Warning signs of dementia
A list populated, and I scanned it quickly.
Bouts of forgetfulness, blankness, mood changes, withdrawal…
My stomach clenched harder. He’d exhibited mild signs of all those symptoms and hadn’t stepped foot outside the house in a week. It was merely Dad’s zeal for the science, I reasoned. He wasn’t forgetful, he was preoccupied with the work and obsessed with finishing.
Every great physicist has a little bit of madness in him,he’d once told me.
“Not yet,” I murmured. “Please, just not yet.”
I turned my concentration to today’s tutoring session with Emery. Helping her pass calculus was a worthy challenge, at least, to keep her tyrannical father off her back. I concocted a dozen practice equations—more than she could do in an hour—and then grabbed my phone for the hundredth time since Saturday night. I reread our text exchange over and over.
I wish I’d been there for you tonight.
I’d failed Emery, arriving at the bonfire in time to see Dean and Harper help her and her brother to Dean’s car. And I’d failed her over the past seven years. It wasn’t my fault that my letters had gone missing, but I could have tried harder to connect. Instead, my wounded pride and more wounded heart kept me from trying again. Who knows what might have happened for Emery had I just made the effort to find her? To tell her…
“There’s nothing more to say,” I declared to no one.
Feelings my ten-year-old self had nurtured were trying to grow back after I’d mercilessly yanked them out. If I let them take root in the empty places where my mother had been, I’d suffer a different version of the same colossal hurt all over again. Abandonment. Rejection. And even if I threw caution to the wind, the odds of something happening between a girl like Emery and a guy like me were statistically negligible. I had nothing to offer her but math equations and quantum theory.
My father had taken that route, and where did it get him? He’d offered his heart to my mother with both hands, and she’d left him with nothing.
Because loving someone wasn’t enough to make them stay.
***
At the Academy, I headed straight to the gym. A group of guys who’d tried out for row crew surrounded a bulletin in the glass case outside. Some were fist-bumping, but most muttered dejectedly. I hung back, watching, as Brent let out a curse and punched the wall. A few of his buddies led him away, patting him on the back.
“My father’s going tokillme,” he said, and suddenly my shit-talking felt petty and small.
When the group had moved on, I stepped up to read the roster, scrolling past the single, pairs, and fours, straight to the eight-man sweep.
Eights:
Coxswain: Dean Yearwood
Stroke Seat: Rhett Calloway
Seven Seat: Henry Moore
Six and Five Seats: Knox Whitman and Tucker Hill (captain)
Four and Three Seats: Justin Wu and Kai Thornton
Two Seat: Orion Mercer
Bow Seat: Xander Ford
I let out a breath. For all my braggadocio, I hadn’t been entirely certain Coach Daniels would take me on. My small smile vanished when a voice came from behind.
“Congrats, Ford.”
I turned. Tucker loomed behind me with Rhett Calloway beside him. Just like seven years ago, though I wasn’t the scrawny kid they’d pelted with water balloons anymore.
“I guess we’ll see what you got,” Tucker said. “But Coach doesn’t fuck around and neither do I. We want to win. End of.”
“I can imagine,” I said before I could stop myself. “Considering how you blew it last season.”
