike her he’d grown narrow shouldered, paunchy, spry.
“Your mother told me you’d filled out.” Darren rapped his knuckles on Joel’s chest. “You must be beating off the boys up there with a stick.”
“I mostly use my hands.”
Darren laughed so hard he had to wipe his eyes. He’d always been alright with Joel.
