More tinny shouting.I caught a word this time.Investment.
Then another.Waste.
My stomach twisted.I knew this tone.I’d heard it from three different foster dads and one caseworker too burned out to care who heard her screaming in the kitchen.The sound of a stakeholder managing a failing asset.
Luke wasn’t having a conversation with a parent.He was undergoing a performance review where the penalty for failure was total liquidation.
“I won’t,” Luke whispered.He turned away from me, facing the corner, pressing the phone so hard against his ear his knuckles turned white.“I won’t blow the knee out again.It’s strong.I’m… I’m the starter, Dad.I promise.”
Dad.The word sounded like a plea bargain.
The voice on the other end delivered one final, quick burst of static.Luke didn’t say goodbye.He lowered the phone slowly, like it weighed fifty pounds.
The silence that rushed back in was deafening.
I waited for the release.I expected him to throw the phone, kick the bedframe, yell—something to discharge the kinetic energy the call had loaded into him.
He didn’t.
Luke sank.He didn’t sit; he let gravity take him, sliding down the wall until he hit the floor.He pulled his knees to his chest and buried his head in his arms.His breath hitched—a ragged, wet sound that he tried to choke back immediately.
He was shaking.
I sat frozen, pen hovering over a quiz.This was data I wasn’t supposed to have.
If I acknowledged it, I shamed him.Luke Carter—Division I goalie, campus celebrity, guy who didn’t color-code his closet—was hyperventilating on the rug because his father treated him like a broken racehorse.If I looked at him now, I’d be breaking the only rule that mattered: don’t see the weakness.
But ignoring it felt like leaving a crash victim on the side of the road because you didn’t want to get blood on your upholstery.
Calculate, I told myself.Variable X is Luke’s dignity.Variable Y is Luke’s current respiratory distress.Solve for equilibrium.
I needed a third variable.A distraction.
My eyes landed on the radiator.The antique cast-iron beast that Facilities had turned on yesterday.We’d traded the drone of the AC—which sounded like a jet engine during takeoff—for a heating system that clanged like a ghost dragging chains through the pipes.
I moved.Deliberate.Noisy.
I scraped my chair back against the linoleum—a harshscreech.Luke’s head jerked up, but he didn’t look at me.He wiped his face aggressively with his sleeve.
I stood, grabbed the small steel wrench I kept on the windowsill, and marched over to the radiator.I crouched down, turning my back to him, granting him the illusion of privacy.
Clang.
I hit the pipe with the wrench.Hard.
“Stupid valve,” I muttered, loud enough to cover the sound of him sniffing.
Clang.
Clang.
“First the AC sounds like a Boeing 747, now this thing thinks it’s a percussion section.”I rattled the metal cover.“Can’t concentrate.”
I gave the valve a meaningless twist and banged it one more time for good measure.The noise was abrasive, filling the room, drowning out the jagged rhythm of his breathing.
I stayed there for a full minute, crouching by the heater, staring at the peeling paint, giving him time to reassemble his face.
When I stood up and turned around, Luke was off the floor.
